Tears and breasts and hearts, oh my

The kindness of strangers often makes me weep.

Today I spent my morning at the Summit Hospital Breast Health Center, called back for an ultrasound on a breast I'm rather fond of. When I was there two weeks ago, I was in and out in 20 minutes and only noticed that the staff was nice. Today during my 45-minute wait, I saw their unwavering kindness to every woman that entered the door.

One hospital worker sat in the waiting room just to greet women with unfailing cheer and warmth, patiently answering stupid questions and considered questions and walking each and every patient to their appointment, the registration desk or anywhere else they might need to go. She told me that my appointment was going to be delayed, and apologized deeply and sincerely. She walked me to the bathroom, found me a not-too-outdated New Yorker, admired my Mexican shirt and made not-annoying small talk to keep me company. The tech also apologized and thanked me for waiting, not in the rushed and peremptory "I say this all day and no longer hear the words" way, but with warmth and eye contact.

Every step of the process was explained to me as if this were the first time they were telling anyone, as opposed to the rote delivery of the gym membership salesman who watches the TV in the gym above your head while reeling off the benefits of membership. At the end of what could have been a traumatic and trying appointment, I wanted to thank each person that had at one moment or another helped me. But as I opened my mouth to say, "thank you, you're really doing a wonderful job here" I found my vocal cords smothered by a cottony lump in my throat, and knew that tears would accompany the words.

This proclivity for tears in exchange for kindness is relatively new to me. It began at about the same time that I began my journey towards motherhood, when perhaps my mom-ducts were turned on and all commercials with babies and even movies with animated beasts crying could reduce me to a puddle of salty tears. This was not long after my brother died, so perhaps it's tied to the both crushing and mind-expanding epiphany that one experiences with the unexpected death of someone you hold in your heart: you are not in charge here, and kindnesses and joy and moments of light should be honored and respected and recognized, never taken for granted or dismissed as just the way things are and should be.

It's either this epiphany or my mom heart that drives the tears when I read obituaries for the young men killed in Iraq, on Bayview streets or through some sleight of fate's hand. I cry when the Beast begins to die in Beauty and the Beast, when athletes deliver gold medal performances, when I see a baggy-pants-wearing, hooded and begrilled boy jump up to assist a woman with a walker as she attempts to navigate the supposedly automatic door. I cry after saying hello to our 90-year old neighbor as he takes his twice-daily walk up our steep hill, and when the special bagger at Safeway turns his round face to me and shouts THANK YOU and hugs me as I leave. With the arrival of my son in my mind's eye and my brother's death, I left behind the woman that was able to move dry-eyed through any given day, pleased but relatively unaffected by a stranger's kindness or general movement at the periphery of my world.

I thank them both — my brother Shawn and my son Shawn Joaquin — for having given me this sometimes painful and awkward gift that keeps on giving.

This little light of mine

We made plans this weekend to travel to Guatemala in three weeks, where we'll hold our daughter in our arms for the first time. Originally a solo trip for me, Gregg is now coming for the first two days to share those first precious moments, provide emotional support and hold the video camera. I am so frickin' giddy that work just seems like a time suck that takes me away from my obsessive thinking rather than the means by which I can pay for this crazy-expensive trip.

I'll spend a week in Antigua helping her with her newfound walking skills, wrapping her little fingers around mine to steady her, and obsessively watching her as she sleeps. After a week of love and sleeplessness in Antigua, I'll relinquish her to her foster mother again. There are no words to describe my dread of that moment.

In the meantime, I'm pulling together all our Spanish-language board books, small toys and the clothes that will fit her now but not by the time she's finally here. I've also tried to explain to Shawn Joaquin that I'm going to be in Guatemala with Madelena for a week, but will not be bringing her home.

Why she not come home?
She needs to stay there with her foster mother until everything is ready.
BUT I READY. Bring her HOME.

I hear ya, kid.

My grandclown

Shawn Joaquin informed me this morning that when he's a grown up he's going to have two children — his son CeCe and daughter Binky — and a pet clown. There was no mention of a life partner or who would walk the clown.

why Why WHY WHY

Our exchange this morning in the bathroom, as Shawn Joaquin looked through random items in the cabinet:

What are those?
Tampons.
Can I eat them?
No, they're not to eat. They're made out of paper, kind of like toilet paper.
Do you wipe your bottom with them?
No.
What they for? Can I try it?

In the last week he's had multiple questions about my body parts, his body parts, where poo poo comes from and where it goes after it leaves the toilet, what death means and where people go when they're not HERE anymore and why it makes us sad, and whether peach yogurt is actually a yogurt or just something yucky that I have tried to pass off as an edible. This during a week when we're all sick and impatient and much more interested in what kind of impression the pillow case can make on our faces if we lie immobile for at least two hours of blessed napping.

At this moment I am supposedly paying bills, and can hear Gregg upstairs trying to read book to Shawn Joaquin who is more interested in the details than the actual story.

The man walked down the street and...
What the man walking about? What's on his shoes? Who's that in the window? Whose house is that? What his name? What her name? What is that animal? What it sound like? Is that a cloud? The cloud looks like a WITCH. Why you afraid of witches? What witches do? Where they live? Do witches DIE? When they die, are you sad? Where they go? Why they do THAT?

My friend Melina, who admires my son from afar, will chalk this up as yet another blog entry that confirms her decision to have cats and friends instead of children. While I envy her ability to get to the gym after work, go to first run movies in actual theaters and be able to leave the house for an adult night without paying $10 an hour for the pleasure, I'll stick with my never-ending question and answer show, and just be glad for these days when I can actually answer his questions without needing to turn to reference materials or the crisis intervention line.

No room for the blues

Yesterday, we found out that instead of going to Guatemala and bringing Madelena home in the coming weeks, we instead get to stay here, be sucker punched repeatedly in the head by the news that NO, NO, there are more paperwork snafus that send our case packing and down the steps of the PGN bruised, battered and in need of attention. I feel much the same way, flattened by the shock and dismay and grief. Our Summer of Love is off, and no good news on when we can reschedule and in what season.

I'm working today, though what I really want to do is get back in bed and turn off the phones and either eat an entire pizza washed down with a bottle of wine and some Xanax or give up food and drink entirely. It's a tough call. But as the siren's song of deep depression calls me, I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from The Anniversary Party, a sometimes navel-gazing but well-constructed film written by Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cummings:

"Oh God, you're so lucky you don't have kids. When you have kids you can't stick your head in the oven. You can't take a handful of Percodan if you want to, or slit your wrists. You can't do yourself in. Kids ROB you of that option. Trust me."

As a mother, there is no time for self-involved grief, no matter how necessary. There are little people who need your love and attention and sobriety. You really can't put your head in the oven, no matter how strong the draw, because you'll inevitably be interrupted any way by some demand for milk, help with on getting on the big toilet, a piercing cry of I WANNA WATCH BACKYARDIGANS or other knee-high distractions that even the wafting gas can't subdue.

And so I console myself with ratty sweats, no make up and an overall general malaise that will not preclude me from being a loving mom, no matter how much I want to just bail on life for a few days and wallow in my discontent. Instead we'll order a small plain cheese pizza, toast with non-fat milk and watch The Heffalump Movie for the 15th time while snuggling under our fleece penguin blanket. Perhaps that's better than a head in the oven or under the covers, and slightly less likely to cause brain damage...other than the song that refuses to leave your head for days afterward, leaving you humming "the terrible thing about Heffalumps" in public places.