How is it possible?

You cannot be one year old today. You cannot. I remember so very little of the day to day happenings of the last year and I want a do over so I can etch every day in my brain. I've heard from other parents that the first year of their child's life was an equal blur. Too little sleep, too many diapers.

You have no idea how much you have made my life worthwhile, and kept me from going crazy when things became too difficult. After Mom died, you were my little rock, and I'm hoping that you have no recollection of all of the times I held you while I cried.

When I think of last year at this time, and how we were in the hospital with you, staring at you, stunned and in awe, I had no idea if you'd be ours, and even less did I know that you would grow into this astonishing little person who exceeds my expectations every day. You're such a funny girl, you love to laugh, you're so social and you read to yourself. You READ to yourself. God, that's my favorite thing you do right now. You pick up a book and you turn the pages while speaking your own language that sounds like a combination of Turkish and Klingon. And when you get to pages that we read with emphasis or a particular voice, you try to imitate it as closely as you can. ALL THE HIPPOS GO BERSERK! I think that's your favorite, behind Binky.

My sweet, sweet baby girl, I love you so much it frightens me sometimes. I had no idea I could love anyone this intensely, and I hope that you know it, that you know that I would do absolutely anything to make your life happy. Of course, that doesn't mean I'm going to give you everything you could want, because that might make you a brat, but you will have everything you need.

We're talking lately about how to tell you that you're adopted, and we need to start reading about these things, as you're growing up so fast we'll be telling you all about your birth story soon.

I hope you're happy with us. You seem happy, we work so hard to make you happy, as does everyone else around us, because everyone loves you. We will always love you.

One more time.

How many times can you say that you miss your mother and wish more than anything in the world that the last five months were a dream and that you hoped you would soon wake up to one of her patented phone calls where she reminds you that it is, in fact, your mother calling, without everyone completely losing patience and telling you to just get the hell over it?

I have one of her infamous calls on my voicemail still. I apparently can go to Comcast's website and access my messages, and hopefully make an audio capture, but I'm terrified that I'll accidentally delete the message, and I really need to keep it as it's her voice and it's an incredibly long and completely typical Mom monologue about how our Costco membership (in my dad's business' name) is going to expire and that we need to send money if we want to keep it going. It's one of those messages that, if I were in an espionage movie and needed to make a recording of Mom's voice to get me past a security terminal that was coded to her speaking a specific phrase, would win the affections of the leading man, as I think she actually says every word the nuns ever taught her merely to let me know that I could either pay her back the $40 or write a check directly to Costco.

The Smell of Evil

So, I know what my kid eats. I know that she eats vegetables and oatmeal and fruit and a little cheese and, occasionally, small amounts of meat. There's nothing mysterious about her food, she's not consuming steak tartare or sashimi, so why does her poop smell like 1,000 festering corpses? Sweet zombie Jesus, I have never smelled a stench like her poop stench. And when her diaper disposal unit is full and has to be emptied? If I could ralph up everything I've ever eaten because of the pervading aroma issuing from that pit of evil, I would. No amount of washing, bleaching or deodorizing makes even a modicum of difference. Post-cleaning, the thing just smells like bleach or soap or lavender and the breath of the Sarlaac.

Would you think that someone so adorable could produce such a smell?


















Nor would I.

"Lessons learned from surgery" or "Wow, that really sucked."

Mom's memorial was this last weekend, and I had been dreading it since Dad mentioned that he wanted to have it. It was just so soon, so painful, so immediate. Tina likened the emotions rolling with it to the water held back by the little boy with his finger in the dam. I have my finger in the tragedy dam, and I can let out as much grief as I can handle, and then I can plug the dam back up. This service was the dam breaking for me, and, coupled with Dad's insistence that we understand why he wanted to have the service whether or not we wanted to understand, I was flooded. I had also been in charge of editing and timing the slideshow with appropriate music, so I had repeatedly watched Mom grow up, marry and have kids to the point where I couldn't bear it any more. So, I wasn't surprised when I started to feel unwell on Friday, before the drive to Spokane. By Saturday I was mildly nauseated, achy, sneezy and congested. The service itself was actually much better than anticipated and I came out of it feeling slightly improved. No one told me that Mom was in a better place, and the conversations revolved heavily around the babies in the family.

Sunday we drove home and were much delayed by a dust storm and consequent road closure on I-90, necessitating our taking the 2 most of the way. It was a seven and a half hour trip from beginning to end, and was exhausting. I still felt poorly on Monday and thought I had a sinus infection, but meds coupled with food from Shelly made me feel better, and rehearsal was surprisingly enjoyable, so, at the end of it, I felt well enough to go for a drink and some food.

I had one drink with lemonade and vodka and three little cheeseburger sliders, and started to feel abysmal about a half hour later. By the time I got home, I was intensely nauseated and desperately needed to vomit. I tried and tried and tried, but was utterly confounded, as the surgery I had in May to repair my hiatal hernia restructured the lower sphincter in my esophagus as to allow nothing but small amounts of gas to reverse course. Because nothing was moving in either direction, the nausea wouldn't pass and my abdomen became distended with the air I was gasping in. I continued to retch horribly for an hour before allowing Christian to take me to the ER. Thank God they were quick and got me in as soon as I made it out of their bathroom. They immediately gave me Zofran and dilaudid and within moments I stopped trying to barf out my intestines, which I would have welcomed, actually.

We stayed at the hospital for nearly five hours as I was hydrated and medicated and my lab results were returned. Chris was home with the baby, who woke at an uncharacteristically early hour and refused to sleep again until Chris met her unreasonable demands. We relieved him at 5:30 am and slept until she woke again at 9, when Shelly came over to watch her while we slept some more.

While I'm grateful that the surgery has prevented most of the reflux that has dogged my the entirety of my life, I'm not sure that I would recommend the procedure to someone in my situation. Maybe last night is too recent, but Jesus Christ, that was truly horrific. At least I know it worked.

All right, that's it.

I have absolutely had it with the airline industry. First, we're being charged for meals, then to check bags, and now, to receive a credit on an already booked flight that has seen a $30 per ticket fare reduction, we'll be charged between $50 and $75 for each price adjustment. It is utterly absurd to think that issuing a credit would require $50-75 worth of employee time. I don't know how to address this issue other than let the offending airline, VIRGIN AMERICA, know that I am furious.

In this time of enormous economic hardship, those who can fly are usually doing it at the expense of something else in their lives as travel is a luxury. That $60 Virgin could easily give us would go a long way in encouraging us to use them to travel in the future, but I will not use them again. At least the nameless, faceless giant wholesalers online offer credits.

Note to self...

or, I should be smarter than this by now. Don't read other singer's websites, don't read interviews with them, don't read reviews, don't read bios, don't have anything to do with the industry except when it directly pertains to me. When skinny singers start calling fat singers "elephants" and say that audiences will be rendered unable to dream when said fatties are on stage, that's when I know this business is a crock of crap.

Happy ninth month, poodle!

Oh my heavens, poodle, it's your ninth month birthday today!

It is unfathomable to me how so much time could have passed already. We were looking at pictures of you as a newborn the other day, and you were unimaginably tiny, so skinny and light, we could carry you around constantly without getting at all tired. You're so big now, so incredibly tall. Everyone who meets you asks how old you are and then marvels at your length, but you're still so lanky! All of your pants bag at the waist, but you have the greatest chubby, ham hock thighs in the world.

You still don't have any teeth, however, which makes your smile all the more adorable, drooly and gummy. And you talk now, constantly, sometimes even using real words, although whether or not they're in context is up for debate. You have met all of your milestones early, you've been sitting on your own since April, you've been crawling for six weeks, you're now using furniture to pull yourself up, and you can move from chair to chair in the dining room while standing. EVERYTHING goes in your mouth, thankfully including the things you're supposed to have in there, like food. You love finger food, especially Cheerios. You even are ambidextrous when picking up things to shove in your pie hole.

You're such a smiley baby, too, good-natured and possessed of great equanimity. You love other people and are extremely social, thank God, as I'm constantly passing you off to friends and relatives, all of whom adore you.

I love your crazy Kid n' Play hair, and I'm a little sad that it's filling in on the sides. We bought you your first hair product, which is pretty hilarious. We can't wait, though, until we can put it up in little elastics, making pom-poms all over your wee heid.

Viv, we love you so much. I hope that we show it enough. I'm trying to get in all the kisses and ear noms and squeezes I can, as you'll soon enough not want any of that stuff. You are the greatest thing that has ever happened to us, and we're happier every day than the last that you're our baby.

Giggle Pants McGee

Meet the new girl.

Meet Gladys, the Gulf Coast box turtle:

At the vet yesterday, while getting Cyril groomed, the subject of box turtles came up, as it usually does with my vet.  It just so happened that the Humane Society had given the clinic a turtle with a shell infection to be treated and then be adopted out, and we have plenty of room. And, as Gus is not a good eater, which has always worried me, adding another turtle to the habitat can trigger competitive eating, so Gladys will be a therapy turtle, as well.  So she's useful, as well as pretty.

Milestones

Crawling:  

And pulling herself up:

Some kind of weird poetic justice.

Viv is SO going to be a soprano, and a really high one, at that.

Far away and all alone.

I leave for Montana on Wednesday, and I'll be going alone.  Christian got the week off for Mom's funeral and all the requisite support duties, so he really can't be away again this soon.  Viv will be cared for in a rotation of battling honorary aunts who are all a little resentful that they have to share her.   

I haven't been away for a job since my only other Montana gig singing Messiah, but that was to the ever charming Billings, the land of it's-eight-o'clock-where-did-everyone-go?  This time, I'll be staying with a host family, which I haven't done since I spent that semester in London my junior year of college.  I'm hoping I won't have to chat or mingle or be chipper and chummy too much.  My conversation would just be so stunning:  

Them:  How are you?

Me:  Really terrible.  I'm devastated by the loss of my mother and I'm away from my husband and child and life means nothing away from them and the world will suckuntilthedayIdie.

Them:  Oh.  Um, well, your room is down the hall.

I hope they have laundry facilities I can use.

Nighttime

I still don't know how we're all going to do this, live without Mom.  Nights are the worst.  I keep expecting to see her walk by in her flowered cotton shorts, trying to tidy up before going to bed.  Seeing her grave filled and her name on a little plate at the head of it was shocking, terrible.  

Every night I think of her and the long future ahead for all of us before we can see her again, if there is such a thing as heaven.  I miss everything, the flip flop of her shoes, the hairclips on all the tables, the smell of her hand cream, her tubes of pink and coral lipstick in the bathroom drawer.  I miss her saying the rosary in the morning and checking on the baby at night.  I miss her pancake mix with the thousand different types of whole grain and her fondness for chocolate cake and pumpkin pie.  I miss the way she loved the grandkids, how she truly cared about their opinions, how she could soothe any hurt or worry by rocking them in her chair.  She always said she wished I had a rocking chair at my house, other than the tiny one from the upstairs guest room.  She wanted to rock Viv to sleep at night whenever she visited.  

Life will be returning to "normal" soon, which is when this will get even harder, I think.  Dad asked me today when he thinks we'll all hit the ground, and I said I thought it would happen when everyone had gone home, back to their lives.  I have to go home next week to get ready for Montana, my aunts and uncles all have their jobs and kids and grandkids of their own.  Our grief will become something we have to bear without putting the burden on others.  

Dad gave me an article today about how most people have very little patience with the grieving process of others, how the five stages should be on a timeline with a quick end.  All I can think of is how I don't think I'll ever get to acceptance, because that would mean that Mom is truly gone.

The hard part.

I don't know if I should have stayed so long with Mom after she had passed yesterday.  I didn't want to leave her alone, but she stopped looking like herself after a while, and I stopped being able to play the "she's going to wake up" game.  

The problem is, I keep expecting her to walk around the corner from the kitchen to the living room, looking exactly as she always has, in her flowered cotton shorts and yellow t-shirt, with the two silver clips in her hair to keep it from curling.  I keep looking for the yellow handbag, but Kyan wanted it to remember her by.  I keep waiting for her voice to call to us from the kitchen, asking us if we want food.  She just can't be gone.  

It was too fast, too unpredictable, the way she went.  How could she have had pneumonia badly enough to end her life?  How could they not have known?  We have a thousand what ifs and whys and none of them will bring her back.  I'm angry at her for not bothering the nurses more if she wasn't feeling well, but she hated to be a bother.  I'm angry at the doctors for not giving her prophylactic antibiotics, just in case something like this happened.  I'm angry that we were robbed of Mom, when we expected at least a few more years, or at least Thanksgiving and Christmas in Seattle while she was there for the marrow transplant.  I didn't expect that I'd be back in Mom's house, five days after I left, but without her here.

This is HER house.  There isn't a room in this place that she didn't decorate.  She bought every piece of furniture at estate sales or garage sales or local shops where she could find a good sale. That makes this place sound shabby, which it isn't.  It's pretty and comfortable and elegant, except for the livingroom carpet, which she wouldn't get rid of.  I hate that carpet.  

Why isn't she here?  Why isn't she home to see her grandkids, or at least at the hospital where the kids could see her on Skype.  Why isn't she still alive?  It makes no sense, which, I realize, is something that everyone says when something like this happens, but now it means something to me.  She was FINE.  I spoke with Mom twice on Thursday, once on our usual morning call and once on Skype, when I was feeding Viv.  She liked to be part of our daily lives and watching Viv eat is pretty funny, besides.  She even posted to her Caring Bridge website that night, not ten hours before she went to the ICU.  

Mom didn't want to die.  She wasn't ready, she wanted to watch her grandkids grow up.  She was supposed to live to 100, surrounded by great-grandbabies.  When she fell unconscious, she must have been pissed, in that corner of her mind where she was still aware of what was happening.  I'll bet she was thinking, "No, not yet!  I need to do so much more, be with my family, it's not time." And oh man, would she have been furious that we all halted our lives to be here.  She hated it when we interrupted our routine for her.  

What's my Dad going to do without her?  How do you make your life again when the person you spent the last 43 years with is gone?  How do you sleep in your bed when the last time you slept there, your wife was with you?  

She can't be gone.  It's not possible.  Too many people loved her, depended on her.  She was too young, too healthy, even with the cancer, too concerned with antioxidants and working out, too active to die.  How is it possible that she's never going to visit us again, that she'll never sit on our couch and say how much she loved to visit us, and how our house is so cozy.  How will Viv not wake up to Grandma holding a bottle, waiting for her?  How is it possible that Viv won't know her Grandma Judy?  

It was too fast.  Too unfair.  I didn't get to say goodbye, I didn't get to hold her hand while she died.  I love my mother, she was my hero.  She was my savior, in a very real sense.  No one else could have cared for me the way she did when I was small and sick.  I have such memories of her holding me, walking through the house in the middle of the night because I was too sick to stay asleep, and she would let me hold the crystal bell my aunt Barb brought back from Germany.  It was special and made me feel like I was being given a treat.  She would carry me outside to see if there were any crocuses, after the long winter.  I know she was over protective, but I honestly didn't care.  I was so safe with Mom.  

I'm now thinking awful things, like tonight at church.  I saw all of the extremely elderly ladies and I though, "What makes them so special that they're here and Mom isn't?  She was the best of all of them."  I feel truly wretched for these thoughts, but that doesn't make them go away.  Mom should have gotten a pass, a dispensation, an indulgence. She was too kind, too loving, too giving.  Why was that taken away from us and the world?  She should have been exempt.  

I don't want to hear that she's in a better place. She's not.  This is the better place, where her grandkids are, where we are.  This house is the better place.  Her rocking chair is the best place, where she held almost all of our kids, rocking them to get to sleep.  She got to hold Andre in her hospital room, so she got to rock him there.  She needed to be able to hold him until he slept here, where she belonged.

I don't want to be planning her funeral, but I have to.  We all do.  I don't want to think about caskets and flowers and fucking food.  I want to think about her next reaction to a new outfit of Viv's, to how much weight Andre has gained, to Jayden's t-ball game outcome, to a Kyanism or to one of Declan's new words.  I want to be able to give her the video I take of Viv almost crawling, just to hear Mom's reaction.  Her reactions were always the best.  My cousin Amy always said that you called Mom or one of her sisters if you wanted a good, satisfying reaction to news, good or bad.  I want to be sitting on the downstairs couch with, watching "A New Leaf" again, hearing her exclaim about the poor condition of my feet.  But I don't want to be here without her.  

Without her.  That's going to be the rest of our lives.  Without Mom.  It's going to suck.

I want my mommy.

Slowly and quickly.

Each day seems to drag on as we wait for Mom's cytogenetic test results.  They determine how the doctors rate prognosis, which seems awfully callous.  If we didn't know about chromosomal abnormalities pointing towards poor outcome, would we view the cancer any differently?  Is it just for the insurance companies so they know what to allow for treatment and what to deny?  Is it to give us a realistic notion of Mom's chances or is it only to help target treatment?  As Tina keeps saying, Mom isn't a statistic, and she's doing very well so far, so maybe the cytology will have little impact on her actual outcome, but what does knowing you have a genetic tendency that makes your cancer less responsive to treatment do to your morale, which is a key factor in treatment success and recovery?  

1 in 10 to 20 adults with ALL have a chromosomal abnormality called Ph1 that can indicated a poor response to chemo.  If Mom has Ph1, then she may not qualify for a marrow transplant, which is usually the best bet for remission.  I feel tense and angry that the test is taking as long as it is to be completed, as it seems to be all we can think about.  However, Rigoletto is next month, and that's seeming to approach all too rapidly, as I'm not memorized yet.  Thank God I'm only in three scenes, although even they seem impossibly dense right now.  Frigging Verdi.  It couldn't have been Handel, could it?  

So, we wait and play with the babies and chew our nails and cook meals and do laundry and edge lawns (Marianne, you tireless badass) and go to sleep each night wondering what news we'll wake to in the morning.  Every night we just pray for the best and cry a little as we wonder if it will be the worst.  

A bit of good news.

The cancer is not in Mom's spine.  She started chemo today and it was a bit rough, but she's been feeling fine since it ended.  I'll be Twittering updates as well as posting them to Mom's Caring Bridge website, https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/judyblewett.  

Last night, Kyan, my godson and second oldest nephew, was lying in Mom and Dad's bed watching Snow White.  Mark asked him if he liked doing so and he said, "Yes, when I'm here I feel like she's with me."  Sniff.

Every worst case scenario.

Mom does not have the type of leukemia we were hoping for.  She has ALL, the most common type of childhood leukemia, but a rarer type for adults, and one that is harder to treat.  Mom had to have a lumbar puncture to determine if there are cancer cells in the central nervous system.  When the puncture was performed, chemo drugs were injected into the spinal cord, just in case.  She will begin chemo on Friday, which will initially take a month, and then she'll have maintenance chemo and then stem cell transplants in Seattle.  And she will not rent an apartment to save me bother, despite her protestations.  

This is going to be a long, sucky road.

Why can't the good be left alone?

Why must there always be bad to temper the good?   I hate having my pessimism validated.  You all know the good, here's the shit stack:  Mom has leukemia.  

I cannot even write it without wanting to throw up.  She was admitted to the hospital Monday as she had gone to the doctor to have her lightheadedness, shortness of breath and fatigue analyzed, and her hemoglobin was so low that they admitted her for a transfusion.  She had her marrow biopsied today, so we'll know the type tomorrow, and the DNA typing will be done next week.  She'll come home for two days starting tomorrow afternoon, and then will be in the hospital for a month for chemo.

This is a woman who has eaten a healthier diet than an army of vegan hippies, who takes vitamins of varying degrees of strangeness, who works out, who does everything right, and this still happened.  She is the epicenter of the universe to the grandkids, and they won't be able to see her for four weeks.  There is no shit like cancer shit.    

Follow Up

When an infant has a UTI, there's a concern that an abnormality of the kidneys, urethra or ureter could be causing reflux of urine, leading to repeat infections.  When Viv was diagnosed with the UTI last week, the pediatrician at Children's and our own pediatrician both recommended an ultrasound and voiding cystourethrogram to evaluate the health of Viv's kidneys, bladder and involved anatomy.  So, yesterday, we took her back to Children's to have both done.  I am again grateful that we are lucky enough to live in Seattle.  Children's staff members all seem to have excellent senses of humor.

The ultrasound was easy, Viv was perfect and laid still with nary a fuss for the 10 minutes it took to capture pictures of her TEENY TINY ORGANS.  We saw her wee little uterus, which was a little odd.  I felt like I was invading her privacy.  Christian thought her kidneys looked like a baboon's face.  The ultrasound technician had never heard that one before.  No, literally.  She guessed that Christian was an artist, as she said that artists and engineers always see bizarre images in the ultrasound.

The VC was less pleasant.  Viv had to be catheterized, have dye injected via the cath into her bladder and then be x-rayed voiding.  She was incredibly calm, though, and didn't flinch or fuss when the nurse inserted the cath, which was remarkable.  The nurses were impressed that we had thought to bring Viv's favorite toys, as, apparently, most parents don't think of it.  Oh, and everyone said she was just beautiful and called in other staff and faculty to see her.  She's the prettiest baby ever.

Anyway, both tests showed that everything was functioning normally, and that she doesn't need to be on prophylactic antibiotics, thankfully.  We're relieved, for us and for her.