Integrating

I had this thought yesterday as I walked in Golden Gate Park to Ocean Beach.
I'm not sure if I can get it down clearly, because it's not entirely clear to me yet,
But I'll try.

I was thinking about Dahlia, about being her mother for almost five years.
I was thinking about her first five months of life when we were living, also, in San Francisco,
On the other side of Golden Gate Park, but also close to the park and the beach.
I was thinking how much life has changed me since then,
Two pregnancies later, still a mother to one child.
Thinking how different I was then, when I actually was able to be
Just a regular mama with a brand new baby in a sling or a stroller.
Unquestioning, busy simply learning the task of parenting a living healthy child.

How do you parent a child who has died?

And I asked myself if perhaps some of my frustration and challenge with Dahlia right now
Has to do with the contrast she reminds me of:
Me before loss and me after.
I wondered if perhaps I am having a hard time integrating my big healthy living daughter
Into my present reality as the mother of a baby who was very sick and died much too soon.
How do they go together?

I wonder if Dahlia, too, is trying to understand where she fits in this new form of family we are now.
After all, she too is forever changed.

Sweet Dahlia, sweet fragile resilient unsure fierce girl.
Insightful, keen, scared, angry, vulnerable and volatile,
Bright, funny, witty, facetious, perceptive, confused.
So many of her own emotions to release,
Such abundance of emotions,
BIG emotions.

It was a gorgeous day in the park
And it smelled good.
I had just made a clay pot chicken for Mary Kay
(Such joy to make food for others...)
And felt ready to move my legs and breathe the eucalyptus freshness.
I asked Tikva if maybe she was around to show me something,
Or maybe if the Universe had something for me to see, to feel.

And this: A rabbit.
I have never seen a rabbit in Golden Gate Park before, and neither has Dave.
Not a wild hare kind of rabbit that you sometimes see at the side of the road in Marin,
But a round chubby fluffy brownish rabbit with cute sort of rounded ears
Bouncing across my path and stopping just near me to eat some flowers
For a long time before hopping away into the trees,
White tush and tail against his brown body.

I could feel two spirits in the rabbit...
Tikva's spirit with the spirit of her future sibling,
Playing together, playing with me.
The rabbit stayed for a long time,
Not minding my presence at all.

And this: A tiny green caterpillar
Hanging from an invisible silk thread from the branch of a tree.
I just watched him for a while,
It looked like he had fallen from the branch and was trying to climb back up
So I took hold of the thread and put him down on a bush off the path.

Rabbit and caterpillar...
Prolific fertility and miraculous transformation.
I'll take that.

It's weird also to integrate thoughts of another child with thoughts of the child I've lost.
I don't feel guilty about thinking of another child.
I really, actually, feel like Tikva is very much in support of another one joining us
Before too much time passes.
I don't think I've been through all I've been through,
Don't think Tikva lived such a huge and short life
So that I could spend the rest of my life mourning her loss and being miserable.
I know she knows the abundance of love that oozes from our hearts in this family,
Ready to fill a brand new heart with love.
I feel like she very much has something to do with the seed that has been planted in my soul
That makes me open to the idea of inviting another child into my arms.

Still, it's strange
To be grieving Tikva's loss
At the same time as
Imagining our next child's existence.
There are no instructions about how to navigate that integration.

I'm not terrified about getting pregnant again.
I'm not scared - at least right now I can say that - that things could go terribly wrong.
Even though we are in complete agreement about the prenatal testing we will definitely do,
Dave also feels confident that it will go smoothly and that we will bring home a healthy living child with ease.

Still, it's a lot to integrate...
Past experience with confidence,
Sorrow with trust,
Confusion with optimism.

Right now this is the best way I know to be:
In a place of surrender and trust in something much bigger than me.
Something I can only barely understand, something I don't need to fully understand.
Something I can surrender to as much as I need to, as much as I can.
Surrender to the understanding that I'm not in charge,
That I was never in charge,
(Even if I thought I could be)
And that our family's unfolding will continue to write itself
Exactly as it is mean to unfold,
No matter how I choose to participate -
With hope or with fear.

With some trepidation, right now I'm choosing hope.