Meaning

Yesterday Sean tried to introduce a little diversity into Walter's recent video viewing (since he's been sick, an endless loop of The Muppets, Sesame Street you tube clips, and covers of favorite Woody Guthrie songs) by breaking out our Fraggle Rock collection.  He chose season 2, disc 1 (season 2 being the best season, in our opinion.)

It's a good choice, but it's a choice we made once before, and when the episode started I was immediately transported back three years ago, the last time we turned to fraggles for distraction during a difficult time.  I was off from work, I spent my days resting with my feet up, I took frequent baths, all as I'm doing now.  But three years ago I wasn't on bedrest, I was having a miscarriage--slowly losing our first pregnancy over the course of a very long, very sad week.  

The first episode on season 2, disc 1 is an episode about Wembley Fraggle becoming a parent.  The episode starts with Wembley feeling depressed, feeling like his life lacks meaning and purpose. Someone (Boober, I think?) makes the comment that meaning doesn't just fall from the sky.  Suddenly, a large object drops from the sky into the fraggle pond. The fraggles all panic, except Wembley, who recognizes the giant egg as "a house for babies."  The fraggles, including his friends, all think Wembley is crazy.  He is defiant, and tells them he's going to do what you do with eggs: sit on it.  The fraggles think this is hilarious, and even his friends can't help but laugh at Wembley's expense.

Wembley sticks to his guns, devoting himself to the task of caring for the egg and the tree creature inside. He talks to the baby and sings the baby a lullaby.  Early the next morning, the egg hatches.  The baby tree creature emerges and immediately identifies Wembley as "Mama!"

Being a Mama is not easy, Wembley soon finds.  He can't figure out what to feed his baby.  His friends have gone from not believing Wembley to being fairly annoyed with him and the baby, who is larger than a full-grown fraggle and very, very needy.  The baby gets depressed (much like Wembley at the beginning of the episode) and Wembley realizes that tree creatures want to fly, so the fraggles all come together and sing a song as a flying lesson.  But they can't teach the baby to fly, and Wembley realizes his baby needs to be with other tree creatures.  It's a very hard decision and Wembley has to be prevented from going with the baby, but ultimately the baby is returned to its tree creature parents, who have been mourning their loss and are overjoyed to be reunited with their baby.  Now Wembley is mourning, until he sees his baby soaring, joyfully flying and shouting "Fly! Fly!"  Wembley is still sad, but happy, too. 

Yeah, it's pretty intense.  Too intense for Walter, it turns out, although I think he was overwhelmed less by the emotional content and more by the really annoying, high-pitched crying noises the baby tree creature makes (Walter ... we are not going to be able to turn off your baby sister and turn her crying into Woody Guthrie's "Take you riding in my car, car" ... I'm sorry.)

Too intense, for me, too. "I can skip this one," Sean said, in 2010 and in 2013.  "No, it's OK," I said three years ago and this weekend.  And yesterday I added, "We've come so far."

Most pastors really only have a handful of sermons that they give over and over again with slightly different words and nuances.  One of my sermons is about idolatry, and how you can come face to face with what you've put in the place of God in your life by asking yourself "What am I most afraid of losing?"  My answer to that question is unequivocal: my family. And you might think, "Well, that's not so bad.  If her biggest problem is that she loves her family too much ... big deal." But no human relationship, nothing on earth, can bear the weight and burden of being made into a god.  It's not fair to make your spouse or your child THE source of meaning, purpose, and hope in your life.  Like Wembley, you will find yourself weeping as you watch them fly away, your meaning taken from you by the inevitables of growing up, of distance, of time, of death. 

But ... and here's something I didn't realize until yesterday and need to add to my sermon ... the episode ends with hope.  Wembley has lost his baby, but he hasn't lost his meaning, and he hasn't lost the meaning and the joy he gained from his time as a Mama.  We shouldn't make our families (biological, adopted, appended, chosen, immediate, extended, ecclesial, etc.) into our god, but our families do give us a glimpse of God, a lived experience of the meaning, purpose and love that come from God.  

Edison-Albright family picture, 2006

Today, Sean and I are celebrating our seven year wedding anniversary.  I use the term "celebrating" rather loosely since we're not, like, going out for fancy dinner or on a romantic date or something like that.  We're even a little skittish about kissing each other, since Sean seems to have picked up Walter's cold.  Between Sean caring for me and Walter and the dog and the house and trying to catch up on some of the time he missed from work, it seems unlikely that this evening will bring any sort of romantic respite for either of us.  And pretty unlikely in the near future, too, as we're kind of, you know, expecting a baby any minute now but if not any minute then certainly next week, Wednesday.

And yet, we are celebrating, and it is romantic.  Here we are, right on the cusp of a new adventure in family life, hanging onto the edge of that cusp like our lives depend on it.  When I kissed Sean this morning I felt the thrill not only of living dangerously with germs, but of that spark, that attraction, that love that brought us together in the first place and keeps bringing us together again and again. 

I'm not going to say that Sean gives my life meaning. That's an awful lot of pressure to put on a guy, even a guy as wonderful as Sean. But I will say that, through Sean, I've gotten to experience a meaning and a love much bigger and greater than just us two.  We've come so far since the day we met in 1999, from our first kisses in 2002, from our wedding in 2006, from the miscarriage in 2010, from Walter's birth in 2011 ... from yesterday, really.  I'm excited to keep going, to jump off this cusp and onto the next, to find new ways of making meaning together.

Happy anniversary to us, novelgazer.  I'm so glad I get to fly with you. 

Edison-Albright family picture, 2013

This date, last year

Soon I will post a very cheerful synopsis of Mother's Day, 2011 ... but today my mind is lingering on Mother's Day, 2010.  These past few weeks have been full of difficult anniversaries ... I would wake up and think, "a year ago today is when it started," "a year ago today is when it happened."  A year ago today I posted the following note on facebook, titled, "Why I'm Celebrating Mothers Day."  I'm posting it again here because I do want to mark these anniversaries somehow; I want to remember where we were and think about where we are now.   This is posted with thanks to The Bean--you taught us so much in such a short time. 

I always knew (on some hypothetical level) that this day is difficult for a lot of people. I imagined what it would feel like for those missing moms who have died, for those missing children who have died, for those who are actively dealing with infertility, and those who can’t or choose not to have children (for a range of reasons, with a range of feelings about it.) This year I am one of “those.”
Sean and I lost our first pregnancy last week. We were still in the first trimester, but as cautious and aware as we were of the usual risks and statistics, we were already pretty attached to The Bean. I had this (hormone induced?) feeling that there was something good happening, there—that this was a very good Bean indeed. Even knowing that this kind of miscarriage usually means that there was something inherently wrong, something that would have kept the Bean from ever developing any further … even now I feel like there was something good, there. Something worth mourning and missing.
Our first positive pregnancy test was kind of funny. The line was faint enough that we couldn’t be absolutely sure it was really there. We used to make fun of those commercials for the expensive digital tests that say “1 in 4 women can misread a home pregnancy test.” And there we were, among the utterly confused 25%, buying one of those expensive digital tests. When that came back solidly positive, we scheduled a blood test. And then another, for comparison purposes. When all that came back positive, we still wondered and worried. I said to Sean, “Pregnancy is rough for people who want instant gratification.” He laughed and said that I should try to get used to it, because parenthood isn’t really an instant gratification thing, either.
I wanted to know everything I could about The Bean right away: I wanted to know if it was a girl or a boy, what we’d name it, if it was healthy, if it was going to make it through to the 12 week mark, when we planned to tell our friends and family. If the pregnancy had continued, there would have been even more questions without instant answers. Not really an instant gratification thing, parenthood. It’s a risk, a constant question with no instant answer.
Being open to that risk, those questions, that ambiguity and lack of instant answers—that’s pretty amazing. That’s worth celebrating. So this Mother’s Day, with new appreciation, I’m celebrating my mom. And because these holidays are totally arbitrary, I’m celebrating my dad, too. My parents dared to hope for a miracle when they were told their only child had less than 6 months to live. When I was cured they realized I was still just a big bundle of risk and unanswerable questions: as the crisis ended, the questions and the risk remained. And continue.
I’m celebrating my friends—parents or not—who take the risk to offer unconditional love and care, without any promise of instantly gratifying answers. I’m realizing that knowing people doesn’t mean I know their stories—miscarriage is common, but talking about it really isn’t. And so I’m also publicly celebrating the risk Sean and I took as we tried to add to our family, a risk we hope to take again someday. It is worth celebrating in the midst of our mourning and missing.
“You may fear that you could never survive another loss. But you are probably more resilient than you think. And you will probably gather up the courage to try again” Deborah Davis, "Empty Cradle, Broken Heart."

το τελος (that's what she said!)

So this is mostly just an advertisement for a neat little Unicode Greek input script that I found after reading Annie's last post. Frankly, Annie left me in the dust weeks ago, and without my textbook, I'm afraid I can't translate her title, let alone her closer.

While Annie paints my perspective on P:B as sort of zenlike, I should admit that it's probably more selfishpragmatic than that. We're coming up on one year of marriage in August, and roughly 2 years of interstate romance. (Turnpike romance doesn't really have the same ring, does it?) So, if it takes a while before we're parents — whether the old fashioned way, or through adoption or audioanimatronics — I'm glad to enjoy spending that time with my wife, being newlyweds. Certainly willing to put the time into trying, so to speak: have I ever told you the wonders Annie can work with a positronic matrix? Either way, we win.

“Goodnight, Irene”?

To telos

I tried to copy and paste in my neat Greek font, but it didn't work. You get the idea, though. It is to telos, the end of summer Greek. I am feeling a little low on adrenaline, post-exam. I think it would be a good idea for hypothetical baby to learn Greek while his brain is spongy ... of course, I also think that about sign language and Spanish ... what do you all think? Which languages should we inflict on our baby?

Sean and I have recently made plans to celebrate our 1 year wedding anniversary by taking in the roller coasters at Hershey Park. We thought about the Poconos but decided that the heart-shaped jacuzzi and round, mirrored king bed could wait until we have kids and need a getaway weekend. For now, we can enjoy being two adult theme-park goers with long legs and patience for waiting in lines, and I can ride as many coasters as I want to (a benefit of not being pregnant yet.) We're also going to spend some time exploring New Jersey. Don't snicker ... it's going to be beautiful!

I go through phases in which I'm really optimistic about our chances of getting pregnant, and then there are times when I feel like, yeah, this really isn't going to happen. As with most things, Sean helps me put it all into perspective: we may get pregnant, he says, or we may not. Either way, this time we have with just the two of us will be fun, and maybe someday we'll adopt. It's going to work out, no hurry necessary. Sometimes I yearn for instant gratification, but no matter how you go about it, having a baby isn't an instantly gratifying thing (you know, that whole nine months thing, maybe even more time for adoption.) I'd venture that it's less the gratification of microwave popcorn and more the gratification of slow-cooked pork. Mmmmmm... pork sandwich. This child will be delicious!

Thanks to all who've been there for me--through the Internets or otherwise--during this tough time. I went through this crazy lonely phase and I'm just peeking my head out from it now, thanks in great part to my summer roomie, Kat, helping me get out of the house now and then. And tonight is Harry Potter! I know it won't exactly be a cheerful movie, but I am cheerful at the thought of seeing it.

And now, I think I've earned an afternoon nap. Time to clear the study aids off my bed. Erxesthe en irene!