Moving

Coming in May 2014: www.annieflavin.com

Thank you for reading here.  I hope you will join me over in my new space when it's ready.

Charlie at 4

Sitting down to write right now feels a lot like going off of a diving board when you're 33 years old: awkward and scary, and it feels like everyone is staring at your fat ass passing judgment on how much bounce the board is forced to give because of the weight of your body.

But I've jumped off diving boards at 33 while the board has bounced more than I'd like and the splash was larger than I might have hoped.  So, here I go.

Our kitchen is being redone, which means I've been a tired and traveling gypsy mama making lunches out of thin air on a back porch that feels like a Bikram yoga class.  I highly recommend a kitchen renovation when you have young children if you are looking to lose weight and your mind.  I believe my kitchen redo has helped with both.

After running in the rain.  Basically, without a kitchen, I feel like I am camping.  I dislike camping, even though I am happy here.

I also left Pat with the kids, which, for the record, is not "babysitting" because when you father children, you don't "babysit" them; you watch them, you mind them - hell, you just do whatever it is that we mothers do day in and day out.  I can assure you that no one has ever thanked me for "babysitting" my own children.  Anyways, I left Pat with our children while I took a trip out to LA to visit my sister.

It was fun and free.  I shopped her closet while she shopped real stores.

My "new" skinny black jeans courtesy of Meg.

And I am very glad that I am not 25 anymore.  Even though I would like to sleep in and eat breakfast whenever I choose, I'm glad that most days I don't have that choice.  I like these guys underfoot.

They are so full of life right now.  Their energy is palpable, even when you'd rather it not be.  They are loud.  They are boisterous.  They are in the moment.  They are puppies at feeding time almost all of the time.  They are up and down and in and out and learning and talking constantly.  Their presence is large.

Because Charlie is my first, I am not quite sure if it is who he is or the age he is that brings out delightful and wickedly smart conversation.  Like, when he was 18 months old and knew how to sing and identify his ABCs, I didn't know that that was atypical for his age.  Seeing Rose now at that age - and she is bright and funny and quick as a wit - but she calls most every letter an "E", "O" or "I" and uses the magnet letter "F" to brush her eyebrows while I brush my own with my eyebrow brush.  I learn now that he was unique then.

Charlie makes me think.  He forces me to learn.  He is so plugged into the world that even when I am practicing living in the moment, I feel like I have a bum outlet because his connection is so much stronger.  His three-pronged plug just gets more juice.

The other day he and I went on a lunch date.  We talked and he ordered his food and then he asked, "Is that lady over there sad?"  I followed his gaze.  The woman was not anything, really; no obvious emotion emanated from her.  I said, "She looks fine.  She's not crying."

"Yeah, but she's just kind of nothing.  She doesn't look happy and we [encompassing the room with his arms] are all out to eat at a happy place.  And, see I'm not crying, but I am happy.  Can't you see?  Because I am happy, so I don't look sad one bit.  And that lady over there [pointing at another table]?  See her, mama?  She looks sad, too.  Lots of sad people at a happy eating place.  That's not right."

My bum outlet coughed and strained and used all of its power and I saw what he meant.  His face is a delight.  It is open.  It is vulnerable.  To look at him is to know what he is feeling.  If you can open yourself.  If you can plug into him.  The others that he had pointed to were dull and maybe suffering a power outage.  He feels that.  And he wants to know why.

I have so many pictures of the two of them smiling.  People close to us always comment that I have such happy kids, but the thing is, when we are out with others, his mind is thinking.  He is content, but he is learning and thinking and configuring in his mind and his happiness sometimes doesn't make it through.  If I ask him to smile for a picture and he isn't feeling it, this is what I get.

His face cannot lie.  He cannot lie.  He is, at 4 years old, a perfectly open emotional soul.  And he can reason and, usually, rationalize.  I like 4.  It's beautiful in all of its honesty.

"Mom, I love my butt on this car mower."

Upon seeing my parents at his preschool recital.

We celebrated him all week.  With a party with twenty kids at a pool and a smaller family party with cake where he drank water out of a wine glass and had a "candle sit."  He requests candles lit at night and we are to sit and put our phones away and talk, "the whole family, except Rose because she is too little to stay up," he adds gleefully.

She loves the water (puts her face in and jumps off the side), but mostly she loves her swimsuit.

I know this kid came from me because I saw it all happen four years ago this week.  But I don't think I'd believe it otherwise.

Silence's Gift

Silence's Gift

If you could sit

alone in silence

for just a little while,

you’d have the time to remember

how much fun they are,

how much you wanted them,

how much love and life

you want to give to them.

And how much they give to you.

If you could sit

and hear the thoughts

in your mind

that are usually drowned out by

the incessant calls of

“Mommy,” “Mama,” “Mom”

for just a few minutes,

I promise you,

you’d run to be with them

again.

I know this because

today

I sat in silence

and wrote this piece.

And then, I ran home to scoop them up and into my arms.

The silence ended. 

The love continued.

Rosie's First Birthday

-From December 5, 2011-

I woke up at 3:01 AM on the dot this morning.  That is precisely the minute on this day last year that I awoke, stood up and started walking to the bathroom.  I can hardly remember who I was then, but I remember parts of the next few days down to the most intricate of details.  And yet, still, there are whole chunks of time that I have completely lost from my memory.

I had fallen asleep on the couch that night after spending the day recovering from the stomach bug that had ravaged our house.  I was better, but still very tired.  I rolled over with my huge pregnant belly, got up from the couch and felt the feeling that every non-pregnant girl knows – warm, liquid was coming out of me.  I thought maybe that my water had broken, but then I saw that it was blood.  And there was lots of it.  In the fog of the early morning hours, my brain tried to compute what it was that was happening.  Adrenaline started flowing as I realized that this shouldn’t be happening because I was most definitely very pregnant. 

Pat still remembers being awoken by me that morning.  I don’t remember waking him.  He says that I was composed and firm.  He says that I kept calmly explaining to him what was happening.  That he had to get up and that we were headed to the hospital.  I don’t even remember.  I remember showering off, thinking that I cleaned up the bathroom (only to learn later that the people who came to watch Charlie re-cleaned it because they thought it looked like a crime scene) and waiting by the back door willing my belly to move with a baby’s kick.

At a certain point in my pregnancy with all of the bleeding I had experienced and all of the roller coaster-like doctors’ visits, I had meditated and prayed to the soul within me.  One night, in the bedroom where my one-year-old daughter now sleeps, I talked out loud to her.  I felt a little crazy – hell, I was a little crazy – while I told her that I could deal with it if she had to leave.  That it would break my heart, but I would carry on.  I asked her then, at about 18 weeks pregnant, to leave now if she knew she was going to have to go.  I told her that I didn’t think I could make it through losing her if she left later on.  After that night, I felt a strong sense that she would stay with me.  That whatever it took to get her here might be rough, but that she would pull through regardless.

But when I saw the blood everywhere, I thought that my prayer that had felt answered was only a wish that hadn’t come true.  I knew that I had to hurry to the hospital, but I was so afraid of what we would learn.

The magnitude of that situation last year sits on me this morning more than usual.  And yet, it feels almost silly because upstairs right now is my baby girl asleep in her crib.  She smiles, laughs, jokes, eats, claps, talks, crawls and almost-walks.  I wish I could travel back in time and hug my pregnant self as I frantically showered off the blood to get into the car to go to the hospital.  I would whisper, “It’s all going to be o.k.”

But, of course, that pregnant mama wouldn’t have totally believed me.  I knew that placental abruptions could equal disaster for all, even though I didn’t yet know that that was what was happening to me.  I knew that gushing blood six weeks before my due date wasn’t what we wanted to see.  I could see the concern etched in all of the nurses’, midwives’ and doctors’ faces as they tried to piece together what might be happening and what the best way to proceed was.  I could see when their concern changed to a controlled panic and then almost to pity when they worried that things could be bad for my baby girl.

I remember that the bleeding stopped by the time I reached the hospital and my explanation of how much blood there had been didn’t alarm them too much.  But then, about an hour later, I felt the familiar feeling of blood; I sat up.  It poured out.  And the nurse became worried.  The high-risk doctor and my own doctor had just left my room.  Both came back quickly now.  Within minutes, we were signing release forms and Pat was donning scrubs.

I remember the look of worry in the eyes of my midwife – a woman who has seen more births than most – as she sat with me while the doctor prepped.  I remember her eyes darting to the floor of the operating room when my doctor asked how long this amount of blood had been coming out of me.  I remember that the anesthesiologist was kind to me as I asked question after question about what was happening next.

I heard a woman counting gauze pads and scalpels and realized they were keeping track so that nothing would be forgotten inside of me (clearly, I have watched way too many "ER" episodes to be conscious enough to have that thought while on an operating table in an emergency).  There were so many people in what felt like a tiny room and there was so much scurrying and hurrying.  And then Pat appeared.  I asked my doctor how it was going.  She said, “It’s going well because you have no fat to cut through.”  I’ll remember that line until the day I die, or at least every time I step on a scale or decide not to go for a walk.  And I'll take that second doughnut, thank you very much.

I remember just wanting to hear a cry.  It took long; surgery takes long.  Finally, I heard a muffled cry, but it quickly went silent as my baby girl coughed up the blood that she had been swimming in inside of me.

Pat went over to her then.  He left my side for hers, just the way I would have asked him to had I been aware enough of what to ask for.  Later, he told me that he said good-bye to her then.  There was a lot of blood and not a lot of clear breaths being taken by her and so he touched her amidst the doctors working, rubbed her and told her that it was ok if she needed to go now.  No one thought he was overreacting, which is to say that these moments were extremely precarious.  Many of them are a blur; some will never be.

I know now when that took place because I remember him coming back to me with wet eyes that hid something that I didn’t want to know.  He said she was ok, but everything about him belied the truth.  Like a child who pretends to believe in Santa long after she knows the truth, I, too, asked nothing further about my girl. 

I understood later that these moments were when she was in the most peril, when things could have gone very wrong and this whole story wouldn’t have ended with the facts that she now says “Ho, ho, ho” when you ask what Santa says or “Owl” when she spots a picture of any owl-like bird within a ten-foot radius.

Learning to share the task of turning the page... not sure who is teaching whom.

***

All of these memories flooded back in throughout the day today.  The chaplain coming into our room, the social worker – all of the people that you don’t want to see on the day your daughter is born.  With each of those frightening memories, though, there are beautiful ones.  The NICU nurse who put warm blankets on my shoulders when I went up to nurse Rose.  The people who brought us food while we were in the hospital.  The people who took care of Charlie so that we could focus on Rose.

Rosie, for as long as I am alive, you will hear the story of your birth with all of its knotty details every year on this day.  Some years, you will listen intently; other years, you will roll your eyes.  Oh, god, how I wished last year at this time that you would roll your eyes in annoyance at me someday.  Yes, you will get sick of the story until, if you decide and are lucky enough, to have a child of your own.  Then you will, I think, understand on some level the rollercoaster of fear, despair, anxiety, triumph, elation and, finally – oh thankfully, we made it to finally – happiness that we were on with you as we welcomed you into this world.

Your birthday feels like a birthday for me, too, for I am certain that I was born again on that day.  I became a mother on that day of the most primal variety fighting for you, learning from you, listening and waiting for every breath.

Week One of Rose's Life

Week 52 of Rose's Life

I learned that some times really bad situations, amazingly, can still turn out something really good.  I learned to believe.  I learned to find the good.  I learned, as I looked around that NICU, that you can always find someone who has it worse than you in some way, and, though that shouldn’t be your barometer for how you are feeling, if you need a kick in the ass, head in to any hospital anywhere where a child who is loved is sick.  Look at those parents.  If you want to see the face of grief, of disaster, look into the eyes of those parents who would do anything to have their child come out alive and well.  Then, go back out in the world and live.

I learned that having people who really want to help can make life so much easier to live.  I learned, too, what it means to really help someone in need: not to do the thing that you want to do for them, but to do the thing that they need you to do for them.  I learned that some people that you think will be good at this will suck at it.  And, others that you would never have asked before for anything will come to your rescue when you least expect it.

I learned that your Dada is the best Dada in the whole world for you because he, too, accepted being born again on that day.  He became a part of the agonizing group of fathers who have had to say good-bye to their babies.  He did it alone, without me, because I was too out of it to know that that is where we stood.  He left my side for yours because he knew that you needed him more.  He became one of the miraculous few to join that group, and then – luckily, thankfully – have his membership relegated to the “Almost” roster.  He had to say good-bye to you, but was able to say hello again.  Don’t think he doesn’t think about that every day when you wake at dawn.  It makes early wake-ups feel downright beautiful… sometimes.

He, like I, will never forget the lessons learned from the couple of days that we spent in the land of “this might not work out all right.”  We would be complete fools if we missed, or more likely, forgot, all of the love and hope and faith and connection that take some people a lifetime to understand.  You put us on the fast track to grasping and focusing on the things that really matter in life.  We might have wished for an easier way for these realizations, but we know that there are harder ways that we were lucky enough to avoid.

My smile looks like it's about to bounce off my face, but you know what?  I was that happy to be there with her.

Today, you raced around the house on all fours pulling yourself up to standing anywhere that was somewhat stable whether it was a wall, an oven door or your brother’s head.  You walked while I held your fingers.  You played with toys, you laughed, you talked.  You said “Mama” and “Hi Dada” and “Arlie” and all of the other words that ramble off of your tongue regularly.  I should marvel at all of this everyday, but I have already forgotten that none of this was a given on this night a year ago.  You make me forget because you just jumped into our world and moved on. 

I’m following after you, sweetheart.  Here I come.

Harebrained Idea(s)

Yesterday, the monotony of the week had taken its toll; I was ready for adventure.  Pat was headed downtown for a meeting and I asked if we could drive him.  I never say, "Poor Pat" - I never need to because my mother always does (she is the exact opposite of the typical definition of a mother-in-law with him in that I am pretty sure the blood line she shares with me has been obliterated by her adoration of my husband), but I will say "Poor Pat" just this once because I saw his eyes as he cancelled out the vision of a quiet ride to himself into the city and back again and replaced it with what actually happened: two kids talking and singing loudly in the back seat while he intermittently replied to emails and I drove.

I needed to see something new.  Actually, just as I sat down to write this, I started to go through my phone to see what pictures I took of our adventure yesterday.  As I scanned through, I noticed a theme: I could trace my weeks through the pictures.  The week starts with pictures of the kids inside and outside, finding fun any which way.

Then, more things like this appear.

Finally, pictures from a new location show up.

End of Week 1:
Charlie on a hike in the woods

End of Week 2:
At a farm - this place is 10 minutes from our house!

End of Week 3:
At the lake

By the end of the week, I just cannot stand to be around my wonderful, little town anymore.  I have to get out.

Yesterday, we drove Pat downtown and then headed to Hyde Park and the University of Chicago to visit my mom at work.  I love seeing different.

One of the things I really miss from my life before having young kids is being able to just go.  When I get this longing for adventure, I still go, but it's so flipping slow.  And if I rush it?  Well, then the feeling of adventure just turns into a feeling of defeat and anger at how things turn out because I never win when I rush them.  It is one of the great truths of parenthood: You will always lose if you rush them.

So we amble along where I would otherwise like to move more quickly.  I do less but I see more with them at my side.

Not really interested in the Business School, but definitely interested in his reflection.

I kissed Pat good-bye when we dropped him off at his fancy restaurant.  With our packed lunches in the car, I drove away and yelled to him: "I might live to regret this, but at least I'm living!"

Just as he shut the door after kissing Rosie on the head, I was pretty sure that the "live to regret this" part would be all that I remembered once I got home because Rose cried from North Michigan Avenue to Hyde Park because her daddy didn't take her out of the car with him (and maybe she knew that our lunch wasn't going to be as special as his).

But, once we made it there, and had lunch in the car while the three of us sat in the front seat outside of Rockfeller Chapel (we couldn't make a picnic outside because my kids were hungry... you eat wherever when your kids are hungry), I felt like I was living.  I also felt a little crazy, but definitely alive and in the moment... Guess those are the bonus feelings to being crazy.

We walked around and met my mom.  Charlie played at a new park.

And then I pretended that they would take a late afternoon nap on the car ride home.

Pat finished up working and took a cab so that he could drive home with us - a move I am sure that he regretted as we sat in traffic with two kids who didn't feel the need to nap.  Each of us, I believe, silently thought of how much better it would be to be in the coffin that is a Yakima rack on top of the car rather than riding in the looney bin that our children create in the car.  But we said nothing to each other.

Well, I spoke.

I said, "Thanks, this was fun for me."