July 26, 2008 10:35pm and I’m typing to the sound of Jason’s distant snoring and Kali’s persistent chattering. We decided last evening during Jason and I’s marathon tear-filled processing session that we were going to temporarily give up on attempting early bedtimes with Kali. It was futile and only made all of us frustrated. So tonight we tried tiring her out instead but it seems that once again it is we who are most tired. She did stick with us hauling rocks (from the old farmers’ rock pile in the woods for the purpose of building the level up for a planned parking space) for close to 3 hours – we were impressed! Hauling rocks as a family was another thing that came out of our words and tears last night. We want to be enjoying the process of making our home and land into the place we want it to be. I’ve spent way too much time stressing over the end goal in so many projects over the past 3 years since we moved to Fruit Farm Lane. In wishing so badly for projects to be over and done with, I’ve missed out on living fully in the process. It’s one of the many lessons that ring in my head and heart multiple times daily from Nora’s life.
Jason recently shared the following Mary Oliver poem with me and its final words are now pretty well cemented in my mind:
The Summer Day Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to dowith your one wild and precious life?
July 27, 2008
I’m not sure that making really bad applesauce is one of the things I most want to do with my life, but that is what Jason, Kali and I find ourselves doing this Sunday afternoon. We have various apple trees of unknown varieties growing on our property and like lots of kinds of fruit this year, they produced in abundance. This particular apple is quite green and small even when seemingly 
ripe. So Jason picked close to 3 five gallon buckets today and we are attempting to make applesauce. I’m trying to be positive but it is most definitely something I would not serve to company and am not convinced I’ll eat much of it myself. The apples are just weird. They don’t really cook down well or mash easily. [Jason’s note: these apples come from a tree that appears to have grown from seed, which is always an unpredictable prospect, and we are likely the first people to have tested the apples for usable qualities] Kali is having 
a blast though and Jason is having a pretty fun time as well. That is why I’m retreating to keep plugging away on this update, where I can reflect on why this feels like such a “waste” of time, when really it is just great entertainment and a fine low cost family activity for a Sunday afternoon, even if all we end up with is composting a bunch of apples in a different form that they would have otherwise ended up returning to the soil. Kali tasted it and said, “Yum” and then suggested that we add 2 more spoonfuls of sugar. But she is quite enthusiastically cranking the second pot while I type. I’m surprised but I find myself eager for the day to cool and for us to start hauling rocks again!
This morning was our 3rd Sunday back at church as a family and I cried…again! I never realized how many hymns reference infancy, birth, death, growing up, parents, children, etc… The one today that got the tears rolling for me was “Hallelujah the great storm is over (lift up your wings and fly).” and particularly the lines “Hush little baby let go of your fears, father loves his own and your mother is here.” Maybe life feels a bit like the sky on a “partly cloudy, potential chance of thunderstorms” day. At one moment my “emotional sky” feels clear and blue and then all of a sudden almost unexpectedly a storm cloud rolls in. Yesterday, as we were hauling rocks, out of the blue it started sprinkling. My emotions feel a bit like that on most days. I don’t even always know the triggers and am not always prepared for the feelings when they come. [Jason’s comment: That song was emotional for me, too, mostly thinking about Nora’s struggle for life, and her freedom at the end, whatever that means exactly.]
So here’s the updated applesauce making report. Jason says, “Yes it’s dry, yes it’s mealy, but the real problem is that it tastes bad.” Kali has lost interest and now two pots of apples are cooking on the stove, we have a huge mess in the old kitchen and Kali and Jason are off playing in the new room.
Making applesauce is one of those activities that incorporates well all ages and that we hope to do a lot of in the future. I will always remember making applesauce with Mom and Jason just days after Kali was born when we still lived in town on Wolfe St. And then last summer Kali and I made 70 quarts of applesauce on one day when I was pregnant with Nora, not long before learning that the pregnancy was not completely normal.
We are approaching the time of year when I will find myself thinking a lot about our journey of one year ago. We were at 24 weeks gestation at this time last year and gearing up for a repeat ultrasound at 28 weeks to see if the minor pyelectesis they had noted at 20 weeks had cleared up. Little did we know that that appointment would set us on a journey we so much didn’t want to embark on. We learned that Nora wasn’t growing well the last week of August right in the middle of my busiest time of the school year – new student orientation week for our graduate students. And soon after that I was put on bed rest for the remainder of my pregnancy. I could only read so much of my journal the other day when I opened it to reflect back on this time a year ago. I cringe when I think of that time of waiting and anxiety and unknowns and fear and hope all mixed together.
I’ve found myself reading the blog of another family who lost an infant and clearly, as we do, found writing a helpful way for them to process and to keep friends and family informed of their journey. I’ve been tempted to pull various quotes from their pages to create an update of our own, since I relate to so much of what I read. As I think about our hopes as we prepared for a second child, Nora’s entrance into our family and the 7 months we had together, one particular quote seems worth sharing here:
"So many of the inhabitants of our nightmares have just been wrapped up in a bow and dropped on our doorstep... Abruptly we've watched our fears coalesce into the one we've dreaded most from the beginning-the need to make decisions without the path being clear. This cup among the whole dinner set is the one we wish with all our hearts to have taken from us."
The other night when Jason and I lay crying in each others arms, I felt such deep sadness and such deep richness all wrapped together. I miss Nora. I still have a hard time believing she is gone and that we won’t watch her grow up. Then at times, particularly when I’m around other babies her age, I have a hard time comprehending that we are supposed to have a baby who is sitting up and crawling around and grabbing at our plants and in general making life more complicated and rich.
I’ve been trying to finish another one of Anne Lamott's books that I’ve been working at since before Nora died ("Plan B Further Thoughts on Faith"). The following paragraph from a recent chapter resonated. “I have survived so much loss… Rubble is the ground on which our deepest friendships are built. If you haven't already, you will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and you never completely get over the loss of a deeply beloved person. But this is also good news. The person lives forever, in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through, and you learn to dance with the banged-up heart…”
We are learning, slowly. We are grateful for those still walking through this with us. I wish I could say that I didn’t feel like I still needed a good deal of help some days. I still feel like I don’t get done in day what I used to – I wander more and am brought up short by many moments (like when I opened Kali’s curtains this morning and took in again the beautiful picture of her holding Nora which is on her windowsill). At the same time, I am thinking a lot more about what matters most to me in life. I just wish it didn’t take losing Nora…
There are a few things that I feel I’m lacking right now and that is adequate time with Jason for the two of us to share together (prior to 11pm when Kali finally crashes) and chances for me to talk about Nora and her life and her absence. I’m finding many social occasions to be a real mix of pleasure and intense discomfort for me. It seems that there are probably multiple reasons why people shy away from talking with us or asking about Nora or how we are doing. And because grief is so individual there is really no way for anyone to know what we might want or need at a particular moment.
It reminds me of when Jason and I were dating and I got so frustrated with his inability to know what I wanted from him at a particular moment, that he couldn’t surprise me with just what I needed on a certain day, that he wasn’t able to see right through me and say the right things at the right time in the right order and in the right way. I’m glad to say that that was over a decade ago. Yet there are still days where it would be nice if relationships worked like that on a regular basis. Jason and I have been journeying together for over 10 years and we have learned to read each other a bit better but I’ve also learned that that isn’t a realistic expectation even for the closest of relationships. So we talk more, and I get better (slowly) at saying what I need, understanding that it is no less meaningful then when that need is met than if it had been met spontaneously without me articulating it.
So as I miss Nora and want so badly for others to know what I need so I don’t have to put myself out there, I also understand that this is unchartered waters for not just us but many of our loved ones. I can say that there is almost never a minute where we don’t want to talk about Nora, where we don’t want others to share with us something about her life or our journey with her, where we don’t want to be asked how we are doing.
Well, I’ve got to pare these updates down a bit. Congrats if you made it this far. I’ll end with a final applesauce report. Jason and Kali are hauling most of it out to the compost pile – a mixture of a bucket not even cut up, two cooked pans that we don’t have any interest in putting through the Victorio strainer and the pulp from the bit we did process. With a little water, some brown and white sugar it is edible and we’ll freeze a bit for baking and occasional tasting to remind of us our experiment. Kali’s final take on the applesauce was that it’s “not that I don’t like it but it’s just not that tasty.” I guess I better help with the cleanup. Janelle
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