6 months right around the corner

It will be 6 months this Wednesday, March 19th.

6 fucking months. Seems pretty unbelievable.

Where am I now at 6 months? I've just started 2 new jobs. I am teaching English at an EFL school in SF and teaching in an afterschool drama program through a theatre co. I am still working at the bakery through the end of this month. I have been "functioning" pretty well in this new world so far (it's just been 1 week), but I guess it helps being in a brand new environment where no one knows me. The truth of the matter is though, that I don't know me.

Who is this person who wakes up in the morning and goes on with her day? Smiles and laughs even. Slips in a conversation with a customer, when asked, that the reason she wears her wedding ring around her necklace is because she hasn't lost the baby weight yet to fit it on her finger. Forgets that this, of course, means more questions and when the customer asks "How old is your baby?," she responds so calmly, "Oh, we lost him,". Who is this person?

I feel like an alien, studying how to be in the world. Feel like an alien, because I don't know *how* to be in this world. The only time I feel like I'm not an alien is when I am reading the blogs of all you incredible women in deadbaby land. I didn't start this blog thinking that I would find other women like me. I started it because I couldn't keep my mouth shut any longer. And, when I started it, I sent an email to dear friends to reach out & share. My first comment was from a woman who randomly found my blog and had lost her first daughter 16 years ago. She went on to have 4 other daughters, she shared.

About a week after my first post, I found the babylossdirectory blog and peered through the incredible number of blogs. So many of us. So many.

6 months I am still swimming through this process. I honestly haven't been one to mark time. I don't often think about Salvatore in terms of how old he would be. He seemed to be everything he was just in those 10 days. But 6 months feels big. Just last week when I was on the bus, a woman sat next to me with her baby who started tugging at me right away. I asked how old he was. 6 months. Issac. A big boy. He's in his "grabbing stage".

This week, I am not looking forward to. I want to do something special on Wednesday for Salvatore and for us. I don't know yet what that is. Tomorrow Mimmo and I have our interview with immigration. You're supposed to bring pictures from your wedding. I will be bringing pictures also of the 3 of us - our family.

Planning for the Unplanned

When I went to Italy in the summer of 2002, something very deep changed inside me. I was always a planner. Not to say that I wasn't spontaneous or I wasn't impractical (I mean, how could one get a degree in theatre arts and not be impractical). But, I was always rooted in "the next step", in my goals and my visions. In college, I would relish every semester in scheduling my classes. Fitting things together perfectly with getting the proper requirements, the right teacher, the right hours, the proximity from one class to another. I went to Chicago with the goal of working in theatre for 2 years. I did just that and left a couple weeks shy of my 2nd anniversary there.

How I ended up in Italy was the most unplanned event of my life up until that point. I came that summer to do an international theatre workshop in Umbria and a week-long residency with a theatre company in Tuscany. I had planned to travel afterwards for a month, first with my cousin, John and then with a friend, Christiana. One weekend of the workshop that we had free, I decided to go visit a friend of mine who was working in Tuscany at a seaside resort. I rallied together 3 other of the actresses to join me on an adventure. San Vincenzo & Ermanno (the place & the friend) ended up being pretty uneventful. We grabbed a wrong train on a sleepy Sunday and ended up in Rome instead of back to Orvieto. So, we decided to stay for a couple of hours and get something to eat in Rome before heading back. That's when it happened.

I literally found myself at the top of the Spanish Steps, coming from a roundabout way (the steps were closed because they were filming something) and I had a magnificent view of Rome. I was so giddy, I started laughing at my discovery and said outloud, "Oh my god! I'm moving to Rome!,". The other 3 girls laughed and poked me, jokingly "Yeah, I'm moving to Rome too...," and I said again, still laughing at perhaps the ridiculousness of it and at my revelation, "No, I'm actually having a moment here. I'm moving to Rome!,". When we got back to Orvieto, I called Vega who was a friend of a good friend of mine and was living in Rome. I was planning on seeing her after I finished the residency, but I had to share my revelation with her. She was so encouraging, telling me that there were plenty of opportunities to teach English there and that if I wanted to learn Italian, there were many language schools. I was excited and then, of course, I questioned myself. What was I thinking? I didn't know any Italian. I didn't have any money. I barely had enough money to support my travels. I didn't know anyone. Well, I kinda sorta knew Vega, but not very well and surely, not well enough for her to be my only contact in a foreign city. Right?

Rome began her lesson to me in letting go. From that first moment on the top of the Spanish steps to the next time I went there and Vega picked me up from the train station, I would get strong instincts about things, follow them, and find myself in the "right situation". I very quickly found other actors, directors, screenwriters, agents, & casting directors. My sister's car ended up breaking down in L.A., so she bought mine in CA and I had money to actually get me started. I took a teeny tiny studio on the Tiber River right near Piazza del Popolo and the Spanish Steps and I was often on that floor, giddily thanking the universe/God/whatever angels there must have been, I thought, to be supporting me through every step of this incredible adventure. Sure, there were lots of ups and downs, triumphs and dissapointments, but my time in Rome felt incredibly unplanned, yet scripted. Everything always seemed to work out, even in ways I would have never imagined. And, as much as I fought with it, I was no longer a planner. Rome had taught me time and time again that when I tried to plan something, it was often the "mistake" (i.e. taking the wrong train), the unplanned event that led me where I needed to go.

Many stories and adventures later, I end up meeting Mimmo, end up getting married (that wasn't "supposed to happen"), end up getting pregnant, and we end up coming to California to birth Salvatore. When we got to CA, we did prepare as much as possible with me taking a small business course to learn about opening a small business here if we decided to stay. We took childbirth prep classes, did the hospital tour, read books, and began preparing for Salvatore's coming. We got an apartment, started to nest, and then, yes, the most unplanned event now of my life occured. Only this time, this "mistake" seems to have no rhyme or reason. Everything doesn't work out. All that I've learned so far in my life from experience, seems to have gone out the door. I survived many difficult things in my childhood and perhaps this had made me stronger, but I never thought that I would have to face trials larger than those I faced and conquered from my early years. Nothing, and I mean, NOTHING can prepare you for this and everything feels like it is out of whack and anything I may have believed in is either questioned or shot down. It feels like standing on a battlefield after all the damage had been done and I am left alive, but everything has been destroyed. And, my whole life before seems like a different person, seems like a film, seems like lifetimes ago and I want to understand and yet, I don't know that I ever will.

I guess that's why I need to write. I need to remember who I was. I need to remember who Salvatore was. I need to ask these questions even though I may never receive the answers. I need to try in my own way to make sense of things, even as they feel so senseless. I want to write a new story. I want this story to have many unplanned events, but I want these events to have a happy ending. I know that that may seem delusional after all that has happened, but I don't expect "and they lived happily ever after". I just expect that they don't end in irreperable tragedy. I'm still stuck on this planet it seems, and even though there have been many moments that I don't want to be, I am still here all the same and I need to find a way to make it ok to still be living. The stakes are too high for life not to get better, to have meaning, and to have purpose.

The Kindness of Strangers

My mind has been full of all the "what ifs", lately...

And, when it returns to all the "what hads"...what had happened...all the players...I remember that there were some incredible nurses with Salvatore in the NICU who also held our hands.

Lizzy.

Lizzy seemed young and intense upon first connection. The first time I met her was when they had taken Salvatore off the cooling cap and I was going to be able to hold him for the first time. She was there when I moved my finger and showed her how he was hanging on to it with all his little fingers wrapped around my one..."He was saving that one for you," she said. "I don't understand how he can do this while they're telling me there's no brain activity?," I asked. "You know, there's something called science," she said "and there's something larger than science that we will never understand.,"

I had asked J to get a book to have people write messages to Salvatore when he was in the NICU. When it got returned to me, I saw that many people had written messages to all 3 of us. I came across Lizzy's message. It was written at 4am.

"Just returned to help care for & be privileged in sharing your wonderous little Salvatore. Upon returning I see a phone being held to his precious ear and know without doubt that his soul is connected to his mother & father, with mommy being so strong & loving and daddy, so compassionate and enduring with courage. Within the small amount of time I have been blessed to know you, I feel that you, Mimmo, & you, Lisa, balance and complete each other. Baby Salvatore has an old, wise, & grand soul far beyond our comprehension. He is such a gift filled with sharing and love. He has already, within a few days, taught both of you strength and love more than you've probably ever known. I wish I could take away the pain and hurt you feel. I know in my heart that both of you love Salvatore & are the best parents he could have & will continue to do things with his best interest in your hearts and minds. It is so evident he is loved, wanted, & appreciated. I feel very privileged to know you and Salvatore. Thank you for being so wonderful - BOTH OF YOU! ALL OF YOU! Love, your nurse Lizzy



Another nurse I only met once. I can't remember her name, but I will never forget her. She was on-call the day we were to have our family meeting with the Drs. The day that the Drs. told us that after doing the brain cooling cap therapy and doing the MRI and EKG, that nothing had changed. Mimmo and I came back from the meeting and Salvatore was being serenaded on guitar by our friend, Alice. Alice sang him a beautiful song she had written. After she had left, I noticed that there was this new sound machine on Salvatore's bed. I asked the nurse what it was. She said that she went out on her break and bought it for him, because "I thought, he doesn't need to be hearing all these machines! Little did I know, he was going to get live music!".

Privacy

Some things have gone down and I need to keep writing and reaching out to you all and hearing your comments, but I realize that some of this stuff I need to go private with...

So, if you leave me your email in the comments (and I know you, either from "the club" or otherwise) I can send you a link to the new blog.

I will probably keep posting here as well...but, the post I needed to write today is not going here...

*Salvatore*, la nostra stella*

Se esprimi un desiderio è perché vedi cadere una stella, se vedi cadere una stella e perché stai guardando il cielo
e se guardi il cielo è perché credi ancora in qualcosa. - Bob Marley

If you make a wish, it's because you see a falling star
If you see a falling star it's because you're watching the sky
And if you're watching the sky
it's because you still believe in something. - Bob Marley

Salvatore's first book was not, infact, the Dolphin Book. While we were still living in Italy, and I was about 5 months pregnant, I found a sweet, small book in a museum store called "Stelle". It was a book written by a Neapolitan artist that described the stars to children. I tucked it inside our luggage and one day, at 7 months, while still staying at my mother's house in Berkeley, it popped out. I had never shown it to Mimmo before that night "You must read the Stars book to Salvatore tonight. He needs to hear his papa read him a bedtime story in italiano,".

Mimmo read to him for the first time. Hearing his deep gentle voice and his asides to Salvatore as he read on "Oh, Salvatore, if you could only see this star right now...How beautiful!," and "Did you know this? Papa didn't know this. This book is very interesting, Salvatore,". That very special night, I got the pleasure of witnessing Mimmo become a papa.

Fast forward to a couple of months later. We are in the NICU at Children's Hospital and Mimmo is reading "Stelle" to Salvatore once more. This time we are all, in fact, it seems in outerspace. Salvatore is hooked up to all these machines, "my rocket boy" as I called him. And, as we read to him, we'd already heard the devastating news from our family meeting. There is no brain activity. And, that will never change. He's breathing only because of the machines. And, even though he could wrap his fingers around my finger, it's just "brain stem function" the Drs., the nurses, & my family tell me. Mimmo and I say that we need time to be with our son. This is our time.

Mimmo gets to the part about the Mayans in the book:

I Maya

Nell'America centrale,
circa mille anni fa,
un antico popolo contemplava il cielo da citta
consruite come veri e propri osservatori astronomici.
I Maya credevano che dopo la morte
tutti sarebbero rinati sotto forma
di stelle!

The Mayans

In Central America,
around 1000 years ago,
an ancient people contemplated the sky from
their city where they'd built real astronomical observatories.
The Mayans believed that after death
everyone would be reborn in the form
of a star!

"And, that's what papa hopes that you will be, Salvatore. A star. Shining brightly. That we can look to at night and you will guide us,"

The next day (or the day after or the day after that...it's all such a blur), Mimmo & I woke up to plan our son's release from the machines. We wanted him to be outdoors, not in that stuffy hospital room anymore. We wanted to say a few words, but we didn't want a priest there. We wanted Alice to play her guitar and sing the beautiful song that she sang to Salvatore when she visited him at the NICU. We wanted Vega to read the part in the Stelle book in Italiano and Leila to read the translation in English. Jen had left her "Life Prayers" book and earmarked a few passages for us. I was so turned off by "God" or religion at this point, but I read one of the dog-eared passages and it seemed something that Salvatore could have said himself:

When I die if you need to weep
Cry for your brother or sister
Walking the street beside you
And when you need me put your arms around anyone
And give them what you need to give me.

I want to leave you something
Something better than words or sounds.

Look for me in the people I've known or loved
And if you cannot give me away
At least let me live in your eyes and not in your mind.

You can love me most by letting hands touch hands
By letting bodies touch bodies
And by letting go of children that need to be free.

Love doesn't die, people do
So when all that's left of me is love
Give me away

-Anonymous

We were planning our son's death. We were planning his release. We were planning a ceremony as we felt it was a rite needed to be marked in the most special and gentle of ways. There was only one quote that seemed to be missing...

When we went to the island of Procida one time, I had picked up a sugar packet from the bar near the port. When I turned it over, there was this quote by Bob Marley. I read it to Mimmo and we both loved it. I had tucked it away in my wallet all this time. A few days before Salvatore was born, my wallet was stolen. Mimmo and I tried with all our might to remember, piece together the quote. "Let's call the bar on Procida," Antonio, Mimmo's brother suggested. So, there we were, calling Italy to try to find a quote by Bob Marley (in Italian!) on a sugar packet to read to our son as we took him off of life support. The bar was closed for the season.

Then, like a lightbulb going off in my head, I was like DUH, the internet. We found the quote. It's strange because with all the googling I did in its many different forms, I could never find this quote in English. I don't know if it's from a song, I don't know if it's something he said in an interview, but it became the last words that we said to Salvatore before we let him go...

Because, besides the fact that he will always be our star, we still (even through all of this) want so much to believe in something.