Woah, Nelly!

Those of you who were born before, say, 1980 might remember the computer game, Little Brick Out. You'd navigate either with a miniature joystick or the arrows on your keyboard, moving a little paddle up and down in order to hit a "ball" (actually just a square on the screen) against a wall (a solid row of squares). The goal was to break through bricks in each layer of wall until you'd cleared them all. This image doesn't really do it justice, because the version I played was DOS-based (which means pre-Windows) with greenish white bricks, paddle and walls against a black screen. I was really good at Little Brick Out, and I wasted hours of pre-adolescent time perfecting my skills. I think I even kept track of my scores on a piece of paper taped to the monitor of my first-generation Apple 2E.

I'm feeling a bit like the ball in Little Brick Out right now. Flying all over the board, trying to hit a target. Sometimes doing so, other times bouncing back to my paddle to try again, sometimes missing the paddle entirely and using up one of my three tries. Undaunted, because I can always hit the Play Again button, start over, and give it another try. But feeling kind of all over the place nonetheless. And I never found a version of the game where the little ball gets to take a break and head to Hawaii for a few weeks.

For the last four weeks or so, I've been waiting to make a big announcement about having gotten the perfect job for me. A job at the local children's hospital working on behalf of babies like Tikva and parents like me. It would be incredibly meaningful, and it felt amazingly right each of the five times I went there for interviews. I felt Tikva so close as I walked the halls and smelled familiar smells. A few times I even got tears of inspiration in my eyes. It was looking very likely that I had the job, and I actually let myself get excited, trusting how right it felt, how meant to be. It felt amazing sharing not only my professional skills but my personal story in each interview, connecting with doctors there on shared experience. And then they decided to completely change the job description, and overnight I was out of the running.

Woah, Nelly! Time to stop, reevaluate, and figure out where to go now.

I wasn't delusional. This job was really happening. The change in plans had nothing to do with me, and just happened last week, after weeks of conversations. Weeks during which I put my job search process mostly on hold, trusting that this thing that felt incredibly right would unfold perfectly.

Perhaps it still has? Perhaps there is a reason for this, and the job would have turned out to be the wrong one in the end? Perhaps 6 months from now, sitting at my desk reading research about one of the thousands of causes of prenatal or neonatal death, I would have burst into tears and realized that this work just hit too close to home? I don't know.

Still, I chose to have a peaceful weekend. I chose to enjoy my time with my family and work in my garden. I chose to put aside all thoughts about my next brilliant plan until Monday morning. And at 8:22 AM today, I was on the phone looking into nursing programs. And after yoga class, I went to one of the local community colleges and filled out my enrollment application so that I have the option of starting some classes there in January.

And this is where I start to feel like the ball in Little Brick Out. Bouncing around amid too many options for nursing programs, none of them clearly turning out to be the easiest and and most obvious choice. Then asking myself how on earth I can even think about going to school full-time when Dave is already the full-time student in the family. Then unsure whether to go for the RN, which requires an Associates degree (and no GRE), or get a bachelor's or master's degree, which doesn't necessarily take more time. Then pausing entirely and asking myself, Do I really want to be a nurse? Can I do this? Go back to school after 16 years? Do I really want to?

Right about then, the little brick is ready to jump from the screen and hit the beach. (Have I mentioned that Ohio is completely landlocked and I haven't seen a seagull in over 3 months? There is just something wrong with a place devoid of seagulls.)

Here is another place the little brick in my brain likes to bounce around, not too productively: That I wish I had gotten a more useful college education like, say, a degree in nursing, which would put me in my 16th year of nursing right about now. Or that I should have made a change of careers about 8 years ago, when I first started feeling the need to get out of the kind of work I do... or even 5 years ago, when I really started feeling less than inspired. Wish I had known what the heck I wanted to do instead back then... Dave is quick to remind me that I actually tried making that change, exploring things like homeopathy, holistic health, midwifery. Shoulda woulda coulda... A totally useless place to be, so I hit Game Over and start a new round.

Interestingly, I didn't completely collapse this weekend after getting the call from HR about the job not working out at the hospital. Yes, I did feel disappointed, and I did cry in Dave's arms, and I did express frustration that the whole thing could have been handled better by them. And I did feel despair at the idea of starting my job search again, of still searching for a job 3 months into the process. And I did feel exasperated that I have to even find a job working at a desk at a computer, when what I really want to be doing is taking patients' vitals, being present at their bedsides, and giving them compassionate care. And I did feel moments of complete - but thankfully short-lived - panic about how long it will take me to get a job and how much of our savings will get eaten through in the process of my search. I did say to Dave with frustration, What am I supposed to be learning from this? But I didn't spiral downward, didn't completely lose hope and inspiration. I may be reconsidering things, but I still trust that I am on the right track, even if the track looks different than I expected.

It's a new experience to just know that I am in the right place, even if I have no idea what things look like even a mile in any direction. Even if another email pops into my inbox just now telling me that I didn't get a job for which I was completely overqualified, I know that there is something much bigger at play in my life right now. It feels very unconditional, this notion that I am not going to wait until X, Y and Z have happened in order to trust life, in order to believe it is good, in order to feel good here. I may not have the deep-and-profound-thing that will give my life here in Cincinnati the kind of purpose rabbinical school gives to Dave, but I am starting to get that it may not be about meaning and purpose, at least that happiness does not have to be attached to that. Sometimes just making a garden beautiful is meaningful enough.

I felt like emotional crap on Friday, stunned and frozen by the unexpected. I decided I would not spend the weekend at my computer researching nursing programs and job options. Instead, I would focus on what matters most - the sweet giggles of Dahlia getting out of her seat 16 times during dinner so that she could tickle her Daddy. The two of them hunched over the box of cookies and cream while I tried not to overconsume the box of New York Super Fudge Chunk I was hoarding. I looked at them and at the abundance of our beautiful Shabbat dinner and said to them, Everything that really matters is right here.

And I looked at the photo of Tikva in our dining room and thought, That includes you, Tiny Love.

***

I've been feeling Tikva so close lately, like she is communicating to me each time I turn a corner in my brick game. I've been crying a lot, too, big releasing cries that feel like new layers of the experience of losing my child. In a split second, I can be right back in the ICN with her, on one of the final days of her life, almost able to smell and feel her in the soft folds of her neck, just between her pointy chin and tiny ears. I am back in the courtyard where she died in our arms. I am walking in Golden Gate Park by myself sometime last fall, looking for signs and wondering what I am supposed to do next - with my mother's heart, with my life. I am at yoga class down the hill from UCSF, haunted by the pull of that place where our story unfolded.

She's there in all the memories, and she's here in the ladybugs, the earthworms, the lavender, the one rose blooming on the challenged rose bush I inherited to care for in our backyard - that incredibly bright dark pink color that, with golden orange, always makes me think of my Baby Girl. She's there in the little gold 18-month dress hanging on display in the store at the mall, and I can see how beautiful she would have looked in it. She's there in the baby who smiles from her mother's shopping cart at Trader Joe's. (I swear babies must feel it in me, this longing, because they stare at me as though I am Elmo.)

***

One of my favorite things in the world is the way in which patterns repeat themselves throughout nature, and how that nature includes our own bodies. The leaves have mostly fallen from the trees here, and I find myself staring at the bare trees, noticing how their ever-branching limbs resemble the blood vessels in our bodies. I love that. I love spirals, and the way they are also everywhere - in seashells and the new leaves on a fern unfolding from their stems. I love how the cracks that appear daily on my hands make me think of the cracks in a dry desert. If find all of that incredibly soothing, a reminder that there is some rhythm, some synchronicity to what can feel so random and arbitrary.

If I am like a tree or a desert, then I must be a part of something bigger, and I must be held.