the potential

Spring teaches us lessons. Lessons in watchfulness. Lessons in living now. Lessons in the fast fading of beautiful moments. Lessons in rebirth. Lessons in possibility. Lessons in the powerful potential for new life.

The potential.

It is hard for me to write about this. It is harder for me to think on it. I am trying to stay in the moment. I am striving for hope where I was not hopeful.

On Thursday, K felt a gush between her legs while she was at work. It was blood. It happened around 3:30.

I had been in Lansing all morning for a House hearing with AFSC's new staff (it was his very first day of work). The hearing had gone well. The day was hot, too hot for the season in Michigan. P, the new staff, and I drove back. I got home around 2:30ish. Grabbed food, grabbed my bicycle and put it on the car and drove down to the park and rode into work. I planned to park the car at the park so k and I could ride back to it around 9:00pm from a panel I was supposed to speak on in Ann Arbor.

I was sweaty when I got to work. Dripping cause it was 82 degrees on april 15 in Michigan. I planned to train P for about an hour and a half and then go to the event I was going to be speaking at when the phone rang and K said I'm having a miscarriage.

And then my heart sank. But it did not sink too much cause I had built foam and other soft substances around it. I know that a large percentage of pregnancies end in miscarriage. I know that this struggle we have been going through is bigger than I am able to wrap my head around and I know it is a struggle. I do not take it as anything else.

Kk had called the repro clinic and they scheduled an ultra sound pronto for 9:00 am friday.

Back at my office where I had been standing dripping with sweat with a partially sinking heart, P instantly dropped everything and took me in his car over to K at her work. Where her boss and colleague had been there for her, supporting her, loving her amidst her tears.

We scooped K up and P took us to our car down in the park.

I drove quickly to the post office to purchase stamps I needed for work the next day, and then I took K home. Our dear friend R brought K a chocolate chip blizzard and some maxi pads. And then, our dear friend and no longer roommate but now neighbor, A, came to walk the pook with me. Later that night she also brought us yummy dahl for dinner.

We walked through an alley I had never discovered before in Ypsi. It is old and dirt and gravel and it feels right beneath human feet. It feels as though it has been tread on for 150 years. We stopped at P's to hand off the stamps I had purchased for the mailing that I would or would not be at work for the next day depending on what happened with K's ultra sound.

I stayed at P's place and A walked pook back home. I drank a cold beer with him in his new apartment, talked, and listened to dylan. He had moved in the day before. We found it together on Monday after a day of apartment hunting. It is a great pad. A good sized efficiency in a very old house with ultra high ceilings and access to two great porches.

It was calming to be sitting there and tuning out a little. But then I knew I had to get back to KK.

I walked home with a small buzz that comes from drinking a cold beer in hot weather as though it were a glass of water. I kicked dirt in the alley. I took in the magnificent green that beats through even the milkiest dusk. Because the green that accompanies the rousing of sleeping vegetation in spring, is different--more vivid, more elaborate than any other green. It glows with the pulse of life. it busts open with that which wants nothing more than to be alive.

When I got back to our house, our good friend G was there with K. She just happened to be in from florida to be with her ailing papa in windsor and was able to slip over the border to visit us and some other ypsi friends. It was perfect timing. Then our good friend N came over and we sat around catching up and three of us drank beers.

They left.

We went to bed.

In the morning, we drank coffee and drove on over to the repro clinic.

Some mother of some straight girl waiting in the waiting room gave us not too kind looks too many times as we sat there. So, I held K's hand tighter as we waited. I held her hand and rubbed her neck and displayed vigorous affection.

We waited and waited.

Then we were taken back to an exam room.

The boy doctor finally came in. Remember, my hope was not high. It was cushioned safely in the cottony confines of my chest.

He wanded K and then instantly said there it is with a strong beating heart. And, then my sweaty hand squeezed K's hand so tight and ghostly little fingers with a mind of their own seemed to rip out the foam and cotton and soft stuff that had been surrounding my own heart, and it became all bare and vulnerable and open.

That is what hope is like. It leaves you open for let down and pure disappointment. So, the 6 week 4 day old fetus has a strong heart beat. We heard it. We saw it. It was alive. Yesterday, it was alive. The blood indicates a threatened miscarriage.
So, k's taking it easy. They tell us the blood could have been from anything. There is still some blood. We can do nothing but wait.

Now, I have this raw heart. This open heart. This heart that saw the beating heart of a little seed.

It is spring. There are many lessons in all the potential bounty. There are reminders of the cycles of life all around us. There are the trees coming back to life and the compost breaking down what once was alive into stuff that will be full of goodness and the potential for even more newness. There are two of us waiting intently for a heartbeat to stay strong. We are counting on spring.

I am learning about hope.

prayers working...for realz...

to those of you who know us in person, please do not take offense to the fact that you may have not heard this directly from us first. this is blog world and a large part of the reason i ever started this blog was to blabber incessantly about this trying to get pregnant that has consumed portions of our lives for the last three years.

i've laid off on the posting about trying, cause it was all starting to drive me a bit mad. i was getting brittle.

and brutal to my own heart. putting effort into something without any results, well, it can get old and tiresome after a bit.

Anyhow, k has been taking femara the last two cycles. it is an estrogen blocker and it makes her eggs develop in a more identifiable way or some shit like that. so the first month did not work.

it just made k strange and emotional.

this month she went in for the ultra sound to detect eggs on day 10 of her cycle instead of day 14. she was almost ready, so then on day 12 she went back and there were some eggs about ready to fall. so she had the trigger shot and we opted out of an iui this month and did a home injection the next evening.

anyhow, then last thursday she peed on a stick and it said, not pregnant. and we were like we knew it...

...it just is not ever gonna happen. the doctor at the clinic acted like it was a for sure thing because of the super positive response to the femara. and we were like ha, she does not know this journey we've been on.

Anyhow, on tuesday k was spotting; on wednesday she called the repro clinic to ask if she should start the femara when she started full on flowing at day three or when she count day three from the spotting day. and then k was like maybe i should check a pregnancy test again just in case and the nurse was like ya do so.

so, k did. and it said pregnant and we were both like no fu.cking way.
we were in total disbelief. then the repro clinic said go for a blood draw, so she did and later that afternoon it said she was pregnant, too.

And so my kk is pregnant. for the very first time in her life, she is pregnant.

I am keeping hope in check cause we know the whole fiasco with me and my pregnancy. she is ultra early on. and she could easily miscarry, so hope is in my back pocket. it gets sat on daily and ground into my ass. simultaneously, i am trying to stay optimistic and send the little spot that is growing inside her lots of good energy.

cause really i am not sure i can go through the whole losing it again thing...argh.
pins and needles, pins and needles, pins and needles for another 8 weeks.

argh.

and good.

last month when the femara did not work, I prayed so hard for my kk to get pregnant. I prayed to that which i do not know, i prayed to that which i think i know, i prayed to the tops of the branches of trees and the sun in the cool spring air; i prayed with cawing of the crows and the soft rush of river water. i prayed that she, my love--my sweet beloved--could have this one thing she wanted so deeply.

and maybe this prayer was heard in the rambling of the rest of our days. maybe it was heard on the tight teeny molecular structure of wind and rain. maybe just maybe, we will be parents 9 months from now.

praying for stickage and all good things.

a weekend of bones and beer and books

Today, a rainy afternoon.

Last night too much beer.
Little sleep.
Too much beer in my blood makes my natural insomnia deeper. Heavy haze in my eyes and face but still no falling into those dark places where things right or wrong themselves more easily.

Last afternoon, i started dare, truth, or promise (a young adult le.sbian novel).Before falling asleep, finished it.

in the middle of the night woke hot and flustered from the previously mentioned too much beer, started the novel Patience and Sarah.
Finished it in the steel gray of coming morning.

Finally slept.

Drank coffee.
lazed around.

devoured the soft skin of the love of my life.
held her close in our new bed. Yes, she built me a bed yesterday. And now we are like real adults--no more mattress on the floor.

We loved for hours this lazy, chilled, early spring afternoon.

I found her softness incredible.
The beating of her heart wishing me to never stray from the bone scaffold of her.
It is like that. this love. it is like rushing and slowing and falling over and over again. it is like never knowing and knowing everything.

we try too hard to make too many decisions. we try too hard to think about the future and what she holds for us. all the jumbled mess of desiring or not desiring children. all the complications that fall heavy like lead bullets scraping past our earlobes and leaving drips of nothing on the tiny lines of cartilage that amplify the sounds we want to hear: the voice of direction; the clarity of a prophet; the knowing that we will be alright no matter what.

Leaving that behind in the sweet and sharp bite of beer and novels about "forbidden" love and women forging ahead amidst the struggle of pure adversity and no clear path, well that is what this weekend held. Better than any other; not so different than all the rest.

And in the end our bodies found comfort today--bone to bone, hip to hip, breast to breast.

we will go on along. each day we will build our bed and love stronger and tighter. we will weave our hands together until the traces of each of our fingertips are left always on the fingerprints of her and of me. it is no more spiritual than this; it is no more fantastical or real than everyday breathing in the dusty air of our house and then the crisp air of outside, once we depart to the world around us.

it is this loving of her that makes sense; it is more than religion; it is everything.

another quickie in photographs

Here are some more pictures from our unwedding. We had a sweet, young man do these photos. You can view more of them and a little video at http://matthew.pro/Other/KristenNatalie/11398069_mfUZk#801142002_nb9z8

a strange and lovely barber shop experience

today, i went to a real barber at a barber shop for the first time. All my adult life I've had my sister cut my hair or have sheered it myself or with the help of friends. But today, well today was damn different.

my strange hawk-mullet had begun to feel cumbersome and tangled.

we were out scoring some chicken feed and pine shavings at the feed store in chelsea (a small town in michigan and the home of all things jiffy-that's the blue boxed instant/add and egg or some milk products) and then we happened upon a barber shop that was open and we went on in.

k happened to know one of the men--the one who ended up cutting my hair--from high school. His uncle owns the place, and we got to take advantage of the family business they had going on.

I cannot express how much i enjoyed the crass, political and down-to-earth conversation we all had--that's me, k, the old classmate of k's, and the old classmate's uncle. Cuss words carried from our lips; we were totally out and even congratulated about our recent unnuptials; I was encouraged by the uncle that I would look just splendid with all of my curly locks trimmed down to a nice side-swiped do; and we tlked long and hard about mi craft beers. Most interesting of all, we got into an in-depth conversation about the problem of prison growth in Michigan and the problems that happen inside. the uncle was outright outraged that we cage human beings up in prison and even pointed out very articulately how only a small, small number of people really need to be kept away from the rest of society and how the remainder of the people are often folks on the fringe who live in the gray area and are marginalized and demonized and then locked away cause of the fringe place they inhabit either by force or by choice.

I gave him my work email and told him to drop me a line so we could talk about it all some more. It felt good to walk into a place that is mostly frequented by all kinds of men, from all walks of life and instead of having a conversation that is surfacey or totally on the brink of inappropriate, we talked about real social problems and human rights issues and i met a stranger--a person from the public--a tax-payer--who believes something is deeply, deeply wrong with the criminal justice system and we need to do something now to stop more people from going to prison.

Now my hair is bristly short and it feels light and amazing and my heart feels a little fuller today, because every once in while you stumble upon good hearted people who let it all hang out.

a quickie

life is so full--a balloon with lovely, dense, and weightier than weightless air filling it up. almost to bursting. almost too much.

we got unmarried, not in the pray eat drink (or whatever it is called) oprah ordained book of the month club way. we had an unwedding ceremony as in the 364 days of us loving and needing and supporting and caring and longing and then singling out one of those many unwedding days (the 365th) and having a party day.

We made up a beautiful ritual and we stood in the cold for a long time and people who love both of us stood there in the cold with us and recognized our love and cried with us and sang with us and got all mooshy good feelinged with us.

It was altogether stunning.

it was a testament to love and to loving people through differences and finding connection and support at the end of the struggle. it was all about the legacy of healing that can bubble up from the residue of hurt (i say this about family of origin struggle and tension that has come a long way to real acceptance--no tolerance here buddies--real acceptance saturated our surroundings the day of our unwedding).

the simple death of raggedty ass

The unwedding keeps getting planned.
I keep being swamped at work.
my mind is so full that I am almost paralyzed. I can't think too straight. Of course, I never really think straight, but you know what I mean...

This week marked our bloody, but not too bloody, baptism into urban farming. We slaughtered raggedty ass on Monday night. I called her raggedty (with a t for the teeee)

A, K and me are a great team.

We set up a log with a relatively flat surface in the back yard. K pulled my hatchet out from our camping supplies. We turned on the mag light, pulled on some warm clothes poured shots of buillet, took sips off those shots, and headed out to the coop.

It was around 8:30 in the evening so the ladies were getting ready for bed. A scooped up raggedty and brought her to the chopping log. She pinned her down with her hands and I grabbed her neck and then I swung.

One chop.
She fluttered.
Regripping of the wings and her neck.
Swing two.
Fluttering subsiding.
Chop three.
It is finished.

We placed her in the a bucket lined with a trash bag and she twitched and twitched some more.

K checked her to make sure she was no longer breathing, cause I could not have handled a prolonged death due to my poor chopping skills.

Raggedty was still.

A and K made it clear that I was not allowed to save her corpse for burial or burning. I've been saving our other dead chicken (Number 6. she fell over dead in early winter, but the ground was already frozen and I could not dig her a grave.) for burial. But, instead, I will soon burn her along with many pieces of paper containing private information of all of the candidates for the new hire at work.

So, poor raggedty ass went out in the trash...

Raggedty had been plenty ill--her ass had frozen chunks of shit and soft egg and dirt and snow hanging from it and her thirst was unquenchable. The rest of the flock ostracized her. She had to be killed and because we did not know what was ailing her we could not eat her...

We came in from the slaughter, and I lit sage and said a blessing for the dear chicken who may or may not have been giving us eggs. We finished the bourbon and went on with our business.

Any which way, she is dead now. I killed her with my own two hands and the help of A's. It went smoothly and I felt so much better knowing she was no longer suffering from enormous ice ass.