No Hyacinths For You!

Yesterday, while in my hometown to have my dad look at my car, I decided it was high time to get my Easter on in the cemetery.  I get really paranoid about getting behind on the upkeep A. so people don't think that I'm neglecting it because I don't live right down the street, and B. because when I'm not, other people do it for me...and I know they mean well, but I get really hurt when they do.  While the rest of my friends are out decorating nurseries and picking out frilly Easter dresses, this is all I get to do for my daughter.  I wish everyone else saw that and left it for me.  

The grocery and home improvement stores here are full of potted Easter flowers.  It only seemed reasonable then, that the ones an hour away would also be so, and its much easier to buy flowers there than to have them spilling over and getting dirt in my car on the ride over.  

Boy was I WRONG!  One nursery told me they wouldn't have Easter flowers until mother's day, explain that one to me.  The hyacinths (which are really what I was after, but I'd have taken tulips or daffodils) in my yard are almost spent, so it's silly for them to tell me they couldn't have blossomed yet.  I went to every grocery store, hardware store, and nursery in plum and I found no bulb flowers whatsoever.  Only one place had any flowers at all.  So I wound up with pansies that are probably dead already from last night's frost and I'l have to plant some more flowers next spring.  I did at least find some mixed gladiolus bulbs at the dollar store and planted those, so at least Lizzie has some perennial summer flowers now and I put in some new mulch.  

Epilogue

*Warning: Extreme Hunger Games Series Spoiler Alert*

I just got done devouring the Hunger Games trilogy.  I really, truly loved them.  But the ending really stands out to me.  So often, characters go through truly horrifying experiences and tragic loss and because the greater goal was served, they all live happily ever after.  It makes you feel like all is right in the world.  "And the scar on his forehead never bothered him again"...

But that's not reality.  War, traumatic loss, torture... they change people, down to their very core, haunt them daily...

In the epilogue of Mockingjay, Katniss and Peeta are watching their children frolic in the meadow that is actually the mass grave of the citizens of their district, burnt until unrecognizable during the rebellion, and this is what katniss has to say to us: "It took five, ten, fifteen years for me to agree.  But Peeta wanted them so badly.  When I first felt her stirring inside of me, I was consumed with a terror that felt as old as life itself.  Only the joy of holding her in my arms could tame it.  Carrying him was easier, but not much."

This is a woman who spent her whole life knowing that if she ever had children, they could (and once she became a champion, definitely would) be taken from her and essentially murdered for other's entertainment.  And then she experienced the horror herself, not by losing a child but by being the child who was almost lost...twice.  It's no wonder she swore off having children and it took 15 years of freedom to convince her otherwise.

Who in the recurrent loss community can't relate with that?  The fear of having your children taken from you that's so strong you put it off for long period of time, and the even stronger fear that envelops you when you learn you're expecting and can't help but love your child entirely from day one, even though you know how poorly it could all end.

Thank you, Suzanne Collins, from all the people on this planet who are fucked up by what life has put us through for not exempting your heroic and loved characters from the same fate.  For acknowledging that it's not only the weak , but also the epically strong who are forever changed and even broken by life.

Humor Me While I Rant

I went to a very conservative Christian college, where the student body busied itself, during it's rare non-studying hours, with charitable deeds.  Amongst those many charities, were a few adoption fundraising groups.  And these young women, who would wed as soon as they graduated if not before, would be taught all about the expense of adoption and the children waiting for adoption and the families struggling to pay to adopt them.  Then they'd be given their buckets and sent off to fundraise.

Fast forward a year or two when, newly graduated and married, these couples start discussing building a family. They have somehow, within only a few years, been blessed with not only the purchase of a house but still having an excess of money.  They consider having their own children and frankly would probably have no trouble at it, but instead decide it would be cruel to bring another child into the world when there are so many who need homes.  They immediately go off and spend copious amounts of money to purchase adopt a newborn from a hard up mother.

Sounds like a great story of social responsibility, no?

But of course, those adoption fundraising groups did a world of hurt by criss-crossing their figures.  There really are a lot of older children waiting to be adopted.  There are also a lot of couples waiting for years at a time to spend rediculous amounts to adopt an infant, and the longer you wait the more you pay.  You see, most unwanted infants simply aren't born anymore.  But because of this misled info, people who could be giving birth to their own healthy infants are removing the few that are in the pool from people who can't have children of their own and wouldn't struggle to provide for a child on a day-to-day basis, but do struggle greatly to come up with the $20,000-$100,000 that comes with infant adoption.

If you have the money and want to do good people, give it to a couple who really needs it or adopt an older child.  That's the socially responsible thing to do.

Smells Like Morning Sickness

4 pregnancies in 4 years, and they've all been in the spring. I walked outside yesterday, in the middle of a wonderful warm spell and thought to myself "it smells like morning sickness". Not spring, or rain, or plants beginning to grow... But morning sickness.

It's little things like that that make me wonder if I'll ever be sane again. Spring is supposed to be a time of life and the light finally returning, and all I can think about is morning sickness, which with my past isn't about life like it should be, but death instead.

And crazier still? I want it so badly it hurts. Spring is always our lucky time. Hope it doesn't let us down this year.