Electron Annie!

Time and all my best laid plans
Cease to exist with shovel in hand...

 I garden the same way I clean house - randomly, and with reckless abandon. I often find myself out for a leisurely stroll around the yard or to pick up a bit of litter after church, and end up hours later with grass stains on the hem of my Sunday skirt and good, clean dirt under my fingernails. Oh, and a smile on my face. The same is true for cleaning (though it's less poetic to write about). I don't know how many times I've started in just to tidy up a little pile of papers and ended up mopping floors in good clothes. I'm not much of a planner, you see. Plus, life is so much more interesting that way, isn't it?

Do you remember looking at drawings of atoms in your high school chemistry book? They were so neat and ordered - the plump, happy protons with their cozy little neutron spouses, surrounded by a passel of electron babies whizzing around them in an orderly (albeit breakneck) manner. The diagram always implied that electrons followed a set pattern - much like the planets around the sun - always predictably in line and never bumping into one another or flying off into another 'nuclear' family's territory. In fact, scientists actually believe that electrons aren't quite the chubby little atomic cherubs we thought them to be. There is a theory called the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle that describes electrons more in terms of being a wave than a particle. Bill Bryson (one of my favorite authors) summed it up thus in his excellent book A Short History of Nearly Everything:

What this means in practice is that you can never predict where an electron will be at any given moment. You can only list its probability of being there.... until it is observed, an electron must be regarded as being "at once everywhere and nowhere."

Well, there you have it. I must be an electron. At least, that's surely what my family must think of me. My children certainly believe me to be either everywhere or nowhere at once, apparently. Sometimes they can't hear me when I'm standing right next to them, and other times they marvel that I have seen or heard their devious little schemes. I guess you can say that this is one example of how well home schooling works. These three kids already have an innate and deep understanding of the complexities of  Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and they're only 10, 6, and 3. For example, while they're not sure that it's totally possible for me to be in two places at once (or to disappear completely), they understand it, at least, as a theoretical possibility. They've also done some practical research on the topic, and have mapped out the most probable locations in which to find me. Apparently, according to them, I'm most likely to be in the bathroom or on the phone. Go figure. But, I digress...

I woke up today planning on cleaning, doing laundry, and catching up on bookwork. I'm not willing to concede that I'm still not going to do those things at some point today. Actually, I'm kind of already doing them, since I've got laundry in the machines, the dishwasher is open and half full, and my table is sprinkled with financial documents just waiting to be entered into the computer. There is still some probability that you might find me at one of those locations at some point today, albeit a low one. If I were a betting gal, though,  I'd say that it is much more likely that you'll find me outside today. After all, I've already felt the lure of the sunshine and gotten a bit of dirt under my nails while putting in some orphan plants given to me by a friend. (Of course, along the way I also started digging out an old tree stump, began weeding a flower bed, transferred a few strawberry plants, and got the yen to mow.) Whatever I end up doing, you can bet it will be seemingly random, but that's only to those uninitiated in the finer points of physics. After all, even those electric robot vacuums clean all the spots on the carpet eventually in their endless 'Roomba Rumba' dance through life.

I'm sure there are elements of the atom that scientists will continue to unfold as the years go by. God's handiwork is not well or easily understood by mere human minds, much as some scientists like to think otherwise. However, until they come up with a better theory, I'm in agreement with ol' Heisenberg. After all, just because no one can actually predict with any certainty where an electron (or I)  will be or what it (or I) will be doing in any given moment, I am content to know that God makes His own perfect order and purpose in what appears to be a confounding, seemingly haphazard series of events. At least, that's the story I tell my husband and children, and I'm sticking to it!

(I'm throwing in a bonus picture with this blog entry. Just in case I didn't really express myself well in words, or if you're more of a picture type person, below is an excellent illustration of exactly what I was talking about.)

Loss

I am bereft, adrift without a tether. It was one loss, and there are so many still here who ground me solidly. Yet, there is still a part of me floating through space, free-falling through the atmosphere, sinking beneath the waves. The loss itself has been nibbling away at her for months, but dealt its final blow in but a moment - a beat, a beat, silence. Now comes the agony of having to re-enter the atmosphere, the coming back to earth, the grounding. What a difficult landing it is proving to be.

I am finding myself first grieving over my loss of the past. There is no one else who can share with me that history, her history. No matter what facts were fuzzy, what details were disconnected in her stories, they were none the less the truth. They were the truth in a way that no one else can recreate, not only because they were hers and only hers, but because no one else walked the miles, saw the sights, felt the feelings, loved the people, lived each moment like she did. And these are just the stories that only she knew. What about the stories that only she and I together knew, only she and I together lived? With no one left to share them, they become a burden too big to carry. What was once a word or phrase that brought knowing smiles, shared laughter, a twin twinkle in our eyes, now brings heaviness and hurt. I don't want to rid myself of them, but I don't want to be the only one to remember them either.

Next, I find myself grieving over my loss of the future. As much as it makes my heart ache to carry our shared stories alone, the hurt is tenfold to think that there will never again be any more of them.What adventures are left unexperienced? What places left unvisited? What people left unmet? What words left unspoken? What love left unshared? I feel stunted, limited, orphaned, cheated. Where will I go when I need only what she has been able to give me? Who will I call when I need to hear only what she has to say? How will I solve the problems to which she has been the only answer? I know there will always be another place, another voice, another answer, but I resent the searching I've now been burdened with since she is gone. Will I become all that I am to be since I do not have her anymore? The future will suffer because of this event at this moment in time.

And now I think of it - this moment. Forget yesterday. Forget tomorrow. My grief is focused now on now. If she were here, I would consult her. If she weren't gone, I would have her read this over, get her advice, reminisce, straighten my thoughts, laugh a little, get perspective. I know that our shared past isn't really gone, no matter how much it hurts to think of it. I will tuck it away and unfurl it bit by bit again as time goes by. I know that the loss of our shared future is, at this point, but a vague and intangible potential. It will become more real, but only gradually, and in keeping with the healing that I know will come to my heart.

I know all of these things. But, I also know, because every nerve in my body is screaming it at me, that the loss I feel now is real and immediate. It is not a paper dragon. It is not a threat of pain. It is pain right now. Right here. In this moment. It is tearing and aching. It is raw and hot and paralyzing, and it is mine. Much as I know she would have been willing to share it with me, I guess I'm going to have to field this one on my own. It will be my first hurt unshared with her - a new beginning born out of a new loss.

Pregnancy - Nature's Hostile Body Takeover

Warning: This blog contains mature content that is not suitable for children. Or men. Sorry, guys... This one is for the ladies only. Don't say you haven't been warned!


I am now just over three years out from my last pregnancy. It is a bit off putting to be in public, surrounded by pregnant women and nursing moms, and to realize that I have aged out (or, as I prefer to think of it, 'experienced out') of that club. I really thought that babies and bellies would be my reality for eternity. After all, I have spent 2 1/2 years pregnant, 5 years breastfeeding, 3 days in labor, and exactly 38,465,342.8 hours worrying about parenting decisions I've either made, am making, or have yet to make. Being a mom isn't for the fainthearted.

No one tells you what it's going to be like, do they? I mean, I know part of that is our fault, as new mothers, because we are so convinced we know what we're doing that when a well-meaning friend tries to give us advice, we roll our eyes and snicker behind our hands at them. "Well, sure you had to use a pacifier with YOUR baby, but MINE won't have any anxiety issues, and therefore won't need external comforting." Spoken like a true preggo or newbie. Just wait until the middle the night about 3 days in - you know, right after you've gone home from the hospital and it's just you and Angel Baby staring at each other by the glow of the nightlight. You'll be desperately digging in the bottom of the diaper bag to find that pacifier too, momma. Trust me on this one.

No, new moms aren't known for their willingness to take advice, but maybe that's because they feel ever so slightly lied to. Let me give you an example. When a pregnant mom asks me what pregnancy was like, I tell the truth - it was wonderful. I loved every minute of it. Couldn't believe what a magical experience it was. Would do it again in a heartbeat. Etc... This, of course, is the perspective I have about it now. You know, now that I'm on the other side of it. Now that it is becoming a memory. Now that I've reaped the rewards. I'm not lying when I say that pregnancy is awesome, but perhaps I'm also not telling the truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothing but the truth as I might have been experiencing it at the time.

The whole truth, of course, involves a bit of unpleasantness. It involves aches in body parts I didn't even know I had. Before I got pregnant I was only vaguely aware of being in possession of a cervix.  I had never seen said cervix. I didn't have an owner's manual on it, had never changed its oil or had it tuned, and I certainly didn't know it could hurt. Further, I never guessed that it would become fair game for discussions with colleagues after visits to the doctor. Let's face it - it's fair game for discussion with everyone near the end, when even great-aunt Lucy will ask how far dilated you are. (This is the same woman, by the way, who always chastised you for not acting like more of a lady when you were young, and now she's hollering into the phone to see how stretched and skewed your most private of parts has become.) By the end of it all, 3 doctors, 10 medical students, 18 nurses, and a cleaning lady who doesn't know how to knock before entering will all have seen the very same cervix you've still not been properly introduced to.

The whole truth also involves, shall we say... anatomical reorganization. These are similar to the theories discussed in college geology classes - poles shifting and causing wobbles and a loss of balance, new hilly eruptions and subsequent foliage cover, bulges in the equator, and the heartbreaking, gradual sinking of northern mountain ranges. Stuff just doesn't stay put when you're pregnant. Your belly button thrusts forward, as if trying to escape the disruptions to its previously-peaceful domain. Your feet widen. Your organs squish and slosh (sometimes even leaking). Fact of the matter is, you even get new body parts. It's true. Look it up. (Or, if you're pregnant, just look down.) Let me explain...


The human body is full of strange sounding parts. You have to wonder if the only reason some people go into medicine is because no other area of science or technology would hire them because of their funny names. They only backed into stellar careers in gastroenterology or otoloaryngology because their initial interviews at, say, NASA or the National Parks Service went something like this: 


"I'm terribly sorry, Mr... uh....Kiesselbach, is it? Though your credentials are excellent, we can't run the risk of you discovering something truly remarkable and then wanting to name it after yourself. It's just a PR nightmare. Have you ever considered medicine, though?" 

So, that's why we now have parts inside each and every one of us that sound like they're more likely to be out of a Star Wars movie than a medical text. I kid you not - if you looked hard enough (and knew where to look) you could find your very own Hydatid of Morgangi (didn't he rule the Mongols in the mid 1500's?), Islets of Langerhans (makes you want to vacation there some time, doesn't it?), Space of Moll (right next to the Black Hole of Moll), and White Line of Tolt (every bit as spectacular as the White Cliffs of Dover, but not nearly as crowded). 

Anyway, these funny little innards are silently working away inside you all the time. But, when you're pregnant and breastfeeding is the only time that your Montgomery's Tubercles kick into gear. They're actually little bumps around your nipples that secrete a special oil to keep things properly lubed for breastfeeding. Montgomery originally described these glands as "a constellation of miniature nipples scattered over a milky way." Very poetic. Most women, however, describe them as just another part of the hostile body takeover that is pregnancy. Oily bumps. On your breasts, no less. Great. Unfortunately, they go perfectly with those dark hairs you sprout on your upper lip and the unexpected gift that is urinary incontinence. You see why pregnant women don't exactly fall for my 'everything is beautiful' explanation of motherhood?

No, one cannot deny that there are some parts of pregnancy that aren't all glowing beauty. Here's the thing, though - that doesn't all magically go away when you give birth. That first post-baby look in the mirror is quite a shock. Your breasts sag. Your belly is floppy. Your stretch marks shine. Your leg hair is thicker. You see things you haven't seen in 9 months, and they're not pretty. Worst of all, you're convinced you're never going to be the same again. And, I've got to level with you here - you won't. Sure, things will get better. Heck, you might even get back into your old clothes and look just as smokin' as you did before, but you will still be forever changed. You will regard your body with new respect. You will cherish the memories, and honor the sacrifices it has made. Those aren't stretch marks - they're battle scars, and you've earned 'em, momma -  just like you've earned a special membership into the exclusive Mommy club, and the right to tell expectant mothers the same truth about pregnancy you heard all along- it's absolutely wonderful!