daily life

Happy Birthday



Tomorrow my daughter will be five years old. It also marks the day that I realized that there was something horribly wrong with her father. A unfortunate collision of anniversaries. The latter half of my pregnancy was marred with increasingly frequent “incidents” that I suppose had I not been pregnant and sick and preoccupied, I would have picked up on. I don’t talk much about the specifics of the early days of my husband’s illness. Partly out of guilt because I didn’t see what is so obvious to me now, but mostly because I know that the things he said and did were a result of the damage that was being inflicted on his brain and thus changing his personality and ability to reason.

I went into labor the night of the 26th. It was about 10:30 when I realized that the rhythmic tightening of my belly was actually regular and close enough to be early labor pains, and of course my water breaking about 15mins later confirmed that I was right. We had been out to dinner earlier, and Will had had a bit to drink. Another thing I didn’t know at the time was that his ability to metabolize certain chains of acids found in food and drink was nearly gone. His illness was a metabolic disorder. His body had stopped producing a particular enzyme it needed and as the acids built up it triggered his immune system into attacking the coating around the nerves in his lower back and the dura matter that protected his brain. The disease also triggered a hyper response from his adrenal glands that was slowly killing them as well. Alcohol is largely composed of the type of acid that he couldn’t metabolize any longer. Even small amounts triggered erratic behaviors because it was like a poison building up in his system that his body could barely eliminate. Long story, but the short of it that night was that he was not much help to me. On the way to the hospital, the stress of the situation caused one of his increasingly more frightening memory lapses where he would get lost in surroundings he had know all his life, much like an Alzheimer’s patient. His stressed adrenals meant that he reacted out of proportion to a situation, so he was angry and a bit scary. Once we were finally in the birthing room at the hospital, his overwhelmed system just shut down, and he spent the rest of the night and into the morning before Katy was born wandering the halls of the hospital in kind of a daze that had the nurses more concerned about him than me at times. Aside from the nurses who periodically checked in on me, I went through the first eight or so hours of labor on my own.

I don’t like to think about any of this really. There is no point anymore. He was sick, and I was too busy to notice, or what I did notice I chose to rationalize away. Though it still bothers me that I failed him so utterly at a time when he needed me so much, the worst of it now is that my daughter’s birth is not a happy memory for me. She is my child. The only child I will ever have and all that I have left of Will, and her birthday is tinged with regrets and sadness that unfortunately I have never managed to completely hide from anyone. Time and distance hasn’t made much of a dent in this of yet, but I have hopes that someday it will.

Not Pregnant


My “monthly” (a term I thought was just another Canadian word but turned out to be my husband’s reluctance to use the word “period” in a non-punctuation manner ) didn’t arrive yesterday, and I spent a sleepless night worrying about the possibility of being pregnant at 43. It was not a silly worry. Pregnancy, as I remember it, is physically taxing, and I have been running on fumes for quite a while. There is also the added degree of difficulty that my age presents. I remember being quite put out with my OB-GYN for referring to my age as a negative when I was pregnant with my almost five year old daughter. I thought, and felt, that at 37 I was in the best shape I had been in my whole life. I think that had my late husband not gotten ill, I would have considered that pregnancy, and even the first six months of my daughter’s life, a challenging but not overly taxing life event that could have been repeated, God willing. In light of the actual chain of events however, I am not as keen on anything to do with the creation of new life beyond the initial fun stuff .

Rob and I had talked about having children of our own early in our relationship. True, we are middle-aged by social standards (Methuselah-Like by medical ones), but the fact  remains that we are both still in ”working condition”. It would have been foolish of us to ignore the issue though in a way we ended up doing just that anyway. He was concerned that I be sure I didn’t want any more children. His own were in their twenties, and while he was committed to the idea of my daughter, he was reluctant to start from scratch. But I had already put the idea of another child to rest. I truly had. I have no interest whatsoever in going through another pregnancy or experiencing childbirth and those mind-numbingly exhausting first months of a newborn’s life. I had quite unexpectedly ended up one of those militant nursing mothers who let their children self-wean and having only just gotten my daughter to give up “nursery” and sleep on her own, I selfishly wanted my body back.  I assured Rob I didn’t want another child.

But, for two people who were looking forward to someday, before they were too old, being on their child-free own, we sure didn’t take many preventative steps to ensure this. I occasionally wondered about it. Even pointed it out, though I hardly needed to as he was as aware of the contradiction between words and deed as I. There was an ambivalence on both our parts about the whole issue. Perhaps we were hoping that fate would decide the whole thing for us. I guess it nearly did.

Although I kept my fears to myself last evening, a sleepless night is a bit harder to cover up. So when I finally ‘fessed up after lunch today and followed that up with the news that all was well, I was a bit surprised to hear Rob confess to a bit of disappoint. He wondered if I wasn’t disappointed to and I admitted to the tiniest of regret but it is a bit more than that. Like him, I wish that we could have a baby together. Blondish and bright blue-eyed. Just like his dad. And I won’t say it is a silly dream, but it isn’t one that the universe is likely to allow us and we both know that. We have our girls. We have each other. We have a  pretty darn good today and tomorrow to enjoy, and a future to look forward to together. I am happy with what we have.

Finding My Way


Doing the stay at home mom thing was my part-time job over long holidays and during the summer. It was not something I took seriously, and I don’t say this to belittle it as an occupation. Raising a child and taking care of the basic and not so needs of a family is not for the lazy, the weak or the slow of mind. I base this observation on the years I spent, poorly, attempting to manage a household, child and a full-time job. None of which I managed to do well simultaneously and can say with all honesty that when push came to shove it was household that got the boot every time…..because it was hard work. Hard thankless unpaid work.

Yesterday I made my first trip into the Fort without Rob. Katy and I had an appointment for haircuts, and I needed to stop by the florist’s to touch base on arrangements for the wedding. I map-quested the directions and managed with only one misdirection. Today was another story. I need to go the library and the post office which ironically sit next to each other though the are accessible on opposite blocks. Library not a problem, but I had the wrong directions for the post office and being low on frustration tolerance still, I just gave up and went on to the next errand on the list. But, you know how after you have failed at something everything that come next takes on a slightly tinged with impending doom aura? 

Shopping is something that is becoming math-like for me. Despite my best intentions to block out all things American when it comes to money and other units of measurement, I find paying for things flustering. So much of the money here is in coin, and I really haven’t spent enough time looking at it to ascertain the values of the dizzying array of colors, shapes and sizes. So between monetary transactions and having to ask OnStar for directions to the post office, I felt quite like an idiot by the time I left town for home. The drive back is long enough that I was able to put some of the mood behind me and then happy conversation with Jordan over a lunch of leftovers banished the rest of the inadequacy fears, but I still feel a bit silly and think I should be catching on to this whole “being in a new country thing” a bit quicker.

It’s odd to feel as though you are right where you belong and like a fish our of water at the same time. I remind myself that I have accomplished some near Herculean things in the past couple of months, and it is normal to want to catch my breath a bit, but there is a part of me that has always met challenges and new things head on and  wants to charge right in and be perfect now.

As far as I have come, there are still things to do and places yet unknown. Patience not being a virtue of mine (something I actually pride myself on a bit at times), I know that I will have other moments like those today when I admitted defeat and called first Rob and then OnStar. It’s okay, I guess. Columbus probably asked for directions too. Well, maybe he didn’t. He was trying to find India after all. He could have used OnStar. They have turn by turn directions you know, but they can’t help with units of measurement thing.