Thoughts on sharing gestation

My mind is running in a strange circle. I want to tell you all about my week and most of my week was work and more work and writing about work leads me to complaining about the politics of work or talking about personalities at work or otherwise violating the sanctity of the shared cube farm. Blogging about work is also bad juju. So I am changing my focus. I am going to tell you about something much more important. I am also going to invite you to appeal to whatever ear in the universe you hold to hear your voice.

My baby girl is again with child. Not to belabor the point, but her gestational scorecard sucks almost as bad as my sex life. We are awaiting another grandchild. Gender is unimportant. Inconvenience is unimportant. The only important consideration is counting weeks to 38 and keeping that polywog wiggling and growing in an orderly series of dividing cells. There is a universe of hope in her womb.

I have shared more gestations in the last few years than I ever really expected to participate in. I am moved by the easy grace that carried Pam from bride to wife to mother and mother again. I am awestruck at Beth showing up again and again to risk another disappointment against the treasure she found in Mogo. My girls are wonderous women. My grandgirls are fabulous little ladies and I look forward to the women they will become. As we wait for another grandbaby, I wish I had a guarantee.

Life doesn’t really come with those, does it? Good things happen and change over time. Bad things happen and they turn out better than my mind could conceive. Today’s happiness can be tomorrow’s ennui. Today’s misery can make the sunrise more beautiful because looking forward beats the Hell out of looking back.

So, as you whisper into the ear of the cosmos, please ask that the hopes of our hearts will come to term. Send your positive energy in our direction. In return, I will say your name to the wind and wish your wishes with you.

One year gone

When Valentine’s Day came and went and the day after stuck in my psyche for awhile–mom died February 15th last year–and I finished the last of three weeks of employment Hell, I was ready for a break–preferably not a weight bearing bone. I have been pretty well working more than not working for the last three weeks. I am not talking about having to go in 8-5 every weekday. I am talking 7 days a week–10 to 16 hours–caring more about someone else’s commission check than that someone does–missing weekends and holidays–and eating whatever jumped in front of me because there was no time to cook, shop, hunt, gather, or frankly give a good God Damn what I shoved in my mouth. That someone, those someones, stand a really good chance of closing some very substantial sales and those closings will have more to do with my skill than with any other single component of the process.  They did not miss their weekends or holidays. No, I am not overstating. It’s not bragging when it’s true.

I have not had time to dwell on what one year of dead mother means to me. I do feel a hundred years old. I do feel like it is time to pitch the suitcase that came home from the assisted living place this time last year. No, there is nothing in it I want or need. I haven’t opened the suitcase in a year. Whatever olefactory vestiges that may still live in that suitcase will smell more of medicine than mother. The mother smell itself had been gone for years before she died. The mother energy left years ago. Now, I am the only mother energy in a lot of lives. And today, as the last of my work obligations are (for the moment fulfilled) and I look ahead to a more than deserved 4-day weekend, I wish I had a glimmer of mother energy pointed in my direction. I wish I had someone to just hold me and tell me that there is more to life than work. I need someone to remind me that there is more to life than not dying. I need someone to help me feel alive. I am not my own best friend today. I am not a very good mother to myself. I think I need to choose my activities more carefully. I definitely need a nap.