Parenthood - The New Frontier

I realize that I haven't said a lot of positive things about parenthood yet. The first 3 months are a bit dicey as we move around in a sleep deprived state of adaption. It's all about survival. But as we arrive at the end of the 3 month stage, I wanted to share some thoughts I've had as I neared the end of my maternity leave and in the blurry mornings before work this week. Below is something that is uncharacteristically sappy - something I never quite pictured about myself - but it rings true just the same. I don't feel the radiating love or mush that some people talk about, but I feel this.

Knish has changed from a sleepy newborn to a giggling baby. So much change yet so much the same. She is still so new yet has always been here - as if our lives have been saving room for her. We are still learning how to listen to her, and how to comfort her, and how to make her giggle. But we're all getting better at living together.
From the very beginning, Knish will raise her left eyebrow from time to time. My mom did the same thing - with the baby pictures to prove it. When Knish does it, I see so much of my mother in her, and it's almost like a reassurance from beyond.

Knish's smile is infectious (what is it about baby smiles??). She can now recognize Hubs and me, and will smile when she sees us almost every time (that won't last long, I know). She smiles at toys and at nothing at all. Everything is wonderful and entrancing to her.

I'm back at work this week and I'm very lucky to have been home for so long (by American standards), but I'm still struck by how time can be so slow and so fast at the same time. Days full of tedium and endless new experiences. Knish is still so new to us yet she fits right into the family. I am amazed at the duality of every feeling - nothing is simply anymore. Complex feelings of love and guilt and freedom and dependency. 

And as much as I had wanted a baby, felt the achy love of what could be, it was still always hard to picture myself a mother. I never felt like my life was incomplete without a baby, much like I don't feel a different "completeness" now that she's here. I'm glad she's here and she's definitely ours. But there are some parenting cliches that are hard for me to identify with. And yet I am so amazed by this baby. From her neck rolls to her sweet yogurt breath; the way she sleepily looks at me and slowly recognizes me before smiling in the mornings; from her eyelashes to her Johnny Bravo cowlick. It's all so familiar and new and sweet.

Circle of Life

I had imagined by big blog announcement a little differently. Not that I am a professional, or even novice, blogger by any stretch. But I did imagine that I’d share my pregnancy with a cute post on bread baking or something and tie it together. Because that’s what you do. Instead, just as I passed the mark at which I felt comfortable sharing, but world was turned upside-down. In the span of just 4 weeks, we lost my mom to cancer.

I was left to balance the incredible joy of my first pregnancy with the insurmountable grief of losing such a powerful part of my life. I could not find words to share the joy. It’s taken me over 7 weeks to find the words for the sadness.

I consider myself lucky in that before this spring, I have never experienced what could be described as “profound grief”. I have lost 2 great grandparents and 3 grandparents in my lifetime. However, the grief I felt was different, and it certainly was not all-consuming. When Bub passed away less than 2 years ago, we knew her cancer was terminal, but that it would give us time to work in a few “lasts” and give us time to say goodbye. Of course I was devastated when she finally passed. But there was the year of knowing it was coming to work through the stages of grief in time. And when we were sad, we could still call her and share about our day and tell her we loved her. We had a year.

Up until 3 days before Mom passed, we thought we had a year. Her passing was a shock, in addition to the grief. It feels so unfair. She had her mom until she was 53. She shared her children growing up and had the support. I feel robbed of so many decades of time. I feel like she was robbed of the one thing left on her bucket list – meeting her first grandbaby. And I absolutely feel like my dad was robbed of at least 20 years of retirement shenanigans. I tried to process the injustice of it.

But life is not about fairness. We are not entitled to the breaths we take. And we were not “robbed” of anything. If nothing is promised, or given, how can it be taken away? Despite this initial bitterness, I am left with no anger.

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I cried before she passed. I did not cry when she got the diagnosis. I did not cry a week later after the surgery when it was much worse than they thought. I did not cry when I spent a week with her recovering in the ICU. But I cried the next week when the scan showed the surgery was fruitless. That even with the most aggressive treatment options available, she would never be cured. But we were promised the meeting with the grandbaby. And I cried two days later when her body started shutting down as the cancer consumed her at breakneck speeds. I cried at the lost year we were just promised. At the loss for the baby. At the shock of it.

I cried briefly at the hospital between phone calls when we notified close family and friends. The words floated out of my mouth, but I cannot believe I said them. And I cried at the funeral – at the moose ears, when our Cantor chanted A Woman of Valor, and at the grave-side Mourner’s Kaddish. But I didn’t cry between. And I didn’t cry again. Maybe I was too tired; but grief is not measured in the number of tears. The grief will come.

It will come at small moments and at big moments. It will come when I am suddenly lonely in the middle of a crowded room. It will come on holidays and on any random day. I know it will continue to come.

Shiva (the week of mourning following a family death) has come and gone. The grief did not change. Only the exhaustion. Shloshim (the month of mourning for a parent or spouse) has come and gone. The grief continues.

It changes, yes. But there’s no switch where you suddenly notice it is better. The waves of grief crash on until one day you notice the tide is low and you can get up again. But the tide comes in.

And there is joy that mixes in. We feel our baby girl move. My belly gets bigger every day. We pick out nursery décor and strollers and baby names. But the grief continues.

As I said before, I still struggle daily to embrace the joy and love with growing this soul, but also to fully grieve my mom without bottled it up for later. I have grief for my mom – she will miss so much. We had such plans (doesn’t everyone?). I have grief for my daughter – she will never know the love from this woman. To her, it will always be someone that I talk about, but that she can only connect to a face in a frame. As she gets older, she will roll her eyes at my repetitive “She would have loved you so” and say that she knows. But she will never know. And I have grief for the hole in my life from losing my mother and best friend.

And yet… I am thankful. We had no anger for each other. No bitterness or grudges. We knew and felt love from each other. She had a life full of personal and professional accomplishments. And if it had to happen, if this was so sealed in the Book of Life, then I am a little relieved that it was quick. And I am certain that our pain in grief exceeds her suffering.

I have the warmth and love of friends to surround me. It does help. But it does not fix what happened. I appreciate the help and the offers of help. And I can lean on so many people for so many teams; I have a village to carry me through this. But I need to walk through the grief myself; the village cannot carry me over the waves. They cannot stop the waves that will wash over me. Yet I do not want people to stop offering help; just to understand that refusing help is not an affront to their friendship, generosity, or trust.

I do not think my grief is special. This would hurt in unfathomable ways whether I was pregnant or not. But I am sad that the timing means that I may never be able to separate this pregnancy, the experience of so many firsts, from the profound loss of Mom.

As the weeks wear on, the tide is slowly going out. So far, this month has been better than last month. But I cannot say if today was better than yesterday; just like waves on a shore wash in and out, so does the grief.

But on the pregnancy side, we are doing well. The shock and travel have not hurt me or the baby. She continues to grow right on track, and at our girls getaway this weekend, she was wiggly for everyone. Time moves slowly and quickly, all at the same time, but our excitement grows. She is due October 28^th – less than 4 months away.

How will the tide look then?

Code Word: OKMHHOU

Last month, after more than a year of dreaming and planning, we finally had a live, in person One Kitchen Many Hearts meet up. 

And it was more than I could have imagined.

PIE!

The seven of us had met in parts in the past - I obviously knew Megan in college, I met Mads last fall when I was visiting my grandparents, and I met Allison on our Alton Brown Tour De Force last October. That left the other half of the group - Kat, Kirsten, and Jeanne - to be new people. I have to admit - there was a lot that could go wrong here. Jeanne welcomed a bunch of people into her home (bless her husband). You would hope that any "crazy" would have come out over the years as we chatted, except that psychopaths are pretty smart. Did she really know what she was welcoming into her home?? We have gone more than a year, as a group, with ZERO inter-group drama. I mean seriously - when was the last time a group of seven women could be friends for so long without any drama? And my real fear? What if, when we finally got together, we discovered that the internet was a great cover and we actually didn't like each other?

We met a special guest while antiquing... She was kind enough to help us out with a selfie.

That turned out to be a stupid fear.

In fact, the weekend went so fantastically, that we came home to realize that we'd forgotten to take more pictures. Instead of a weekend when seven bloggers got together, this transformed us quite simply to seven friends. It added some realism to our friendship, or at least ended any doubt there was about what kept us together. 

The only van with enough personality to haul us around

To be honest, the weekend was such a blur of friends and laughs, that I don't have much else to say about it (I mean, what would you say about your girl's weekend?). So here are a few more pictures.

One of the bomb-diggity breakfasts

We went antiquing, and happened across a scrap metal shop. Well, they had a series of flying pigs and I fell IN LOVE. Jeanne went all the way back after we left, just to make sure Al Porcino could make it home. Confession: I'm ordering a second one. Herd of flying pigs? YUP.

VAN SELFIE!

One of the best surprises of the weekend was a pinata donkey, who became our mascot. We even took him to meet his real-life baby donkey counterparts.

Seriously - daily pinata selfies. He was our 8th muskateer.

MY PEOPLE!!

Are you my mama?

Hi.

Even Donkey Pinata likes beer...

Belly rubs!

I cannot wait to see any one of these ladies again. Love you all so much!!

Check out with the other gals have said, too:
Allison from Decadent Philistines
Jeanne (our beautiful host) from Inside NanaBread's Head
Kirsten from Comfortably Domestic
Kat from Tenaciously Yours
Megan from Wanna Be a Country Cleaver
Mads from La Petite Pancake

Update on Life

I have so very much to catch up on. First of all, something that I didn't necessarily want to share openly on the blog while it was happening, but in March I was laid off from my real job. Unlike many other bloggers that I worship, this is (obviously) not something I do full-time, and honestly, I don’t want to. This is something I do for me, so I'm not sure the pressure of a full-time job in this creative outlet is a good fit for me.

During that time, I was very worried about getting a new job, but I did translate that stress the same way I normally do: into food. I did not, however, do a great job of snapping photos or writing down all my thoughts associated with these meals. Mostly because I had no thoughts. All of the stress, thoughts, free time, and stomach ulcers were devoted completely to finding new employment. Even while baking, I would rewrite cover letters between additions of eggs and vanilla.

I do have some new recipes coming at you, but they will be slow to post. The reason is that (Best Day) I have been employed for about 3 months now. As with any new job, the first few weeks were incredibly busy with travel and long work days (and learning, and reading, and organizing, and oh, did I mention the long work days?).

My unemployment lasted only about 7 weeks (I was incredibly lucky), but it still took a significant toll both emotionally and financially. As I get back to work after that much time off, I found it incredibly difficult to get back into a cooking schedule at night. I now work until about 6 pm, and if I run first thing, that still doesn't get dinner on the table before 8 pm. At the earliest. And in my constant battle with my alarm in the morning as it is (let alone trying to workout as well), I feel that the balance will, once again, come slowly.

I’m getting back into the swing of life, blogging, and, well, balance. My Plan for the next few weeks include regularly scheduled monthly posts (featuring the Many Hearts gals and the Theme Weavers), but hopefully some recipes (Oooo! Aaaahhh!). First to come, as I brush off the blogging dust, will be a few ramblings of recent trips.

From recent life.

Coming soon: Hangover Part Kvetchin Kitchen. 

All The Feels!

As you may have seen from my previous post, I was in Israel last month. Not for the whole month, but for 10 days in the middle. Writing about my time has been a battle, and I've refused to write about anything else in the meantime, which is a silly rule and I should just move on. But also delayed in part because I couldn't decide how much you all (some friends and some interweb followers) really wanted to know about my travels.

I saw and felt and tasted many things. However, as I finally down to describe my journey, I am still so outrageously hurt by the events of this week that I decided to break my original lengthy post into two shorter ones. I ate many things. I will talk about those later. For now... The Feels.