I promise, the next one will be about my father

When I was 16 I had an abortion. My mother had no idea. Or maybe she did. I have no idea. When I had my follow up appointment at my local Planned Parenthood I told her it was about time I went to a gynecologist. She didn't argue, didn't encourage. So off I went. When I got home I showed her the receipt that had the diagnosis codes and descriptions. The paper clearly said it was a post termination check up and that I was given birth control pills. She said nothing.

I had been back living in her house just a few months when all of this went down and maybe she didn't want to drum up any more trouble with my step father? I still have no idea.

That year was so insane. I was kicked out of my house and sent to live in Holbrook, MA for several months, stalked by my step father, physically assaulted by him, doing shitty in school and the day I drove to Rockland County to have the abortion, I was pulled over by the police and taken to the station and interrogated because my car and person fit the description of a runaway. Do you parents know where you are they asked? Uhm, HELL NO! Can we call them? NO! They finally let me go, go to have general anesthesia and drive myself home 3 hours later.

My mother was not a willing participant in her life. She didn't want children, but she was supposed to have them so here we are! Yay!

I have a few really lovely memories of her and I remember for a long time (a few years?) thinking she was a fun, good person.

But I also remember getting paddled with a spatula for lighting the matches left in my room by my uncle who was staying with us. He worked nights and slept in my bed all day when I was at school. He had a brown paper bag with porn, cigarettes and matches under my mattress. So this guy was allowed to jerk off in my bed and smoke butts but I get wailed on for lighting those matches in an ash tray?

I remember pooping in my pants long after that was acceptable. I was punished. Sent to my room to feel like a loser with shitty pants and no dinner. I was handed a harsher sentence for soiling myself than I was for driving our Pinto wagon into someone's hedges & porch.

My mother didn't drive me anywhere she didn't absolutely have to. She farted in front of my friends. She gave me a package of maxi pads the day I came home with my period soaked culottes (I was 11).

My mother had a pretty shitty childhood and couldn't wait until mine and my brother's were over. She has no idea what kind of people her children and grand children are.

I don't feel sorry for myself. And I'm not angry. Mostly because I have the greatest inlaws in the world. They are the parents I waited 28 years for.

I've just been thinking a whole lot about that 16th year of my life and how it solidified the structure of the relationship I have with my mother today. Have you ever been to Hong Kong? The scaffolding that surrounds the spanking new high-rises that go for miles and miles into the air are made entirely of bamboo. Lashed together with rope. Take away the rope and that's about right.

Question:

What is better than having an ENORMOUS B.M. right before you go shopping for new jeans? That's right: N O T H I N G.

No, you can't have her.

My big kid today told me this: "Everyone in school hates their parents, but I love mine". I asked her if she actually said that out loud. Her reply? "Of course, what do I have to lose?"

So today I fed them all chips, seltzer, choc chip cookies, donuts and pound cake. They're happy, I'm happy.

Today, I am a good mother.

WARNING: Dream Post

This morning my husband told me that no matter how fat and flabby I get, that he'll never leave me. And I believe him.

I've recently lost 15 or so pounds and I can firmly put my ass back into pre-Ruby pants. And that's alright. Alright indeed.

That feat is made all the more miraculous by the fact that I've been taking 20mg's of Lexapro for the past 3 months. If the FDA wouldn't have my head, I'd invite all the ladies over for daily trick-or-treating for some of this sweet mama candy. Side effects be damned! I'm skinny AND my libido is through the roof. UNH!

Anyway I *have* been having extra bizarro and off the wall dreams, though. Never a slouch in that department, I think the Lexapro brain is making all kinds of random connections while I sleep and churning out some fucked up fodder for my nightly visions.

Last night, I was (for some reason), bounding around my yard in teeny, tiny chinos and a tight grey tshirt. This get-up was really a bonus for enhancing my santa-esque midriff. Jiggles like a bowl full of jelly indeed. I was short, chubby and flabby and dancing around my yard IN FRONT OF MY HUSBAND'S NEW GIRLFRIEND. She was really nice, though. The kids seemed to like her.

Hell & D Part II

We certainly take for granted the amount of and intensity of experience we have every single day on our unit. We hold and process on a spectrum of "healthy". Some of us keep it all in, some of us pretty much wear it from the inside out but most are in the middle. And most of the time, most of us just get through the day. We see what we see and we get through the damn day.

So when you get sucker punched in the face with the reality of your job it's kind of unnerving. Whenever I have the privilege of taking care of a deceased baby I feel the hit. I take my time, take care and talk to the sweet, limp, cold body and try to make the two of us not so alone in the room where these things take place. I don't always cry, but I always weigh the moment. I'm seeing so many things at once: A dead body, an infant who most likely wasn't old enough to live outside it's mother's belly. I'm seeing a mystery, science, love, fear... all of it. I weigh the moment and it is dense and heavy like stone.

The day after our patient dropped to the floor I was given the opportunity to see her. Her 36 hour postpartum body needed to be assessed by an L&D nurse. She was so still. Her uterus hard as a rock (as it should be) and her skin warm and pink. Tubes everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Machines thumping and whizzing. Her ICU nurse asked me about her breasts, should she be lactating? We developed a plan to try to get her breasts producing in the one in a million chance she'd be able to feel her sweet baby's sucks one day. I went to talk to her family about our thoughts. I never saw our patient again.

Back on my unit I went to the room where her husband, family and friends had been staying. I did my quick "nurse knock" and I walked in. Holymotherfuckingshit. HOLY SHIT. I was twisted instantly. I did not, could not understand what I was seeing. Nothing about the scene in that room made sense to me and I wanted to cry and run and leave. I had no intrinsic skills. Everything I did and said felt like it was coming from another mouth. Another brain.

I take care of women and babies. My patients are always women and are most always accompanied by women. Husbands, boyfriends and baby-daddies aren't foreign, are mostly welcomed but are never my patients.

When I walked in the room and faced the husband of our patient and I saw him laying in a patient bed, under the covers, eyes red, arm across his forehead, exhausted, pale, I took a bowling ball to the chest. It's not supposed to be like that. And to make the scene more marked with the absurd, he was surrounded entirely by other men. Men who looked at the floor, who were touching his bed, holding his hand & comforting their tortured, devastated friend, brother, son.

I will never forget it. And I never want to see it again.

Hell & D, part I

So, you know... life is a bitch. A bitch because that shit is closely followed by death.

I think a lot about what will be the thing to tug me back to the keyboard and write. When I'm driving a million, jillion things drift in and out of my mind and for moments of time every single day, I am brilliant! I have the MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD TO SAY. But then I get home and someone needs a hug, a sandwich, a clean ass, a stern word or a damn drink.

It has been a month of flux. And while I can say I am happier than I have been in years, there has been damage. Sadness. Grief. Stress. Tears. Layers have been peeled and the icky sticky underneaths have revealed gifts I wasn't ever prepared to have. I don't think I'm particularly worthy of good things (not feeling sorry for myself, it's just the way it is in the mind of Chez OBrien) but I am receiving my bounty with gratitude (a gift in itself).

Yesterday afternoon, at the memorial service for the 32 year old patient who died on our unit last week, I was thrust into the infinite space of love and light of a friend so precious. I don't touch her enough but yesterday, I couldn't let go.

How do you pound on the chest of a dead woman for an hour to give her newborn baby one sliver of a chance to feel her mother's warm skin one last time and then come face to face with her mourning and devastated family? How do you do that with grace and humility? My friend did that. My badass, beautiful, brutally strong friend.

Not far from the tree... sort of

Yesterday I realized that there is one fantasy I've had for my son's future is actually a guarantee. Guaranteed only by his Fragile X-dom.

My son will always be sweet. Will always love and respect women. Will never be a dick-head or a bully. He won't be aggressive or mean. Thanks to Fragile X, my son will be a good man and for that, I am grateful.