Thanksgiving and more...

I'll be called for "cuddle time" with Kali here before too long but many thoughts have been brewing. We arrived home late last night after spending Thanksgiving with Jason's family (see http://picasaweb.google.com/bennerj8/ThanksgivingWeekend#) and a brief stop over in my parents' area for a funeral Saturday and a short visit with my sister and family. It felt so good to come up Fruit Farm Lane and crawl under the covers in our bed; the covers were much appreciated since it was about 54 degrees in the house!!

It's been a rainy day and the woodstove has felt good all day. I stayed home from church again this week to unpack and straighten the house (to get ready for Christmas decorating which Kali was very enthusiastic about doing), take it easy to try to continue to nurse my body back to health from a cough that seems to be more of a nuisance now than a week ago, and to be alone with my emotions.

There were so many wonderful things about our time in PA with family. I think I just underestimated the emotional energy this first major holiday season without Nora would require of me. I guess the hospice newsletter we received in the mail full of tips for surviving the holidays should have been the first clue. It's a combination of family times that feel incomplete without her presence and the fact that this holiday season is so full of memories of the ways we celebrated differently last year.

We got down our one box of various ornaments and Christmas decorations. Kali pored through it like it was presents! I caught my breath just a bit when one of the first ornaments she pulled out was one she had made for Nora last year at a make it yourself pottery place in town. Her aunt Karen and aunt Sue had taken here there on an special outing and she had made two with Nora's name and two with hers. It made me sad and thankful; the reminders are so good for us to have. As we went through the box, I remembered how my parents joined us and helped us decorate our own home. Before last year I never took the time or made the effort to decorate our house for Christmas. Kali was too young to really appreciate it and we traveled for all of the holidays so why bother? Last year I didn't necessarily always feel like or have the energy for a lot of celebrating but many helped us create special memories that I now cherish. And those memories are not just flooding back for me - Kali clearly is remembering the fun and excitement that come with this holiday season and her enthusiasm is contagious!

Kali also seemed really glad to be home. I continue to wonder how to best help her navigate the world of large social gatherings when I'm seldom comfortable with them myself. I'm so glad she has school and that setting to negotiate relationships with other children and adults (without me there to fret and analyze!). I tend to do my share of fretting and analyzing at family gatherings... In some ways it made this year no different than many past, but there was the new layer of complexity as I figured out how to bring Nora's presence and the memories of her life into that space.

I have noticed in myself that there are times and places where I can do that in a very personal and sometime internal way. Sometimes I light a small candle in our home before company come if it is a night I just need a tangible reminder of her presence. Today I wore an orange "prayer shawl" scarf made for our family. I steal away and look at pictures for a bit. On other occasions I feel such a strong need (maybe a desire that feels like a need) to have her acknowledged to the community of people I'm with in a more public way. I told Jason that I imagine, and hope, that as time goes along it will be easier for me to rely on the personal and internal and find less need for the other. It seems likely that will happen some naturally with time.

For now, it's a messy mix of the two and I feel badly for those trying to so gently walk with me on this journey. The reality is that no one has ever "gone wrong" by talking with me about Nora. And even in PA this time, some family expressed being worried about Jason and I being okay emotionally if we shared with the extended family about Nora. For me talking about it always helps. It almost surprises me sometimes how helpful it can be. Somehow it makes the space feel safer to me. It makes it more possible for me to then enjoy and be more present to what is happening around me.

I thought a lot about Kali this trip and about siblings. There were three sets of twin cousins and then Kali. At one point a bunch of the children were on a water bed getting "rides" in the waves and there were talking about how many girls were on the bed, how many boys and then how many twins. I don't think it phased Kali but for me it highlighted something that is so often on my mind. Kali continues to talk about a future little brother or sister. The other week when I threatened to give away a pair of jeans that she insisted she "hated," she was crying as she told me we needed to save them for her little brother or sister to wear. Sometimes I just don't know what to say.

I realize we haven't even reported much on the autopsy results we received and that is mostly because there wasn't necessarily a lot of information that directly pertains to our journey at this stage. Probably the biggest thing I think about is how we go about processing any decisions to be made about the future make up of our little family. We live with the knowledge that some day down the roads (years, most likely) there may be a test for Petty Syndrome that would be available to test Jason and I for a recessive gene. Until that time all we know is that there is either a 25% chance that any future child would have some degree of Petty Syndrome (about which there is still much to learn) or a negligible chance (a spontaneous mutation that it just as likely to happen to any one else on the globe as it would be to repeat in our family).

And then of course processing those two possibilities and my reactions to each raises all sorts of emotions and questions until I finally have to consciously set it aside, telling myself that we have no need to make any decisions right now and that we can take as much time as we need. It is just hard to on the one hand feel so very grateful that Nora is part of our family and to find myself physically aching in some moments to have her physical presence back in my arms and then to struggle to know if Jason and I would knowingly choose to have another child if there is a 1 in 4 chance that that child would have a similar condition (possibly less severe or more severe) to Nora's. Fretting and analyzing again...

That was a diversion to something I wanted to share about our trip. The last morning before we left, most of the family went to a "rock shop." Jason's mom had wanted to gift each of the Benner girls/women (in-laws like me included) with a piece of jewelry with Nora's birthstone in it as a tangible reminder of her. It just so happens that there are two options of stones for Nora's birth month: opal and tourmaline. And it just so happens that both come in a whole array of colors!

I really don't like many options when shopping. I'm baffled by the choices. I wanted to find something that had meaning and maybe more importantly that I would actually wear. I'm just not a big jewelry person. On the way to the shop, I even asked Jason if he would be okay if I would stop wearing my engagement ring and replace it with a ring with Nora's birthstone (so that I didn't increase the number of pieces of jewelry I wear from 2 - my wedding ring and one other).

As it turned out, I had a wonderful moment of inspiration :) The woman helping us by showing the many options seemed to question how inspired I was, but in the end I think she could tell that it was exactly what I needed. It just happened that a couple years ago one of the four VERY tiny diamonds that surround the sapphire (Jason and I's birthstone) on my ring fell out. I never had any need to replace it - you really could hardly see the diamond and therefore could hardly see the hole.

It is so special to look down at my hand now and see my lone wedding ring, knowing that when my engagement ring rejoins it, that missing hole (the fourth stone) will be replaced with a tiny blue tourmaline. I'll know it is there and that is all that matters!

Kali has issued the call for cuddling so I better wrap this up. I just have to note here for the record that Kali won two of our three games of Sequence tonight. She is proving to be very much like me, if not much better, when it comes to an affinity for game playing. And she is really cute when playing too. She jabbers on and on about her strategy, but the crazy thing is that she will seem to be not paying any attention to what she is doing and then in the end she wins! The final game we played tonight made it quite clear to both Jason and I, when we were not laughing too hard to notice, that she does in fact have a really good grasp on exactly what is going on. Fun!

Jason's note: I thought I had the game wrapped up, when I played my one-eyed Jack to clear the way for my Ace of Hearts to complete a sequence of 5. Janelle didn't have anything to block me, but she asked Kali whether she could do it (not pointing out to her where she would need to go or offering any other clues). Kali responded with a hearty and gleeful "YES, I CAN!"(Obama should be proud), whereupon she pulled from her hand with a flourish the OTHER Ace of Hearts and plopped her chip down! I nearly fell off my chair with a laugh that was half joy, half astonishment, and all pride! What a kid.