Pop on over

And see me at my new other place.

I'm going to document my kitchen adventures. Any comments or links would be most welcome and I will happily return the favour.

xo

http://foodonyafork.blogspot.com

A little miracle - the weedy sea dragon

Aren't these the best little critters?

I was first interested in them when reading Gould's Book of Fish and saw this picture in it.

The whimsy..... and the abandoned look in its eyes........

and if that is not enough magic, last night I saw this in a David Attenborough doco which you should watch. I think it's all I need to believe in God.

They hang out in the waters around Sydney although i have never seen one in the wild (have seen them in an aquarium). My cousin though, he is a marine biologist and sometimes he gets paid to go diving and count weedy sea dragons.

Sigh.

Your 4th Birthday

For your birthday, I made coconut ice for some of the people who loved you. I put it in a little origami paper box that I made, and wrapped it in bubble wrap and posted it to them.

It had a little note in it which read

" In memory of Maya, who would be four

and for all the others we have held in our hearts and hope"

And I am sorry that you have to carry all that weight. That somehow, the death of other little tiny sparks of hope get hitched onto your death. That your death becomes more than your death, it becomes a symbol for all the little deaths, and eventually, the death of hope.

It is not fair of me to put this on you. But I am so sorrowful and I don't know where to put all these other little deaths. They break my heart too, just as your leaving did, but they go so silently, and unmarked. I want them known too, at least a little. So I let them hitch a ride with you. And I let others use your name as a short hand way of expressing all the grief and pain of these four years. I do it myself sometimes. I can barely tell where one sorrow ends and the others start.

But I am sorry for this. Because, it's not yours to bear. It swamps the memory of your sweetness, as if all you ever brought to us was sorrow, when in fact, what you brought was joy.

So I made coconut ice. It seemed fitting for a four year old girl, or the idea of such. Pink and sweet, a little old fashioned, nostalgic, a taste of childhood.

I will be dreaming of you this birthday. Aching, when I wake and loose you again.

Little girl

I love you.

Love your mum

You see

The pee stick did have two lines on Friday, and again on Saturday. Which is what made me think that just maybe I could give up IF for lent. The "yeah right" was you know, being superstitious as we all are, me pretending that it wouldn't happen so that it would.

I thought it would.

I really did.

But on Monday you couldn't see the second line, only a shadow where the line might be if there was going to be one. And today my beta was a big fat 4.

Why does my body not hold on to my babies?

Why don't they stick?

Lent

This year, I'm giving up infertility.

Ha. Yeah right.


(as long as I don't get it back after Easter).

A new decade

I didn't really think much about the fact that it was a new decade until a friend left a message on the answering machine (a little trashed) saying good riddance to the last and aren't we all glad to see the back of it.

Yeah.

Mostly.

I mean it was the decade from hell but, damn it, it may contain the only five days of my life where I got to be a mum. That's so precious to me and I can't throw it out with all the other shit that surrounds it.

I'm trying to come to terms with that fact. To think about it without tears taking over. To not get consumed with anger at the injustice of watching so many, so so many of my friends and family have babies, and with such ease while I (to the surprise of all involved including my RE) have not managed to fall pregnant again, or did for so short a time that it barely registered. I can feel the anger turning into a type of bitterness. I don't want to become that person but I am struggling so hard not to. While it brings freedom, forgiveness is pricey. I have a long list of injustices that I perceive have been done to me, more so in this last few years rather than at the time of Maya's death. But I think the hardest thing for me to come to terms with is essentially, how unchanged, the people close to me seem by what I have been through. I feel like the universe is continually kicking me when I'm down, and feel betrayed when I don't see those close to me shake their fist at God on my behalf. Surely they would get angry if they saw someone beating me? It seems to me, that they carry on, thanking God for blessing them, and refusing to alter the view of how-the-world-works one tiny bit. I find that painful. I just wish my family would express the sentiment to me of standing beside me being angry at God about the amount of pain I have been in and am going through. They may well experience this and have just not shared it with me. Who knows. But I am finding it a hard not to judge some close people, for what feels like a failure to take up my cause.

And I don't know what to make of this. Obviously my view is skewed at the moment by the amount of pain I experience. Is there any truth in these feelings? or is it an excuse to keep people away and then get angry at them for it.

I feel a lot like my dog. His leg was broken in three places from being kicked when he arrived at our house. (not speculation, I know the house he came from). In fact, not only that, he was dehydrated as he was in so much pain he was unable to drink,. A series of operations, pins and extended vet visits and he was OK. Two years later he had another operation, this time on his front leg (same side), which took months and months to recover from. Being a needy dog, he wants to be close so always comes and sits at your feet. Being a dog with a history of trauma, he bites you when you move your feet too fast, or too close, to his left side. Which leads to a rather comical show of coming close to people and then biting them. But in a way that feels like me. I want the comfort of being close to people, and then I bite them if they say or do anything that comes near my pain, or memory of it. When I say "bite" what I really mean is judge, because I never actually say something to the person. I just get angry at their insensitivity. And when I say "judge" what I really mean is feel more pain. They don't understand. They are not even trying to understand. etc.

I have enough insight to realise this cycle does not serve me well. What I don't seem to have at the moment is the skill to break it. Or the wisdom to distinguish what is a genuine grievance that needs addressing, from my knee-jerk response at the pain of being around close family/friends and their babies/pregnancy etc. The same trauma response that my dog has. He nips my foot even if I haven't touched him, in anticipation of pain.

And seeing that in myself pisses me right off. Broken things can be patched up, but the scars are always there, and scar tissue (whilst amazing and miraculous) just doesn't work as well as normal tissue.

Which is a way of saying I don't want to be a broken thing, on the defense against things that might hurt me, always ready for the pre-emptive strike, angry at people who seem essentially, indifferent, no-different, for having witnessed my suffering. But a part of me feels that to just give up that anger might be betraying myself at some level. And that is the thing I am finding difficult to resolve.

In happier news. I am pleased to say that I had an excellent non-pregnant holiday in Tasmania in which I drank lots of lovely pinot, and ate piles of oysters, prawns, lobster, locally smoked products (the trout was amazing and it was bacon like I've never had it before) and unpasturised soft cheese. We camped, cooked (check this out), hiked, ate, and drank our way around a small part of this small island. It rocked. And it went for three whole weeks, so when we had finished camping at one lovely pace we got a little sad about leaving and then moved on to a fabulous eco stay in the Wilderness, then to another delightful campsite or bnb. I could feel the knots in my back slowly undoing themselves, I got hungry, slept well (things I hadn't felt in a long while) and had a lot of fun to boot.

And I will post some photos of the happy (and a little fatter) Barbara enjoying her holidays. And if you need any tips for travel in Australia, I'm the girl to come to. I think I rock at holiday itineraries.