Do you ever wonder how you can keep things from going wrong? Just stop everything and hold on and push and shove the bad away? When you love something so much, you have so damn much to lose.

A couple weekends ago, we decided to go to the beach. In January. Of course, that’s not a big deal in Florida. It’s 75 and sunny this time of year as opposed to 95 and scorching. So we brought a lunch and I sprawled out on the blanket while my husband and kids went looking for shells.

I remember lying there and thinking — desperately acknowledging, really — that THIS IS UTTER PERFECTION. The water. The sun. The day. And watching them.

I am so grateful, it almost hurts.

When bad things happen around you to people you love, you try very hard to rationalize it.

A lot of bad things have happened to people I love recently. Cancer, death, lost jobs, broken relationships, bad stuff.

Bad stuff just keeps happening to good people. For no reason. For no purpose.

But there I lay under the sun that day, I lay there in total perfection with sun and clear water and my entire family and love and health and laughter and ease.

I am so grateful.

In fact gratitude has become my superstition, my religion, my lucky rabbit’s foot and my four leaf clover.

I keep thinking that if I say thank you silently (or, ahem, not so silently… like on a blog or something), the powers that determine good and bad will think… “OH. Well. She knows what she has. She is thankful for it. She isn’t taking it for granted. We’ll let the bad stuff slide. For now.”

Ha. As if that’s really how it works.

But when bad stuff happens to good people and there is no rhyme or reason… well, whispering my desperate thanks aloud over and over and over again makes just about as much sense.

So I am clutching my own kind of rosary beads, linked together with every single thing I love, and worrying over it and and treasuring it and giving it such careful focus…

Thank you for this day. Thank you for my boys. Thank for my life and our health and my thriving boys and that I can afford to put gas in my car and that I love the person on the couch next to me and that the sun is out and all is fine, fine, fine.

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.  ~Thornton Wilder

So. We need some funny up in here. It’s time. I hope my Facebook friends forgive me for posting this picture twice. But it seems exactly what this blog needs. Some help. A helpful hand, if you will.

All I needed was a chin strap for a baseball helmet. I knew exactly where I would find it in Dick’s — so I marched right over to the baseball section with my kids trailing behind. I was less than five minutes into my quick shopping pit-stop when I heard my seven year old yell: “Mom!!!” I turned around to see what he was pointing at and this is how I found my youngest child:

My best friend’s baby passed away a few days after Christmas. I wrote this during the days following and was honored to then share it at her funeral this past Friday. I am posting it here since I have had a few people ask to read it again. Ultimately, I hope to share the lessons I have learned from this amazing and (to quote her mother ) oh so “remarkable” child. (Please note that I have omitted any names to protect their privacy since my blog is public.)

There is a spider that lives in my shower. I had meant to get it out of there while cleaning my bathroom months ago. But I hadn’t. So there he lived, minding his business, affecting nothing.

The day I found out that my friend’s baby had Trisomy 18, I stood soaking in my shower and hating that spider. Why? That spider was likely to outlive this new life. That seemed more unfair and impossible than any other fact of life I had ever experienced. I hated that spider with every part of me. I wanted to swat it down from there and be done with it. But I didn’t.

A handful of days later, I arrived at my friend’s apartment with my bag and my heart in hand. I stepped through the door and found the sounds and smells of warmth and home. There was joy and children laughing here. Voices, hugging, coming and going and comfort. And there, by her sleeping daddy’s side, nestled deeply in the coziest wrappings of blankets and and all of this wonderful love around her was the baby.

I was pretty selfish about her right from the get go. Give her to me. I needed to be with this baby. But I wasn’t the only one. Over the next few days, people came. Family, friends, letters, emails, phone calls, Facebook comments, small packages, enormous tin-foiled servings of food, flowers, people and more people. All of this and the love they stood for arrived to that very same apartment. We were all pulled into orbit around this perfect wonder, who stared up from her wrappings and watched us all.

I’m not sure she knew what the fuss was about. You see, this girl was more concerned about just being a baby. She slept, she cried, she fussed when she was hungry, she gulped down milk while propped up in loving arms, she needed burping, she needed changing, she smiled in her sleep, she carried on doing the very important business of a baby. She also watched her mama. In the wee hours, she (like any newborn with their sleeping and waking wildly mixed up) was wide awake and mesmerized by her mother’s voice. Alert, eyes wide open, tiny lips in an “O”, she stared up at her and punched her arms a bit and stared some more. Her mama amazed her.

So, while being very busy at the business at being baby, this child somehow stirred up all that had settled in our souls. She awoke and re-energized our hearts and brought love and joy sharply into focus. While we gathered and her heard story, our lives were forever shifted on their axes, driving us to think carefully about all that we cherish in this very moment. With dark eyes watching, she inspired everyone of us to look inward and kick the dust off our joy, reminding us what we so easily take for granted.

Did you ever notice that her fingers were crossed? Even this sweet trait of hers inspired me. “Fingers crossed that you get what I’m trying to say here, Auntie. Fingers crossed you are loving your life and all you have in it.”

I do.

So, back to that spider. I haven’t been home to see if that spider still resides in my shower but I suspect that he does. But here’s the thing about that spider. During his lifetime living in the corner of a ceiling affecting nothing, he will never EVER conjure up, create or inspire the kind of love our wonderful girl did in 40 days. In fact, how many of us could say that we have done what she has in the many years of our own lives? It doesn’t matter how long you have, it is what you do and you give that matters.

She was a precious gift. She was pure joy wrapped in a blanket. She was our reminder to love, right now and everyday after this.

In her honor, I will do everything I can to reach deep down and keep that soul of mine and the love I have in my life dusted off, held up and celebrated. 40 days, 40 years, 80 years, it is what I choose to do, not how long I have to do it. I hope I can keep this up for you, sweet baby. I will certainly do my very best. Fingers crossed.

It’s happening right now.

In the past, I thought forward. I considered and dreamed about my so very dear adult-life. The man I would marry. I wrote lists of names for my children. I sighed about where we would live.  I would wonder how they would look. My so very perfect, just-so life.

And I said I would take my children to The Nutcracker someday. When *I* was a mother. And they would, of course, love it as much as I did.

That day came last week. My son had seemed interested so now, at 8, I decided it was time he went. But at 38, I try not to get too caught up in romanticising what I will do with my children anymore. Things change, kids don’t like what you did a lot of the time, real-life isn’t so make-believe. But I bought the tickets and I took him. We held hands. We walked along the Riverwalk before the show. We sat and read the program and ate cough drops together and giggled about how we couldn’t stop coughing. When the lights went down and he heard the music, he smiled. And he turned to me. He got it right away. He loved it like I had. This was something special for him, too.

Suddenly I became far too aware that the future that I had day-dreamed about for so many years is happening right now. There are no more second chances, there no do-overs. This is it. My life. My adult life. And these are my children doing some of the things I dreamed and many that I didn’t.

This Christmas season has brought lots of difficult news. Apart from some things that I have written about, two friends have been diagnosed with breast cancer (one being one of my closet college friends), there are friends with very sick relatives, some with new concerns about their children, others who have had miscarriages, and others who have lost jobs. And while things remain blessedly peaceful and healthy in my life, there is a lot of coping and getting through the season happening all around me.

Again, it is very clear to me that every hope and dream for the future is so very very uncertain.

So, I don’t want to look forward so much anymore. I don’t want to think about what will happen in my dreamy little grown-up world. And I don’t want to think about what could have been or how things used to be. I want to grab hold of the present and BE entirely in it.

I want to tie myself to this very moment and experience it and let every taste and sound and feeling sink right on in. I don’t want to miss a thing, I want my eyes wide open to it all.

There will never be another first time I get to take my oldest child to The Nutcracker. So I sat in the theater and held his hand and watched him watch and laugh and listen and clap loudly. It was perfect and everything right now needs to be.

This, my life, is happening right now. This Christmas, this time when both of my children still believe in Santa and shamelessly dance “Christmas is almost here” dances in the hallway together, in Spider-man jammies… this is happening RIGHT NOW. 8 and 5 turns into 9 and 6 next year. And on it goes.

I cherish every Christmas past. I hope for many Christmases in the future. But I am living and breathing this Christmas present. I have what I have right now — and it is a gift.

To inspire little boy smiles for our family Christmas card, we pretended to pick my 8yo’s nose.

(Now I kind of wish I had “picked” this one for our card… har har.)

I dredged up this oldie but a goodie to inspire some Christmas Spirit around these parts. In December of 2007, my then 18 month old was obsessed with pirates (no surprise, he was born in Tampa). Here he learns what Santa says… or not. Prepare for EXTREME Christmas cuteness.

It’s taken awhile for me to post this. It seems I’ve simply lost my words over the last 11 days. You see, my closest and dearest friend’s brand new baby girl was diagnosed with Trisomy 18. If you want to know all the details, just read them. I’m not going to hash it out here. It’s not my story to tell anyway. But my friend’s child is not expected to be some miraculous survivor.

However. There is beauty in all of this. So I will try to scrape some semblance of written sense together to explain where that beauty is tucked around all the horror, settling all of us down.

I’ve found beauty in this child. I just returned from spending 3 days with her. I cupped her tiny head in my hands, fed her a bottle, and sang to her in the wee hours. Her tiny black eyes met mine, he fingers curled around mine, she rooted and snuggled and wrapped herself around my heart for warmth. I’m in love. Utterly and truly in love.

I’ve found beauty in her parents. They know they were chosen to care for this child, they know they are meant to do this and that they can handle it. They know her time is limited and it is their job to make her existence as comfortable and meaningful as possible. And, with their daughter home surrounded by family and bundled from one set of loving arms to another, it is both of these things

I’ve found beauty in the love that keeps knocking on their door and calling their phones and texting and emailing and Facebooking near and far. Love pours in constantly and at every hour. Selfless, unconditional love. People want to know her daughter. They leave food. They take their girls to the aquarium. They sit on their couch and love the new baby. They love them and love them and love them all. This tiny, sweet girl has created more love in 11 days than I have seen in my 38 years of life.

So, I’m left speechless and without my words. Because I can’t make much more sense of this than that. But maybe you can say something for me. Maybe you can leave words of love and support here for her. Could you do that? Could you tell her how amazing she is? Could you bolster her any way that you can? Could you share a favorite poem she should read to her girl? Anything really. I just ask that it is positive, that you celebrate this child’s life and bring love to her world.

In the meantime, if you want to see how another family found beauty and joy during their time with their child also diagnosed with Trisomy 18, please watch this.

Did you know that the number one killer of children under 5 is Pneumonia? I was thinking about that the other night as I stared at my son in bed in his dark room. He was coughing. A lot. Loud and hard and he could not settle down. He had a fever, too.

Of course, I had flashbacks to 6 months earlier when his lungs sent him to the hospital for 5 days. That wasn’t pneumonia. But it was the flu and it started with just a cough and then a fever, too.

So I stared at him and fed him sips of water and wondered what I should do. Of course, I called the pediatrician 5 minutes before they opened the next morning and kept redialing until someone answered. By lunchtime, we were back from the pediatrician and he had finally settled down with three types of meds (one being antibiotics), a nebulizer and a very effective prescribed combo of lemon, honey and tea. It worked miracles. I knew his respiratory infection could have evolved into something worse, but it hadn’t because we had access to immediate medical care.

We have access.

Yesterday, I sat in on a conference call about World Pneumonia Day. Today is World Pneumonia day, in fact. On the phone were Dr. Richard Besser, ABC News’ senior health and medical editor, as well as Dr. Orin Levine, with the International Vaccine Access Center. A number of bloggers were on the call and, for an hour, we discussed the dangers of pneumonia in our country and worldwide.

Here’s the thing. Whether you live in a small village in India or whether you live in a comfortable home in the Tampa suburbs, pneumonia can happen to your children. In fact, a child dies from pneumonia every 20 seconds. The doctors on the call agreed that many are surprised that it is the number one killer of children under five. It certainly doesn’t get the recognition that other conditions do. But maybe that’s because it isn’t a huge first world health priority. For every child who dies from pneumonia in the industrialized world, 2,000 more die in developing countries. Why? Children there don’t have access to care and antibiotics.

We have access.

One doctor talked about the work children with pneumonia do just to breathe. He recalled a time in Africa when he held a nine month old baby in his arms who struggled and struggled to catch her breathe but could not. She died minutes later. What could have saved her? Knowledge about respiratory distress and simple antibiotics. Both Dr. Besser and Dr. Levine are working to increase access in these countries. Anyone can be trained to recognize the signs of respiratory distress. And antibiotics are extremely inexpensive to distribute. As dangerous as pneumonia is, it is also one of the most solvable deadly conditions we’re faced with.

I walked away from the conversation far more educated about the extent of this disease. I also sat down and appreciated just what my children have. Their risk of dying from pneumonia is far lower thanks to a pediatrician 10 minutes from my home, $5 antibiotics and basic knowledge about respiratory infections. We have that. So many do not.

Follow Prevent Pneumonia on Facebook. Take a moment to watch this quick video about World Pneumonia Day. Consider what you have. Consider what others do not. Learn what you can do here.

My prayers have been answered and I have a college admissions program to thank for it. It turns out that my husband had to work a college Open House this weekend where he would be meeting prospective students and parents. He knew he should look “professional” so that meant a button down, ironed pants and… no more facial hair.

Glory, glory, thank you heavens and praise be the razor!!!

*doing the running man in my living room*

Ha! Move over Movember, my husband’s face is swoon-worthy once again!

But to keep it interesting, my husband did not shave the entire monstrosity off at once. Oh no. He took it off one piece at a time which resulted in a  number of mustache progressions. Naturally, I took pictures to share with you here. Get ready, folks. My husband is taking it ALL off for you, for me, for everyone to see….

The "Lawrence" from Office Space, 11 days old.

The traditional "Handlebar."

The "Tom Selleck."

The "Pencil-Thin" -- disturbing, ew.

The man I married. Shweet, shweel...

And before anyone says he bailed out too early, RECOGNIZE the fact that his facial growth FAR outdid anyone else’s we’ve seen. In fact, parents of recruits who had been to other campuses noted that his was the best, the fullest, the most outrageous they had seen — even on day 11. So. He did his part. And we can still do ours and donate to the cause. Because this insanity earned it, don’t you think?

Call me unsupportive and selfless, I don’t care. I am struggling — to put it mildly — with my husband’s most recent charitable act. You see, he’s a college Lacrosse coach and his team has put together a fundraising team to raise money for a charity. But here’s the catch. They are joining men nationwide this “Movember” by growing mustaches for their particular charity.

Gulp.

Now let’s talk about me. Forget the charity and the good and the bonding that this facial hair frenzy offers the world. I don’t really care. I care about what I see when I roll over in bed in the morning. And what I see is this.

And this is only day ONE, people! But, of course, the way my brain processes a mustache of this caliber on my husband means that I see this guy instead.

THIS guy has replaced my husband. Someone hold me. I can’t bear it. I can’t possibly get too friendly with that. Not up in that grill. I just CAN’T.

And please don’t take it the wrong way if your partner has a mustache and you love it. That’s fantastic. I mean no offense. I think they look fine on some guys. But I just don’t like them on MY partner. Who is an outstanding and handsome individual. Swoon-worthy, really. So it’s not anyone else and their staches… it’s just my husband’s and what he is doing to that fantastic face…

Fine I’m a total mustache bigot. FINE. I can’t put aside my distaste even for cancer-fighting goodness. Yep, this liberal has found a charity she can’t whole-heartedly back because her husband’s mustache turns her stomach. Write your disdain, show your disappointment, how DARE I.

…Is there any sympathy out there? Any at all?

*crickets*

So, in case there are any people out there suffering through Movemeber with me, I have a few tips. They aren’t a perfect fix but they will work when you have no other options.

1. Avoid eye contact with it. Hopefully your memory of your partner’s stache-less face is still intact.
2. Keep clean-shaven pictures around. That will help keep the stache-less memory alive.
3. Hold your finger under his nose when you get close. Like he’s going to sneeze but you’re stopping it. How nice of you!
4. Give him a lot of back massages.
5. Read a book and when you talk to him, hold it in front of you so that all you see are his eyes. Such nice eyes, aren’t they?
6. Turn off the lights. It’s good for the environment!
7. Don’t put those Halloween costumes away just yet! Get out the masks! Fun!
8. Tell him you’re into wild west bandits that are about to rob a bank and a kerchief around his face is so super hot.
9. Take off your glasses. This trick works best for legally blind folk like myself.
10. Grow your own. Just saying. Eye for an eye.

 UPDATE

Four days later, and now THIS. This is what I wake up to. After only four days. Speechless.

This is a time of year when traditions find their way back into our home. But, you know what? Sometimes I have no idea where these traditions have come from. More often, I never expected that they would become traditions in the first place. But they have, just because it is what we “always” do. It is what my children expect that we do. It is what they remember and count on and find comfort in.

I often read my 8yo’s writing (*proud proud proud* of it, too) and am stunned by what he remembers. I can’t believe he has this or that stored away and then accessed over and over as “that time when we went to that place and this happened.” Why was that special? It wasn’t special. Was it?

It is dawning on me that I am responsible for my children’s official childhood memories.

Oh my God.

This seems more mind-blowing than the daily exhaustion of feeding, clothing, schooling, homeworking, driving them. Because so much of the very mundane, very everyday stuff will mostly be forgotten (I think). It is the traditions and the trips. The decorations I pull out and the chocolate chip pancakes on Saturday mornings that WILL be remembered. And I am in charge of all that. So I better make it good.

Fall Festival = Good Memory

I’m trying. I know I can’t over-think it. But I’m trying. So, today, we went to a corn maze — a tradition they have come to count on every October. We had a great time. Phew.

Because here’s the other part. While I am responsible for their memories, I can’t control what their minds snap hold of and never forgets. Will my 5 yo remember how I hollered at him when we got home about video games? I yelled that he needed to get outside, and “I don’t CARE what you’re saying, just stop bothering me already!” …Ugh. Will he remember that today, too? Because I was tired after a morning of driving an hour there, traipsing through a corn maze, rallying them through carnival games and driving them back. Sure, any adult could understand what set me off. But a child very often does not. So, will my 5yo remember “Yeah, we did this fun thing but my mom yelled at me about video games that day and it made me sad.”

Mommy Yelled About Video Games = Bad Memory

I suppose we can’t control what sends them to therapy one day. I suppose every mother does her pound of damage.

So the point is here that I’m aware. I’m aware that my children look to me and wait for me to create their childhood. They wait to be exposed to what is out there and then expect explanations. And if we just happen to do it over and over, it is “what WE do, in THIS family” and that is that.

I hope I can do right by them. I know I won’t. Not entirely. And they will tell me about the times I yelled at them someday. But I have to hold on to hope — and go into that weird place of denial most mothers do so that they don’t go insane with guilt — that these two very significant childhoods will be good enough.

Happy That-Time-of-Year-I-Better-Not-F-Up Holidays!

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