A Gorgeous Day

We were blessed by the most beautiful day on Saturday for the March for Babies.
We walked from Fort Mason all the way to Fort Point,
Which is just under the beginning of the Golden Gate Bridge.
We walked 6.25 miles - along the Marina Green and Crissie Field and back to Fort Point,
The sun on our faces and the wind at our backs and blue sky above us.
San Francisco really is so beautiful.
I saw a Red Tail Hawk flying over the eucalyptus trees of the Presidio in the near distance
And a flock of pelicans and many, many seagulls.


We were 22 people in Team Tikva - including one teenager, 5 kids and three double strollers - and Henry, the world's sweetest dog.


Dave, Dahlia and I wore our I'm with Tikva t-shirts.


My sweet and wonderful Dad walked the whole 6.25 miles
And so did my sister Sharon and Dave's brother Mark.

We ran into the team of nurses from the UCSF ICN and I hugged each one of them,
Thanked them for all they did for us and all they do for babies.
I told them I love them so much I want to be just like them one day...
And I will, in time.
It was sweet to see Jill, who had been Tikva's nurse for a few days when she'd been in the isolation room.
She and one of the other nurses were holding babies - a set of twins - and they seemed so at ease, of course.

Team Tikva raised over $6,000 for the March of Dimes... We surpassed our goal by almost $2,500!
Thank you - everyone - for supporting our team and this important cause that is very close to my heart.


It felt good to be surrounded by family and friends.
I felt both Tikva's absence and her presence while walking
And in the days since.
Thank you to everyone who joined us in body and in spirit for this beautiful day.

New Photos on Flickr

I just put up a bunch of new photos on Flickr - taken both by Dahlia and by me.
This one was taken by Dahlia, of the Bagel Faces she made herself and then devoured.
Check out the ones of Red Tail Hawk from a few weeks ago.

Mini Me

This is how I felt this morning -
And probably how I looked -
When I lost my patience with Dahlia
And let out a holler of frustration.
It felt good to scream AAAHHH!!! at the top of my lungs until I ran out of breath.
Why didn't anyone tell me sooner that I could do that?
Dahlia covered her ears and said, with a baffled look on her face, I can't hear you!
As soon as I'd finished screaming, I felt awful for having lost it with her right there.
I felt awful for having screamed instead of taking a deep breath and attempting to act calmer than my five year old.

I hate when I lose my patience with her.
I hate when I do exactly what she did just a few minutes before - yell at the top of her lungs out of frustration at me.
I know, I shouldn't feel bad for being human,
For being an emotional creature,
For having an emotional child who loves to test boundaries most
Every morning when it's time to go to school
And every evening before bed.
I know it's understandable that I lose my patience when we go through the same routine almost every day.
I know she's just being five,
And that she's a feisty one and I wouldn't want her to go through life being more passive.

I know that we are in so many ways exactly the same...

Emotional
Strong willed
Determined
Opinionated
Creative
Persistent
Argumentative
Kind
Caring
Loving
Aware of others
Smart
Clever
Fiery
Generous
Sympathetic
Compassionate
Forgiving

I know that we push each other's buttons because we are so much the same.
I know that there is so much love and respect and caring underneath it -
Otherwise we wouldn't care as much when things went funky.

I remember arguing a lot with my own mother.
Not all the time, but enough that I remember how it felt.
My dad remembers that my mom would perpetuate our arguments,
Rather than cut them short and tell me when enough was enough.
I would've made a good lawyer with all the practice I got.
I've definitely mastered the art of asking for and getting what I need and want in life.
I just don't want to have that kind of dynamic with my daughter.
I don't want a home where we yell at each other.
I don't like Yelling Gal... and I don't like being yelled at by my daughter.
And I really don't like the non-stop complaining she sometimes gets into where everything is wrong and nothing can be done to feel better.
(When I write that, I realize even more how like me she can be - especially me as a child.)

I told Dahlia this morning on the way to school that I was sorry for yelling.
I told her we should have more pillow fights to get the stress out.
She liked that idea.

Last night Dave told me he isn't going to worry about how things will turn out with his school and the uncertain economic climate.
Then he said, When have things not worked out for our family?
I replied, When our baby died.
I wasn't being sarcastic.

It's hard to trust life after losing Tikva... just hard.
I went to Haight-Ashbury today in search of engraved stones.
I am looking for one that says HOPE and one that says LOVE and one that says BELIEVE.
HOPE and LOVE are to place in the garden at UCSF where Tikva died.
BELIEVE is for me to hold, to place on my altar,
To help me remember that I can trust and have faith that things will - that they can - work out beautifully.






This is me with my parents at Dahlia's age...
(My dad's t-shirt says, Love: It makes the world go round.)

The March for Babies is this Saturday

Dear Friends,

GO TEAM TIKVA!

The March of Dimes March for Babies is this Saturday, April 25, in San Francisco's Fort Mason. I am really excited to walk with our wonderful team on what promises to be a sunny and inspiring day. If you would still like to sponsor me in this walk, please go here to contribute. And if you would like to walk with us, please let me know. You can sign up at the same link.

Thank you to all who have supported Team Tikva for your generosity. I promise to write about the experience.

With love,

Gal

Craving Calm

My thoughts are bouncing all over the place.
I can't settle on one and work through it completely without bouncing to the next thing.
Or I don't want to go there thoroughly with one thing because the thought makes me tired
So I move on to the next.
I ask myself if there is anything I really want to share with the world
Or if I am better off just keeping it all to myself.
But it's not feeling good all bottled up inside me
So maybe if I start writing it will all come out
And some of it will start to make sense.

Yesterday my grandmother died.
Since her anurism and fall almost 7 years ago I think I have been preparing for her passing,
Feeling the loss of her a little more with each year she continued to live,
Never quite the same person externally that I had known before.
Now that she's passed, it's as if she has already been gone a long time
Because already I lost a part of her - the part I knew so deeply - years ago.

Today another sweet baby with CDH came home just a month after he was born,
Needing only a feeding tube and no breathing support.
I am filled with joy for them
And so triggered still by
Why not Tikva?
Of course I am happy for him and his family.
Of course it hurts.

A few days ago I found out that our future is unclear... again.
Changes afoot at Dave's rabbinical school because of the financial crisis that is enveloping our country (and beyond)
And clarity isn't going to come for a few months,
And it may mean... who knows?
It's making planning challenging
Again.
Damn plans...
Every time I slip into a sense of believing I can plan just a little,
Every time I start to get organized around a new idea of movement in a new direction,
BAM! Not too fast, Gal. Don't think you're going to get away with stability that easily.
Damn plans.

Don't they know how much I need a few years off from complication?
Hasn't anyone heard my call for calm?
Have I not put out the desire for a peaceful life on a Hawaiian island clearly enough?
You know, living most of my days barefoot with my feet in the sand,
Like for the rest of my life?

Even though I've lived most of my 37+ years of life with instability,
Instability scares the crap out of me.
It makes me uneasy, unsettled.
It makes me feel tired, like, Oh no, not again. Please not again.

I'm just past the part of my life where I want excitement.
I did that.
I traveled Europe and Israel for 7 months by myself at age 23.
I went to Burning Man four years in a row.
I stayed up all night dancing at raves.
I left my stable job at age 28 unsure what I would do next and started a consulting business that I had for 9 years.
I traveled throughout Turkey for a month when I was pregnant with Dahlia.
I took my 6 month old daughter to the Rainbow Gathering in the middle of the wilderness.
I did all that. I'm done with excitement.
Now I just want some calm.

Calm and steady and sure and predictable and simple and easy.
Throw in a little boring while you're at it.
How much clearer need I be?

And yet I am still so much calmer through it all than I have been in the past.
I still approach it for the most part with grace.
I know that I am still strong and that I will get through it intact,
That none of it is bigger than the experience of losing Tikva.
That I can handle it all.
I know all that, but it still makes me tired.

In my next life, I am going to be a cat,
A very spoiled domesticated cat in a household with no children and no other pets.
I will be the princess, spoiled and pampered and adored.
And all I will do all day is lie in the sun and nap.
That's all.
I will need about 17 years of a really easy life after this lifetime's hard work.
Then I can take on another big growing lifetime.
After one lifetime off.

For now, I dream of quiet except the sound of lapping waves
And a warm breeze across my body
As I doze on a hammock
Between two palm trees...
That'll be my happy place tonight when I turn off the light.

A Most Magnificent Rose

Let me tell you about my grandmother, Rosy.
Let me tell you about her face... like a movie star.
Let me tell you that when I was a child, to me she was the most beautiful woman in the world.
Let me tell you how she loved her son, my father.
Let me tell you about the times they spent at Roushdi beach in Alexandria.


Let me tell you about the company she kept.
Let me tell you about her lovely mother, Clementine,
Such a lady.
Let me tell you about her son's mother-in-law, Aloisia,
My other grandmother -
The way they so deeply respected and cherished each other -
And Aloisia's friend Estelle,
Together to celebrate my parents' wedding.
Let me tell you that this is one of my favorite photos in the world.


Let me tell you about the foods she would prepare
With the North African spices.
Let me tell you how she would come from Italy to see us
And stay for months at a time.
Let me tell you how she came to care for us for a long time after my parents split up,
How she showed up so completely for her son and for her granddaughters.


Let me tell you how much she loved her grandchildren,
Sharon and me and my uncle's son Marco.




Let me tell you how close I always felt to her
Even though she lived far away.
Let me tell you about the long phone conversations we would have
And her unabashed conviction of always telling people whatever was on her mind,
No concern with offending yet so refined at the same time.



Let me tell you how when I graduated from college
I could not imagine doing so without her there.
Let me tell you how she had also come when I began my senior year
And took me to the supermarket and bought me food and containers
And spent a week cooking and preparing meals I could keep in my freezer.
Let me tell you how she told me then,
Don't ever skimp on food. If you need money for food, let me know.


Let me tell you about her older sister, Lina
Who is almost 92 and has outlived her husband, her son and now her sister.
Let me tell you how Lina is like a third grandmother to me.


Let me tell you how today I sat with my father and we called Lina to tell her her sister had passed
This morning at 5am, one day after her 87th birthday.

Let me tell you that Rosy lived a full life.
Let me tell you how years ago with her second husband, she had sat at a dinner with Golda Meyer.
Let me tell you about her closets filled with dresses and shoes and handmade silk undergarments from Egypt of the forties and fifties.
Let me tell you how I had some light blue embroidery from one of her nightgowns stitched into the sash of my wedding dress.
Let me tell you about the solid gold earrings that she had unearthed from an archeological site in Egypt decades ago
Which were on display in her living room.

Let me tell you how many languages she spoke... French, Italian, Arabic, Greek, English.
Let me tell you how I always spoke to her in French.
Let me tell you how everyone in her neighborhood called her La Signora Favia.
Let me tell you how she lived for over 50 years at the outermost tip of the heel of the boot that is Italy.

Let me tell you how she made jam out of rose petals and cooked zucchini flowers
And rarely threw anything out in the kitchen because everything was edible if you just knew how to prepare it.

Let me tell you how she smoked cigarettes like they were going out of style,
At least a pack a day for at least 50 years,
And how eventually I stopped bugging her to give them up.
Let me tell you how she had a stroke while I was on my honeymoon
And lost the need to smoke.

Let me tell you how that stroke changed her
And how I missed the depth of our phone conversations after that.
Let me tell you that it has always made me sad to live so far away from her,
From almost all of my family.

Let me tell you how I last saw Rosy in 2001
When I went to spend Passover in Paris with her and Lina and Lina's son Eric who died a few years later.
Let me tell you that, even though times had changed all of us, I felt at home there,
In this apartment where I had spent so many Shabbat afternoons as a child.

Let me share with you how deeply I will miss her presence in this life.
Let me tell you how much I have loved and will love her always.
Let me tell you that I am sure she knew how much I cherished her in my life.
Let me tell you that today I bought two dozen bright yellow roses with pink-orange tips
To remember my Rosy with warmth in my heart and a smile on my lips.
I love you, Rosy...
Rest peacefully.

Body Talk

I'm thinking about my body today on Glow in the Woods.

Good Stuff

It felt really good to hold sweet Margaux last week.
Really good.
Natural.
Easy.
I even got dozy rocking her in the glider.
Yum.
Thanks for the sweet gift,
Little lady.
You are absolutely precious.

Spring Cleaning

It's almost Passover.
Yesterday Dahlia went to the zoo with her Nonno (my Dad)
While Dave and I spent five hours cleaning our house.
Dave worked on the kitchen, cabinet by cabinet,
Getting crumbs of hametz out of every crack and corner,
And I worked on the rest of the house.
I vacuumed and dusted and put things in their place.
I scrubbed the toilet and bathtub and sinks.

I put the Red Tail Hawk feather I'd found back in the fall away in Tikva's box,
Separating it from the "now and future" focused things on the little altar atop our dresser.

And I did something I'd been holding off on doing since August:
I washed off the spots of breastmilk
From the rocking chair in the corner of our bedroom
And the floor around it where the pump had sat.
Splatters of my milk that had landed there
When I pumped for Tikva during the two months of her life
And which I hadn't had the heart to remove.

But it was time, and as I reflected on the labor of love that was pumping for my Baby Girl -
The act of pure and utter faith amid doubt that she would ever drink all that milk,
Even doubt that she would live long enough to ever nurse at my breast -
I scrubbed off each spot of dried up thick creamy milk,
Its natural fat requiring effort to remove.
With it, I wiped off a year's worth of dust...
The glider has sat in the corner of our bedroom since last March,
Since I carried Tikva inside me.

I thought about the babies who got Tikva's milk when I cleared out four freezers full of bottles.
I thought about the clogged ducts in my breasts from pumping instead of nursing.
I thought about the quiet time in the middle of the night as I pumped and thought of my Baby Girl at the hospital.
I thought about the month Tikva had to have formula because of the lymphatic fluid leaking into her system.
I thought of the joy I felt when she got to have my milk again.
I thought of how she got my milk until the very last moments of her life
Through the tube that went straight to her belly
Even outside in the courtyard where she died.
I thought about the fact that my child died
And how I held her as she breathed her last breaths on her own.
I thought of the longing I will always feel because I never got to nurse her
And the longing I feel to nurse a child again.

I thought about how good it will be to leave here for our new home in Ohio this summer,
To move forward to the next chapter
And leave the heartbreak of this past year behind.
I know I won't leave Tikva behind here
Because she isn't here.
This place isn't her, but it is the place where her story -
Our story - unfolded.
It is the place that is hard to still be in sometimes,
The place with the huge hospital to drive by every day,
The place that I am living in so obviously without my Baby Girl who brought me back here.

I think I will be ready to leave when it is time,
To leave behind some of the sorrow of losing my daughter,
Some of the strangeness of this in-between place and time.

I have been feeling some dark and messy emotions.
They'll be familiar to some: envy, jealousy, doubt, longing for the impossible, questioning everything.
And so much sorrow, so many tears...
I wake up every morning with bunched up Kleenex amid the covers when I make the bed.

I haven't felt like writing much,
Haven't felt like sharing with who knows how many people read here.
I have needed to distinguish my emotions and beliefs
From those of others whose blogs I have visited all these months.

Do I feel this fear because it's what I'm supposed to feel
After having birthed and lost a very sick baby?
Or do I feel it because it is real, because it comes from deep within me and has a message to share,
Something I need to listen to?

I bought a 750-page hardback first edition today of my favorite writer's new book.
I've been waiting more than 10 years for this book, seriously.
He spends years writing his books, and they're worth the patience.
I am in heaven at the thought of the delightful escape into another world that awaits me.
I haven't even read what the story is about, I just want to dive in without knowing.
It's time for a good book, and perhaps it's the perfect time for that since I feel like writing less than I have all these months.

Two Passovers ago, on April 1, I miscarried my second pregnancy at 10 weeks...
A blighted ovum, they called it.
Two Passovers ago, I was still miscarrying at our community seder.
Last Passover, we were unexpectedly back in San Francisco
Instead of finally being in Jerusalem for Passover,
Tikva growing comfortable and safe in my belly.
Now it is this Passover and I am here,
Belly empty again, my Baby Girl somewhere else.

Next year in Cincinnati...

I am ambivalent about Passover this year.
For me, it just is...
I need it to just be.
A time to reflect on what enslaves me and what sets me free?
Perhaps I'll think about that some.

It's nice to have such a clean house,
And the spring sunshine feels comforting
And my feet are happy in my purple sandals.

Today at work I sent an email to everyone letting them know I'm selling raffle tickets for the March of Dimes walk.
A very sweet colleague responded that he wanted to buy some tickets so I went to his office.
He told me that one of his now-college age twin daughters was diagnosed quite accidentally when she was 14 years old with spina bifida,
Something she'd had since birth but which has never affected her wellbeing.
I told him I was walking in memory of my daughter who had died a few months after birth.
He told me he was sorry.
Then he told me that his oldest daughter had died of cancer when she was 4 years old, many years ago.
I told him I was sorry.
We talked about this strange huge club you never dream of finding yourself in.
It was sweet, and I imagine I was not alone in realizing that I had no idea we shared this in common.
You just never know...

Dahlia has been working through the difficult emotions of being a big sister without a living sibling.
She is extremely sensitive at school when her friends talk about their siblings,
When they share the joys of having a brother or sister,
Or when they have something negative to say about their siblings.
She tells me a lot that she's mad that she doesn't have a sister who is alive to be with her.
And today, on seeing a pregnant woman in a cafe, she said to her:

My baby died.
She was zero when she died.
She didn't come home from the hospital.

The woman was incredibly sweet with her,
Then she looked at me.
I nodded and told her that our daughter had been born with a birth defect and died this summer.
She said she was so sorry, very sweetly, with no fear or apprehension in her eye.
In a beautiful way, she was able to hold our two realities
With no smugness and no pushing away.
Perhaps because it had come out of the pure lips and heart of a five year old.

I took Dahlia's hand and we walked out of the cafe
And I said to her,
You're sad that your sister died, huh?

Yeah, she replied.

Nature’s Elements

If I were an ocean,
I would wash my tides
over and over your body
until you could feel
no more pain.

If I were a rainstorm,
I would pour down
every inch of your mind
covering your doubt
with hope.


If I were the sun,
I would radiate my heat
through your soul
and chase away
the cold black darkness.

If I were a mountain,
I would brace myself
infinitely
to shoulder your burdens
indefinitely.

But alas,
nature’s elements
I am not.
And I don’t really know
what to give you.
And I don’t really know
what you need.

But even the elements are not perfect.
The ocean is full of salt.
The rainstorm is unrelenting.
The sun hides at night.
The mountain is inflexible.

At least
I am here.
So I’ll just ask.

(Thank you, Christabel)

More Dahlia Photography

Dahlia and I went to see the model train exhibit at the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park today...