Confidence

On Friday I got on Skype with some of my oldest friends.
Women who have known me for almost 30 years.
Some whom I haven't seen in more than a decade.
One - my Karina - who is my constant, and who calls me daily from California.

Sometime before either of us was born, something big and powerful looked over all that was ahead for me in my life and said,

To make it a little easier throughout, I will give you your Karina. You will meet her early on and you will be close to each other forever. She will witness and love you unconditionally and reflect all you have been through and how you have blossomed. Your paths will move in parallel all of your lives.


(Karina and me, holding each other's babies, January 2004)

We met at the beginning of fifth grade, both of us a little different, born in other countries, weird foods packed in our lunches.
On the first day of school each year - even though I've been out of school for 16 years - I count the years and honor our anniversary.
This September was 28 years.
That's a long time.

She claims that it's equal, that I give to her as much as she gives to me.
That we just get each other in a way that only we, with our history, can get each other.
I honestly could not have gotten this far without Karina.

When Dave and I first started going out, there was something familiar about his nature.
Something about his positive outlook, his faith in life, his confidence, his comfort with people, his ease.
That familiarity reminded me of Karina, and I knew that I could do this journey with Dave as my partner.
Dave asked Karina what he should know about me, and she replied, Gal's neat.
What more could you ask from your lifelong friend?

I loved seeing them all together over the picture on the computer.
I wished I was there with them, these gorgeous women I knew as girls,
There with their gorgeous mothers who had been in their thirties when we were kids,
And their gorgeous children... Three generations of beauties.

All but two of these friends are from Russian families
And for all these years I have been held by Karina's family as if they were my own.
I don't speak Russian at all, but when Karina's mom talks to me,
I understand what she says by a sort of osmosis - feeling the emotion in the sing-song of her language.

Karina and I were talking on the phone today and she told me about a video she had watched with a few of these friends.
It was taken at our high school graduation.
She talked about how for the most part, most of us looked like younger versions of ourselves, but pretty much the same.
Maybe a little less grounded, a little more flighty, bubbly,
But pretty much the same.
Except me.

That's because I was carrying 50 extra pounds, I said.
But it was more than that, Karina pointed out.
And Karina knows me sometimes better than I know myself, so I listened.
She's right, it was more than that.
She spoke about confidence, and how she sees me hold that now, as an adult, as a woman.
She noticed that that confidence just wasn't there back in 1989 when I was a few days away from 18.
She's right, it wasn't.

Maybe it was that I was newly fat, and didn't feel at ease in my body.
Maybe it was that a few years before my parents had gotten divorced and my mom had quite suddenly left our home forever.
Maybe it was that I'd always been a head taller than my friends, who developed years later than I did - the contrast that made me feel large even before I actually was.
Maybe it was that I didn't have a boyfriend... and oh how I wanted a boyfriend in the way, I was convinced, everyone else had a boyfriend.

But then I went back to before high school, even to before my totally awkward and totally void-of-confidence, embarrassingly insecure junior high school years.
And I realized that I just wasn't incredibly confident for most of my life.

Don't get me wrong - about some individual things I was confident:
I knew I was smart and good at school and getting good grades.
I knew that, even if I didn't have stick-skinny legs at age 12, I did have a pretty face, a nice smile with naturally straight teeth, and big eyes with long eyelashes.
I knew that I had a nice voice and could sing on key.
I knew that I was mature and responsible, and a good babysitter, a kid adults trusted and enjoyed being with.
I knew that it was pretty cool that I'd already lived on three continents by the time I was seven, and spoke French... even if those experiences also contributed to what made me feel different.
I knew I was creative.

But that overarching confidence, that sense of ease in one's skin, ease in one's soul, comfort with one's self...
I just didn't find that until so many years later.
Maybe it's the nature of being younger than 25, no matter who you are... but I don't think so.
I didn't bother to take a poll about this at my 20th high school reunion last summer,
But I'm pretty convinced that some of the kids I grew up with who appeared to feel good about themselves in spite of braces and badly permed hair at age 15 really did feel that way.
How and why that is the case, I really have no idea.
How and why I lost whatever deeply-rooted confidence and trust I may have had as a very young child, I'm not really sure.

Maybe it was just part of my journey, part of what I needed to go through in order to get here,
To this place of grounded, trusting, grace-guided womanhood.

I said to Karina on the phone,
Oh how I would love to go back in time to myself at 17, give myself a hug and a glimmer of the confidence I have now.
She finished my sentence,
Let her see you now, so she knows she'll get through it, to all that is ahead. See the wonderful man you married, your beautiful daughter... And all the hard stuff ahead too.

After I got off the phone, I had a flash of myself in 1991 on the roof of my apartment building in Westwood, Los Angeles.
Sophomore year at UCLA, one of the most depressing years of my life.
I filled probably five journals that year with endless longing,
Passages about how low I felt, how alone, how trapped in a body that didn't feel like my own.
In that flash, I sat next to the jacuzzi, my feet dipped in the hot water,
Probably staring down at my thighs, lamenting how large they were
As I wrote in my journal, hoping no one would disturb me, comfortable in my sad loneliness.


(Pregnant with Dahlia at sunset on a beach in Patara, Turkey, August 2003)

I wonder what it would have been like that night on the roof if I had encountered myself,
Back in time from 18 years ahead.
If that Gal had said to me,

Hang tough. You'll lose the weight. You'll release this sadness. You'll find your joy. You'll have adventures, you'll play. You'll fall in love. You'll walk down the aisle. You'll have babies, some who will live, one you will lose but not completely. Things will be great. Things will be hard. But you'll grow and you'll strengthen and you'll work hard and you'll shine. And throughout you'll be held and loved and blessed by lifelong friends, family who know you deeply. Kindred spirits. Keep moving towards that, and I will see you there.

I think she would have given me great confidence, that Gal, if I had met her on that rooftop.


(Pregnant with Dahlia at the Burning Man Decompression Party, October 2003)

On Skype the other day, I felt it.
I felt I had arrived.
I felt grounded, confident, beautiful, me.
I felt it because in my beautiful friends, I could see it too.
And there is no way they could have grown into such amazing women
Without my having gotten here too.

Thank you ladies.
I love you.

Gratitude

I'm expressing gratitude and other emotions today on Glow in the Woods.

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.

Missing You Still

I miss you, Tikva.
I am missing you especially right now.
Missing your sweet softness,
Your cute little face looking up at me,
Or sleeping peacefully.
Just missing you being here.

I feel you close and feel your absence at the same time.
I'm having one of those moments when I stop and it hits me...
You died.

I wonder if that will ever stop happening,
Even if it only happens once in a while.

Lately I've noticed how floppy the skin is on my belly
From carrying two girls inside as you both grew.
It's not something I think about a lot
But lately it's something I touch and feel and see each time I bend over to dry my hair after a shower,
And I think of you
And how big my belly was when you were growing inside me because there was so much amniotic fluid you couldn't swallow.
And I have that thought,
You died.

The past few weeks I was reading The Lovely Bones
And you have felt so close,
Of course.
It's told in the voice of a girl who is dead,
About what happens to the living after she dies,
About her connection to them still and theirs to her.
It's a gorgeous book
And I cried and cried
And felt awe.

I love that you feel close, Tikva.
And I wish you were in my arms
Or toddling around on your new toddler legs.
That is my favorite age ever in a child: almost 18 months.

I miss you, Sweet Girl.
I wish you could've stayed.