Cool!

This.

Innovate

I called Anika's school this morning and told them she wouldn't be coming in today and that I would be in Monday morning to sign some paperwork stating I will homeschool Anika.  Collective G A S P!  I hung up the phone and walked upstairs feeling a little crazy and disoriented.  But I felt exhilarated! I know it's right for Anika and that's about all I know at the moment.  The only word that came to mind as I contemplated our new life was INNOVATE.

Time for our first lesson.  I went straight from my phone call to the computer and typed 'innovate' on the screen and printed it out.  I then, ritualistically and with feeling, removed Anika's school papers from the fridge and replaced them. 

Those papers represent so much.  The yellow one is a log for minutes read.  The kids are sent home with a book (not of their choosing) and they are explicitly bribed into reading.  Read so many minutes, earn a pizza party!  Read this many minutes, earn a PTA t-shirt!  In essence:  Conform, be bribed, smother all joy for learning!  What about reading for reading's sake?  What about reading something that interests you?  Heresy!

We talked together about the meaning of 'innovate', not just once but whenever we recognized innovation throughout the day.

Lookey there, we learned something useful already.

This wasn't a flippant decision based on a few bad days or weeks at school.  I've been leaning towards it for quite some time.  I've felt it was right for her but to be honest, I was looking forward to six long hours I would use to...I don't know... complete a thought.  Also, I hate to admit I worried briefly about societal and familial expectations and pressures.  Ultimately, though, I don't care what people think.

I know I can do this. I'm capable. I know it's what she needs.

Anika is brilliant and inquisitive.  She is also anxious and rigid. I figure Anika's story ends either with a Doogie Howser or a self-hating alcoholic, depending entirely on how I play it, how adept my parenting is. It's time to pony-up.  Anika is a square peg and I refuse to force her through a round hole.  It's time to do everything differently.  It's time to innovate.  It's time to pray to God and beg more than ever for guidance to be the Mom Anika needs.  

There is so much I want to share and talk about regarding Anika.  I'm excited.  I haven't felt like writing in a long time but now I do.  That's a good sign.  The same life that breathed into me today, breathed into Anika too.  She was a different person today.  So was I .  This is good.  We are alive.  I feel like we are about to create something really neat.  

Lunging forward, letting go of solid ground. 

Shaping.  

Innovating.

Jacy's Blog

My friend asked me to share the story of Ivan for a series on her blog called "My Name Is". Here is the link to her wonderful blog.  Also, I've posted the story on my blog below.

My Name Is Jonah

The story of me and Ivan is a lot like the story of Jonah and the Whale.  I'm Jonah in this story.  Not the whale like you were thinking.  Though I was pregnant and very much whale-like with Ivan for forty-two weeks and a day.  But I guess that's more like being an elephant and not a whale.  Aren't elephants pregnant for like two years or something?  Anyway, I'm Jonah.  You're Jonah.  We're all Jonah. 

My name is Jonah and I'm a bereaved mother.

Very early on in my pregnancy with Ivan, I knew something was wrong.  I just knew.  Nobody believed me.  My belly was measuring small and my morning sickness didn't abate at twelve weeks like it did with my two other children.  And somehow, don't ask me how, I knew it was anencephaly.  Long before an ultrasound, I was already trying to come to terms with burying my baby.  I had already cried.  I was already asking myself questions like where would I bury him?  How would my five-year-old daughter cope?  I tried to talk myself out of it but I knew.  I knew the heartbreak was great.  I could feel the trauma reaching back from the future to get me.  This event was out there in space-time and had somehow already burned me.

In the car on the way to my eighteen-week ultrasound, I chided my husband for being so upbeat.  I  said, “Don't be so happy.  You're about to find out your baby doesn't have a brain.”  

A few moments into the ultrasound,  I thought I saw the profile of a nice, round skull go past.  Phew!  My baby has a skull!  See, Alana, everything's going to be fine.  I wondered if it was a healthy baby boy or a healthy baby girl.  Then the ultrasound tech said, “I'm just going to tell you right away...there is something seriously wrong with your baby.”  Before he said another word, I said, “Is it anencephaly?”  He was shocked.  “How did you know?” he asked.  “I just knew,” I said.  He asked me several more times how I knew before conceding,  “I've been doing this long enough to know that Moms just know things.”  Yes they do.  

My baby's neural tube didn't close.  Part of his skull never formed.  He was going to die.

I started crying immediately in the office and fell apart completely by the time we got into the car. Why?  How?  Is it my fault?  Not my baby!  Not my sweet baby!   But I want him!  I want my baby!  I really want my baby!  I wondered why this felt so bad.  After all, I had been through the sudden death of my father and the suicide of my brother.  This was just a little baby I hadn't even met, I reasoned.  Why did it feel as bad and worse than losing someone I had known and loved my whole life?  

After finding myself alone in the house later that day, I fell on my face on the carpet of my living room floor and out of the belly of hell cried I!   I sort of thought it would be a good idea for God to take Ivan home then and I told Him so.  I couldn't hold my baby in my arms and watch him die. Then a thought was whispered to me and it went like this:  Maybe God knows better than you do, Alana. I started laughing deeply and out loud.  My laugh startled me but it was appropriate.  I had just grasped for the first time ever that God is God and He must know best, right?  My will compared to His was ludicrous.  Like, really funny.  Of course He knows best...He's like, God!  Duh!  

Ivan wasn't leaving me just yet and I knew it.  I knew I would get to meet him and had about five months, I figured, to enjoy him.  I treasured each kick, each hiccup. Whenever I had my other two kids in the bath tub, I would sit on the tile floor and revel in that fact that all three of my kids were alive and kicking and with me in that moment.  I tried, I really tried to soak Ivan all in.  It turns out, though, I didn't soak enough in!  It turns out you don't appreciate anything 'til it's gone, no matter how hard you try.  If I had no regrets or guilt, it simply wouldn't be death.

My due date came and went.  My doctors were ready and willing to induce me any time and  I could tell they wondered at the source of my patience. They didn't know what I knew:  If was induced, I wouldn't meet Ivan alive. Labor would be slower, the contractions longer and harder.  A long delivery would be too hard on his fragile head.  I knew if I wanted to meet him alive, I had to go into labor naturally and deliver quickly without an epidural to slow things down.  Moms just know things.  

Each day was a gift and I was fully prepared to carry forty-four weeks.  Or two years like an elephant.  Or forever.  At forty-two weeks and a day, labor arrived.  I paced the house between contractions, singing lullabies to Ivan and crying.  I wasn't ready!  I wasn't ready to let him go.  Please not today, I thought.  Please not yet.  Oh, God!  Let me keep him!

At the onset of each contraction, I visualized looking up at a tall island mountain.  Then I would imagine going under the ocean and down, down, down to the bottom of that mountain.  After the contraction peaked, I would imagine slowly coming back to the surface of the sea. This visualization technique had arrived in my mind uninvited while I was in labor with my previous son two years prior.  I was surprised by it then and chuckled upon realizing my mind had borrowed this whole bottoms-of- the-mountains business from the the story of  Jonah in the Bible:

Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.  And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.  Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fishes belly.  And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me;  out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.  For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about:  all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.  Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.  The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.  I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever:  yet thou hast brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God.  When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord:  and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.  They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.  But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed.  Salvation is of the Lord.  And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.

Did a great fish literally swallow Jonah?  I don't know.  Maybe. I don't really care if it's literal or figurative or both.  That's not the point.  The point is redemption.  The point is having the weeds wrapped about your head and the waters compassing you about, even to the soul!  The point is feeling cast out of God's sight. The point is being in the fish's belly and how to get out.

Childbirth is agony by the way.  Losing a loved one is agony.  That kind of pain (both physical and spiritual) is for me, visually,  beneath the sea, at the bottoms of the mountains and inside the belly of a great fish where it feels like God can't even see you.  

I know you know this place.  I know you've been there too.  

I labored several hours in a warm bath at the hospital with the lights dim and the room quiet.  My husband knelt beside the tub and poured water over my belly during contractions.  Some tears formed and fell silently from my eyes while in the tub but not for sorrow.  For sacredness.  That was the only time I've ever cried because of sacredness.  I don't know how else to describe it.  It was beautiful.

I had come to realize in those last months that the reason I could grieve so deeply for this tiny, supposed stranger was because time isn't the way we perceive it and that's a scientific fact.  I have a relationship with my son that exists out there somewhere.  It already is and has been. He's my son from all eternity to all eternity.  Just because our paths were only going to cross here and now briefly didn't mean our love was less.  He is my son and I knew him when I saw him.  

Contrary to the original diagnosis, Ivan was born with exencephaly, not anencephaly.  He had his entire brain but it was protruding through an opening in his crown.  He had a chromosome disorder called Trisomy 18 which is what caused his neural tube defect.  He also had enlarged kidneys and a single umbilical artery. And bless his precious thumb on his right hand...it looked like a pinky in the wrong place.

Meeting Ivan face to face was magical.  My Mama eyes couldn't have seen his defects with a microscope.  He was perfect!  Oh, my sweet, sweet baby boy!  He had a lot to say to me.  He made many baby sounds with his very own little voice, told me all about it.  He yawned two adorable yawns.  He opened his eyes a lot and looked into mine. I was so very, very happy. 

There was no way of knowing how much time we would have.  Ivan seemed so strong and pink and definitely wasn't waning yet.  My five-year-old daughter had expressed a desire to meet him before he died.  I felt nervous about my husband driving home to get her.  What if Ivan dies while he is gone?  But I was  more nervous about my daughter missing the chance to meet her brother.  I let the nurse bathe him so he would be cleaned up and not startle his sister.  While the nurse wiped Ivan down, I  turned my gown around, wiped off some blood and practiced my normal face.  It was during his bath Ivan started to weaken.  I started to panic and wanted him back in my arms immediately.  I had an incredible midwife who came to the hospital with me to be my doula. She told Ivan to hold on until his Daddy got back and that's exactly what he did. I knew he would wait for his Dad.  Ivan knew that was important.

My daughter experienced a little panic of her own and decided she didn't want to come to the hospital after all so my husband rushed back to the hospital without her.  In retrospect, I'm sick with guilt that it went down that way.  I'm sorry my husband missed thirty minutes of Ivan's short life.  I'm sorry I gave up those precious moments to bathe him when he could have been in my arms.  I worry that leaving my warm, bare chest made him weak.  But what if we hadn't tried to give our daughter the chance to meet him while living?  I would regret that too. It's tempting to waste wisdom on the past.

Once Brandon got back, I told him Ivan was weak and I thought he was going to die soon.  Ivan's eyes had been shut but after Dad got there and everyone had left us alone in the room, he opened one eye and took a last peek at Mom and Dad.  I can still hear his last gasp for air in my mind's ear as he died in my arms with my husband by my side.  Each time I had imagined that moment, I had winced.  But the moment had come and gone peacefully, quietly.  He died two hours after he was born.  Two very precious hours!  I feel spoiled I got that time.  It is a privilege denied to many.  

Ivan and I were like subatomic particles and having collided and interacted for a nanosecond, it was over.  Poof!  Like a flash!  Our trajectories had crossed and we would have to wait a really long time to be together again.

Every motherly instinct was insulted as I walked out of that hospital without my baby.  My legs were collapsing as I made my way for the car, my husband literally holding me up.  (He has held me up in many ways.) We buried Ivan four days later. Spring was just arriving, which I found heartily appropriate and welcome.   Hope.  Resurrection.   

How does one find oneself vomited out upon dry land?  A bold clue is the fact Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.  I believe my heartbreak was made bearable and healed through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. You don't have to believe the same thing I do.  The principles that get you out of the fish's belly are legitimate, no matter what 'being redeemed' means to you. To escape the belly of hell, I had to submit my will to God's, dwell in an energy of gratitude, pay what I had vowed, and be merciful to obtain mercy.  Ivan taught me about God's grace.

I read once that problems come to you with gifts in their hands.  Weird, huh?  I thought so too.  Except it's true.  I love deeper.  My capacity for joy is greater.  My marriage is stronger.  The name Ivan means 'gracious gift from God'. 

I went down to the bottoms of the mountains but I am happy. The sweet will be sweet only because we have tasted the bitter.  It has to be this way.  The Lord prepared a great fish to swallow us up. 

Wherever you are, Ivan, I love you.  Our reunion is out there in space-time somewhere and its sweetness is reaching back from the future to get me.  I just know it.

"Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle
Everything I do is stitched with its color."

~W.S. Merwin, "Separation"

Missing Ivan

And just when I think it's getting easier... it's not. I just miss him.

D U H !

It's of note, isn't it, that God knows what He's doing?  Remarkable, really. 

When I first found out about Ivan, I thought the task impossible.  I prayed with my wet face buried in the carpet of my living room floor for relief.  I wanted God to take him then.  I thought it would kill me to watch my son die in my own arms.  And then as I prayed, my wails turned to laughter.  A real, deep belly laugh. A thought had been whispered to me and it went like this:  Maybe God knows better than you do, Alana.  I don't know why I thought that was so funny.  I was laughing, I guess, at my own pride.  It's like that was the first moment in my entire life I really understood God is God.  And so God knows better than I do, right?!  Because He's like...God!

It was maybe the first time I felt real humility.  To compare my will to His was laughable.  Just plain ol' country funny.  Like someone had just told me a great joke.  I knew then my will is NOTHING.  The humble surrender felt sublime and brought great relief.  I laughed.  And sobbed. And laughed.  I handed it all over to my loving Heavenly Father in that moment and decided to trust Him because remember... He's like...God!

D U H !

I also knew in that moment that Ivan would be born full term and I would get to meet him.  I just knew.  I'm so thankful my Heavenly Father loves me and all of us enough to let us suffer.  He is good and will turn our sadness to joy, the bitter to sweet if we let Him.

Ivan's Gifts

For this photo of Brandon carrying that little box... I have no words.

Okay, so I'm Alana and I always have words and usually lots of them:  The man in this photo looks like he's being crushed by the actual, albeit unseen, weight of the world and it breaks my heart.

Ivan brought our family so many gifts, I don't know where to start.  Among them, a sweet spirit in our home and especially between me and Brandon.  There is something about standing next to a man and dressing the baby you share for burial that makes it very hard to ever  be unkind to him again.  I still can be jerk, but like I said, it's much harder. ;)

I've been a terrible wife for a lot of our marriage.  I always hated the wife I was, not the husband Brandon was.  It is an ongoing internal struggle for me but I really started to make some good changes a few years ago.  My progress has been slow, almost imperceptible.  But I've never given up.  I think about the last 10 years and it feels good to honestly say I'm a much better wife than I was when we started out. 

Brandon is perfect.  No, really.  That isn't some figure of speech or an exaggeration.  It's explicitly true.  Okay, he leaves socks on the floor and stuff like any other human being but what I mean is:  He's sinless!  He's never said an unkind word to me.  Like, literally not once.  He's never said an unkind word about anyone.  He has not a hint of idleness.  He has no passions to be bridled... no anger, no lusts.  The man doesn't even eat if he's not hungry.  He'll be all, "No, I don't want dessert, I'm not hungry."  Who eats dessert because they're hungry?  I cannot find his fallen man.  I see no flesh mouldering in corruption.  I call him The World's Last Good Man.

All my cruelty towards Brandon in our early years was because of my own dysfunction.  It has taken me a long time to accept the fact that Brandon loves me.  And an even longer time to be at peace with the fact that the way he shows his love and affection is not the way I show my love and affection.  Ivan's gift was dashing to pieces that last bit of viciousness I had yet to shake.

Ivan's gifts have been many. He boxed up love, compassion, gratitude, sweetness, even eternity itself...tied it up with a pretty little bow and left.  He's helping us to become an eternal family.


And since I hope my blog will eventually start to lay off all the death and coffins and stuff, I leave you with an image of what I think Brandon will look like when he is an exalted man, or the angel he already is...  He's totally gonna be Thor!!!

Slightly less God-of-Thunder, maybe.  Lose the hammer but keep the long hair and beard and intensity and glory.  Are you seeing it too? 

Don't Worry. This Has Happened Before.

The above is something my nephew said to my daughter when he was only six years old.  My daughter was having a meltdown over something-  I don't even remember what.  He calmed her by saying, "Don't worry.  This has happened before."  He told her, "This happens to everyone."

His little comment has stuck with me.  It calms my meltdowns.  For everything I've had to go through, someone else has done it before and will do it again.  There is great peace in accepting life is supposed to be hard.  There is peace in recognizing the nature of the beast.  I don't know why we act so surprised by death.  It's as common as birth!  I knew after my Dad and brother died, there would eventually be someone else joining them.  Thankfully, though, we never know who.

I am part of a private group on facebook for moms and dads of anencephaly babies.  I also met with a girl in town who went through this six months ago.  Talking with others who have gone down the same path has brought me immense comfort and strength.  When I was getting close to delivery,  I panicked a time or two with the horror of having to watch my baby die in my own arms.  But then I thought about the others who had braved the same thing and survived it (even found peace in it) and I was lifted up.  I thought if they could do this, maybe, just maybe I could.

I'm not the first Mama to lose a baby and I certainly won't be the last.  My experience is uniquely mine but not unique.  Death is not unique. I can feel the strength of all the Mamas gone before me.

If we're lucky enough to be around for a while, we'll all lose people we love.  This thought doesn't depress me.  It comforts me.  Death is normal.  Don't worry, I tell myself,  this has happened before. 

Love Wins

To:  My Body
The milk.  It seems to me a really low blow.  Is there no system override when my mind knows my sweet babe is not here?

To:  My Dad
When you died, I just couldn't believe you had food in your fridge.  And fresh fruit on your counter.  I wore your slippers, sat in your chair and ate your chocolate pudding.  I couldn't comprehend that you had just been here.  Just days before.  You were actually on earth, had gone to Wal-Mart and picked out fruit!  And it was still fresh.  This was proof you were close when you were gone.  Inevitably, though, the time came to empty your freezer, box up your books, lock the door and turn in the key.

To:  My Sweet Baby
My milk is gone now.  It was painful while it was here but it was proof you were close.  That you had actually been with me for nearly one year.  That I really did hold your warm body against my chest and hear your sweet voice talk to me.  No one can stop this arrow of time.  I can't slow it down.  I hate these days passing.  I want you to be close.  Please stay close to me always.  Let me feel you close.



I've been thinking of the instincts a mother has.  Even animals are driven beyond their own control to fiercely protect and nurture their young.  I understand now the aching arms.  Everything in me wants to hold my baby and take care of him.  The fact that he is in a box in the ground is a very disturbing nightmare, the ones you wake up from to find your baby still sleeping in your arms.  I keep getting a panicked feeling, similar to the few seconds you can't locate your child at the park or in a mall.

For so long, I knew exactly where Ivan was.  I knew he was safe and warm in my belly, spirit and body together.  And now I just want to know exactly where he is.  I know he is safe and with God but I feel like I've lost him.  I feel terrible I couldn't fix him and make him well.  Every cell in my body is wandering, looking for my baby.  Every bit of me aches to hold him.  I wander the house, full of the energy and adrenaline that keeps you awake nursing those first months, not knowing what to do with myself next. 

And then yesterday I remembered that my baby loves me back.  When I am empty, I let that love flow between us.  I send some to him and he sends some to me.  It fills me up.  Love wins.  I'm so happy he is my son!  I'm so happy to have had him here with me.  I miss him.
 

I love this picture my midwife took.  It captures the intense love and happiness we felt when we finally got to meet Ivan, Brandon's eyes wet all at once with happy and sad.  A volunteer from NILMDTS came and took professional photos which I should have in several weeks and am very much looking forward to seeing.

March 5th, 2013

We drove the kids up to Zion today.  We just had to get out of the depressing house and try to make the kids feel normal.  They really needed our attention.  I told Anika when someone dies, families need a lot of time together to give each other extra love.  I have felt like I don't want to leave Brandon's side, even to go downstairs alone. We really needed today to be together, close together.  And to rest.

We drove through the Zion tunnel.  Anika thought that was great fun.  It was nice to see her enjoying herself.  When  you come out of the black tunnel, the light seems blinding. We parked in the campground and walked down to the river to let the kids throw rocks in it.  The sun was so bright, I could hardly see.  I hadn't felt the sun soak my skin for a very long time... or I was just too sick to notice.  It feels weird, unrecognizable to not be sick.  I haven't thrown up since I was in labor, standing over the toilet vomiting up cranberry juice while simultaneously peeing all over the floor.

Sitting there on the west bank of the Virgin River, I felt like I had just split the Red Sea, wandered in the wilderness for forty years, crossed the River Jordan and was sitting on its west bank...The Promised Land.  I was resting with my family in the crimson-bright light.  How beautiful, I thought, will it be when we walk where the pain ends and into the light.  Into the arms of everyone we've ever known and loved.  How beautiful to be missing no one.  The sweet will be sweet only because we have tasted the bitter.  The joy will be joy only because we have known the pain. 

March 4th, 2013

Dearest Ivan,

The day you were born was the day the sky changed from a winter sky into a spring sky.  We buried you today, the day the spring winds came.  The grass was half green, the trees hinting of pollen.  I imagined myself as a wrinkled old woman, still wearing your golden ring around my neck.  Dozens of springs lie ahead of me.  Thousands of days.  I will long to hold you and kiss your sweet cheek each and every one of them.  Like the world in winter, seemingly dead, you lie dormant.  But I know you live.  I know we will be together again.  I know you're looking down on us, my sweet angel.  I miss you.  I love you.

Love,
Your Mama
 

Ivan Brandon Larson

Sweet baby Ivan came Thursday.  He stayed with us for two precious hours.  He breathed on his own and made tons of really cute baby sounds with his very own adorable little voice.  He moved a lot while snuggled into my chest, skin-to-skin.  He yawned two adorable yawns.  He opened his eyes quite a bit to look at us.  We love and miss him very much.  I feel so lucky to be his Mama!