kisses

The kicks I feel from this little baby feel like kisses. They're getting more defined and I love them so much, I could just sit all day with my hand on my belly and wait for them. They make me so happy. It is nice to feel a joy that starts from the inside out.

I had a good cry tonight, missing my Otto so much and needing to look at his pictures, to really remember, to bond again. Amazing how much love is there. Love that makes the rest of the world seem silly. Like degrees and sales and other things. I am grateful for that perspective of love being really the greatest thing there is.

My little boy is with me, and my little baby is here in my belly. I just want to be a mama. I don't want to think about careers or how things will work out, I want to walk around the house singing to my baby. Sometimes I think of that me, the one that has a 10 month old boy now, I feel her in the house, talking to him, walking down the hall with a dirty diaper in hand, I long for that reality. I think, that's why I'm so disoriented, because that is the life that my heart is in, and nothing else I do right now makes up for that one.

All these realities overlapping, sometimes they are louder than others. And this reality here, at the computer typing before bed, is precious too because there is so much love. And confusion. But mostly love.

Goodnight my babies, goodnight my friends, goodnight cricket outside and the moon getting smaller, it's time to go to bed.

I feel afraid. Hearing my baby's heartbeat yesterday was beautiful, we got to hear it for a long time, nice and strong, everything looks good.

But it hit me yesterday that we have no control. We don't know what happened with precious Otto, and that is so hard for me to live with right now. I have faith and love, and also I don't want to feel foolish again about planning for a baby if it doesn't stay. I know it's not really foolish, but it feels really bad.

I need help. I need prayers. I want this baby to live.I want to give baths and and change diapers and sing and hold and sway and love. I want to have a happy Thanksgiving.

I know you are here Otto. How do I work through this? I feel sad, the sadness right after you died where we were just shocked and devastated.

But I feel the little bump on my belly and know that this baby is here now, I can love her now, I can only be grateful for what is now. And try to trust. The odds are in our favor. And we want you so much, it is worth the risk. I'll just focus on that.

In the days after you died

They came around me like kind bees. They wrapped my hard, engorged breasts in cabbages and ace bandages. They brought me sage tea. Drink this, to stop the milk. Bitter.

They came and put food in my mouth. Every two hours they brought vitamins, C and echinacia and other things to keep my immune system going, because they knew that the rest of me would be shutting down, going to sleep, stop trying. These wise, wise women. My sisters, my moms, my midwives.

They chopped fresh potatoes and parsley as a poultice to help the ache of my breasts, their swollen fight, making so much, so ready, so loving, not wanting to take this answer that you were gone. That you wouldn't be eating.

Lay on the bed, wilted parsley and cabbage, I am cooking it, it looks ready for soup.

To dry up, to flatten out, to say no to the life and force so joyfully pouring out, mama for the first time, mama from here on out, to say no to that...

I send love to that me, that me that was round and full, and so happy to be your mom, to that part of me that had to go back to sleep, and pack up your clothes and the diapers I had washed and layed out, all ready for you, and the little bath tub and dresser, and take them away. I send her love because she was glorious and beautiful. And so brave.

I look with longing at your picture. Every day. I feel love, I feel heartache. I don't know or understand what happened.

Depression is a blanket sometimes light and thin and sometimes heavy. But always always there.

Today it's heavy. But it's weird because I can still have moments of happiness, of good, of appreciation.

I don't want to get "work" done. I just want to write. I just want to play. I just want to read. Can I do this? Should I?

I see pictures of myself holding you and try to get that I was a mama, I know you will all say I am a mama, and I know that, i feel that, but I don't ever get to hold my baby. So I see when I was an on-duty mama, when you were MY baby. I miss it so much. I just want to fall apart.

What is life about? Not what I try so hard to achieve I think. I wish I could say that since you died I've become a very wise person, that everything is in perspective, that I know what life is about. That I want to live fully. I'm not there yet. I still want my music to do well, I get depressed about the tour not getting booked the way I want it to, that the album isn't perfect, that I'm not getting somewhere with it, all ego, all an excuse for not being content with life, with myself.

I like to think that if you were here my heart would have more of an anchor of love, that you would be the center, that music would have more love and less frustration. It did for a while, after you died, I could play and feel the center of the notes, every one affected me so, and now I'm a stress case. I feel like there isn't time to just play.

The moment the doctors told us that you had suffered major brain damage and a wash of whiteness came over me, an absence, a swoosh of air, a big, deep breath, I thought, no more Petracovich. There was no room for that. I thought, I knew, the most precious thing was to be lost in a few days, that the strain for accomplishing would die.

And it did for a while, and now I have an album to release to the world and I'm tying myself in knots over it.

I need your advice, your knowing, my baby. What would you tell me about this?

You say:
That you think I'm wonderful, the most wonderful. That you know my heart and it's beautiful. That I'm already there. That I am allowed to have joy.

And I think you are wise, my baby. I want to be a good mama for this little one. I want her to think that life is good, not just sad, not just angry. I'm angry all the time. I want to be a good mama for her. There is love too. There is tenderness. Today I sent blessings to all of her little parts, her heart, lungs, stomach, pancreas, eyes, brain, legs, hands, it is lovely to send love.