Notes from the Northern Hemisphere

Soon after moving to Chile in 2011, I wrote about Culture Shock. I told you all then that I’d have to report on the final stage, Reverse Culture Shock, once we returned to the U.S. Well, that time has come. In addition to the overwhelming options that greet us at every turn, it’s now strange to be perfectly understood in my native language, to feel spring in the air in April again, to drive around the suburbs and pick up Chipotle for dinner. As timing would have it, an essay, “The Weight of Two,” I wrote about another kind of Reverse Culture Shock was recently published in Outside In Literary and Travel Magazine. I wrote it nearly a year ago, but here it is, arriving just when we are.

She Writes Press, 2014

Around that same time, I wrote another essay that has just arrived. On April 19, 2014, Three Minus One: Stories of Parents’ Love and Loss (She Writes Press) was published. My included essay, “Lorenzo’s Island,” recounts the trip Ryan and I took to Easter Island last year over, as timing would have it, Easter. It was nearly a year after we were supposed to travel there on a “babymoon” for Lorenzo. It was exactly a year after I’d first felt his kicks. Two Aprils ago. Now, one year later, this April, this Easter, H. is in the world. It all continues to shift and turn. Please consider supporting the book: for Lorenzo and other babies like him, for their parents, for anyone who tries to understand what it is to survive such brief lives.

It always means something profound to share Lorenzo’s story, which often stands alone. In this anthology, his story sits next to others like his. He isn’t alone, and neither are we. For so long, that’s how you feel. Your pain looks unfamiliar to those around you, so you presume you yourself must as well. It’s shocking to flip through all these many pages and see how similar our stories are. Our losses and our grief remain personal, but there is an undeniable power in the collective, in belonging to any true tribe.In other writing news, editor Allyson Latta asked me to pen a guest post for her website. She wanted to know how I came to write my memoir, what the challenges were, or any other part of the process I wanted to share. The result, “Memoir as Survival: On Writing ‘Lorenzo’s Heart’” is about all of that as well as the driving motivator for the writing and one of the central themes of the book: Survival. Because the fact of the matter is that the act of writing helped me survive those early days and months without Lorenzo. The result is a personal story that I hope will one day help others survive across the spectrum of grief. As you continue to read along on this journey, I say thank you for helping me.

Homeland

We did it! We successfully managed our 24-hour voyage with a baby, a dog, and about a month’s worth of luggage for our temporary home base back in the US of A. Somewhere in that process, we repatriated ourselves. We don’t live in the Southern Hemisphere anymore.

 

 We said goodbye to Santiago de Chile…

 

As such, you lovely friends and family are welcoming us “home.” But are we? We have good friends here who (bless them) brought over lasagna, perhaps the most “home” of all foods, our first night here. We have extended family not too far away. We aren’t necessarily starting over in those ways. But neither Ryan nor I have lived in the mid-Atlantic region before. Just as much feels new as it does familiar. For example, we went to Safeway and, overwhelmed by the options for everything from sausage to salad dressing, I found myself gravitating safely toward the same things I bought in Santiago. We can still be creatures of comfort on these surreal adventures. (That is until I found the pita chips.) Food, it seems, is the first thing that tells you you’re home, or that you’re far from it.

 

We traveled via two hotels and two planes…

 

I used to write about what I missed about home. Now, and for a little while I imagine, I’ll think about what I miss about Chile… neighborhood streets learned so well walking Ruby, friends from all over the world, passing by the hospital where my daughter was born. Recently, back in Chile, I met with my writing group, which is high on the list of what I miss. We are a diverse group, hailing from Argentina, Denmark, Colombia, Australia, and the U.S. Eileen, one of the Americans, recently visited the U.S., but the opposite coast than where she is from. Mary, the Aussie in our group, said how nice it was that she was going home, but Eileen didn’t consider it the case since it felt like such a different part of the country. Sure, the conveniences of language and custom may prevail, but is it really “home”? For Mary, Australia—any region of it—is “home” and elicits all the comfort encased in the word. I think I see it both ways now that my feet are once again on U.S soil.

 

We arrived to endless options, heart houses, and fresh air hikes…

 

 

Surprisingly, a South America connection has been a reassuring thread during our first week here (and not just because I keep saying “Buenos días” and “Gracias.”) When we got new cell phones, our customer service rep was from Perú. When we looked at a house to rent, it turned out the owner’s family was originally from Argentina. In line at Hertz, when a sharply dressed woman saw H. and said, “Que linda,” I asked where she was from as certainly she, too, was from somewhere else. If you can believe it, that somewhere else was Santiago. She went to the school that is around the corner from what is now our old apartment. And even though she’s raised three children far from home, she still misses the empanadas. One day gone, and I was so eager to talk about “home” as in Chile, to compare what we each knew about the same faraway place. While it was truly her homeland and not mine, it is H.’s, it is Ruby’s. It was our first home as a family. And when I found a dog park down the street, I felt a certain pride in telling the other owners that our dog had come all the way from Chile.

So have we.

 

What I Don’t Know Now

I’m sure most everyone who has a baby goes through this cataloguing, this realization that certain things have come full circle while others have begun anew. Perhaps it feels similarly for an astronaut looking down on Earth from space or for a tiny lady bug summiting a blade of grass or for anyone who rescues a living thing—the view has changed so profoundly that you have, too.

Five weeks after we lost Lorenzo, I posted what I had learned from that profoundly shifted view. I called it What I Know Now. Around the same time, I reached out to two grief mamas who had made similar decisions for baby boys, one of whom had also had HLHS. Both were pregnant with baby girls at the time. Nothing helped quite like their solidarity because they had seen the same view. And the new lives they were carrying were HOPE.

Recently, a grief mama reached out to me. I’ve never met her, as I still haven’t met the grief mamas who helped me, but you bond quickly when you are writing about your lost babies. It was a full-circle moment: I had seen enough to be able to help someone else. When she first wrote, I was pregnant with H. When I saw this mom swimming/drowning in the fresh flood of loss, I realized I no longer was, though that does not mean the waves don’t still crash. But I’ve mastered a certain kind of stroke, the one that allows me to keep going when I used to feel the lull of sinking. As I’ve discovered along the way, it isn’t one profound shift, but several. I keep changing because I was Lorenzo’s mom, as I will now that I’m H.’s.

I was recently asked just how I had changed now that I have H. What did I know now about being a mom? Well, I became a mom two years ago, not two months ago. I know that. I know how fiercely protective I am, in a primal way. I know I would lay down my life for hers. I also know I would have changed places with Lorenzo. I would have given him my heart. He taught me that. And thanks to H., I know how incredible active motherhood feels, moment by moment, as I learn all that she and I are capable of.

Strangely, as time passes, I think more about what I don’t know:

• What to write on the line of H.’s baby book that asks what number grandchild she is. She is the first in a way, and not in another way.

• When I will tell H. about her brother though I do know I will tell her.

• How many of Lorenzo’s things to give away, as I’ve been doing for friends and family who have brought baby boys into the world since his passing. It helps to know that those thriving babies breathe life into what was meant to be his. Some have even made it to an orphanage in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where a friend recently adopted two boys. That’s pretty cool to think about in terms of Lorenzo’s reach! I’ve also dressed H. in some of his things. Finally, I’ve packed a box for another boy we may have one day. We may not, and then I really don’t know what I will do with the rest of his things. Or, it will be all too clear.

• What to do when another grief mama I know loses in her third trimester—again. I know some of what to say (your baby is precious and perfect and loved) and what not to say (this happened for a reason). I know all I want to do is get on a plane and hold her hand and let her cry.

• How it will feel to leave Chile after all that has happened here. Yes, there is that. It’s time to say goodbye to our home in the Southern Hemisphere after nearly three years for me and nearly four for Ryan. We are moving back to the U.S. with his company, not to California, but to a new state we haven’t lived in before. So, we will be starting over, but not in the ways we did here as newlyweds, with a new language and a new procedure for just about everything. Perhaps I don’t yet know what I will miss most, but I’m starting to sense… backyard tennis ball tosses with Ruby, walking the streets where I was pregnant with all of my children, the trips Ryan and I took so far away from home. I will miss my doctor; H. and I have been so well cared for. And so many dear friends.

I now have patience with the unknown; that may be the main thing life in Chile has taught me. Days here have been my very hardest and now, my very best. A place like that will stay close to you. H. will always be Chilean, so maybe she will come back and walk these same streets and see where she and Ruby came from and ask me to tell her about our days here. Maybe she will tell me all that she knows.

 

Here She Is

It’s been a while since I wrote. The last time this much time went by without a post, we had lost Lorenzo. I wasn’t sure I’d ever write again, much less return to such a public space. But I did, and it helped. You helped.

This time, I haven’t written because another amazing creature is in the world. Nearly two months ago, we met her and saw instantly that she was entirely her own person. Not in anyone’s shadow. Not a mini me or a mini Ryan (though sometimes their resemblance is uncanny). To us, she is all her own. A new soul we have the honor to shepherd. She is strong as I knew her to be when she was still inside. She smiles. She is peace and joy and love.

Her birth was healing, a word I once doubted could ever apply. “Healed.” No, never. But “healing.” Yes. She arrived later than expected, but smoothly, calmly, positively. Our midwife was there throughout. Ryan made me laugh, bless him. And she was already there, too, her steady heartbeat filling the room. Before we knew it I was shaking again, like I did last time, when my nurse told me it was a good sign—that things were changing, that the baby was coming.

This time, when the baby came, she came with cries. Her open hand spread against my chest like any creature emerging from water and clutching dry land. She was out and live and warm and squirming. And Ryan and I “exploded,” as my amazing doctor, who has been through so much with us, put it. English isn’t his first language, but I think the word is apt. How could we possibly contain the emotion of parenthood that escaped us then? That had been there for so long, begun by Lorenzo, then corked so profoundly. And now it could run free in a different way, as we took in the majesty of our daughter, as we still do each day, when she lies between us on the bed, her limbs on the move, her expression changing, her sounds telling us a story about where she has been.

Of course, there is sleep deprivation. Of course, I do most things one-handed, which means it takes time to tell you that she is here. But I wouldn’t want it any other way. All of it means I am taking care of my daughter. Of course, I also still worry, but not nearly as much as I feared I would. There is a lot to be said for a mother’s instinct. There is a lot to be said for a healthy baby’s vitality as she grows and learns.

All that a new creature learns! To feed! To hold her head up! I imagine what Lorenzo would have had to also learn… how hard it could be to breathe, to endure open-heart surgeries (if he was lucky). Babies around the world are learning those things every day, and I honor them as I honor their parents. Holding her, I don’t pretend to assume things will always be okay though I pray that they are. I know how suddenly they can change. But in holding her, I also know that right now she is happy. She is telling me what she wants. She is here.

There I Am

“Travel far enough, you meet yourself.”
—Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

While we wait to meet our daughter, I’ve spent time with the meaty novels and collections I’ve been meaning to read. After relying on memoirs of survival this past year and a half, I’m giving my brain back to fiction: Alice Munro, Barbara Kingsolver, Ian McEwan. If there’s time, George Saunders.

At the same time, I’m ready to take a step back from it all, push away from the desk and my own memoir of survival, and settle into a space that will soon be all about her. But she isn’t quite ready to join us. So, we wait. I read. Ryan plays the guitar. Ruby lounges nearby. The hot summer air floats to a stand still beyond our open windows. For the most part, things are simple. The bougainvillea is so lush and full it bleeds into the sun.

There must be a term for this—the waiting period, the in-between time, the hours on the clock right before everything changes. Inside which one of those hours on which one of these days will she arrive?

There is mystery still, as there has been each step of the way—from the day you find out a baby is coming, maybe to the day you find out one no longer is, to the day another begins—and grows—and beats—and kicks—and is finally ready to be born. All I want to hear are cries from her lungs. All I want to see are her eyes open. All I want to feel is the curl of her fingers around mine. All I want is for Ryan and I to look at each other and see, in her, how far we’ve come. Again:

Travel far enough, you meet yourself.

It turns out our most revealing traveling has not come from being Californians living in Chile these past three years, or from side adventures on islands, along coastlines, or next to volcanoes. It’s come from this. This loss and this life. This grief and this effort to pull ourselves back up. This is how I’ve come to meet my truest self. The person who wasn’t necessarily always there, but was summoned.

Because you cannot see certain views and remain the same. Nor, I now believe, would I want to. The journey has never been back to who I was before, back to “normal,” back to the expectations or minor problems a charmed life may allow, or back to anywhere at all. It’s not a self-knowledge one seeks, but once it arrives, it’s you, down to your core of cores, nestled so deep within it couldn’t possibly be extracted. Unable to un-know it, you walk on knowing it all too well.

There I am, I think, when I read another stunning essay about grief. There I am, when one morning I can’t feel the baby kicking, even though I jiggle her home, even though I stand in front of the refrigerator chugging lemonade. The trauma and the panic re-surface. We call the doctor. We run down the street. I clutch my husband’s hand in the backseat of the cab, saying over and over: “I can’t live through this again.” I throw my head back when someone gets on the elevator at three and we need to get to four. I could push through the steel. I tell the guard, “No puedo sentir a mi bebé.” He gets the midwife, who is soon over me with the Doppler as if it is meant to jumpstart my own heart, until we hear hers booming from her peacefully sleeping body. There she is. 

We also have been traveling to her, as she has been to us. She has already brought us such joy. There I am, too, in that joy. Because I have loved being pregnant. Despite the past trauma, through it, my body has responded well and has proven to be a good home to her. With her very own body, she has accomplished what I so desperately have wanted to see: a big, round belly sticking out into the world.

Now, I feel my body, primal, readying itself to do whatever it takes to deliver her safely into the world. It’s not so different from how I felt delivering Lorenzo. The clarity rises from a depth. It doesn’t question. The body knows what it has to do. Lorenzo has already taught me and because of that, I am calm. There he is, too. This will not be my first delivery, but it will be my first birth. She will teach me how that feels. She is healing, but she is not the reason when people say “everything happens for a reason.” She is not even ours. She is her own person, as her brother was. Her journey will be her own, as her brother’s was.

The difference being she will be. She will be, will be, will be.