Two nights ago I was watching this documentary on PBS called Swimming in Aushwitz. They interviewed concentration camp survivors and showed old pictures and footage while the the survivors spoke. One woman told the story of how hard it was keep going each day, keeping the faith, hoping for survival. She said "I will tell" was the mantra of many. "I will get out and I will tell what has happened. I will tell."
Her words have really stayed with me for the last two days and have sort of inspired me to start blogging in earnest again. I update occasionally, but the vigor with which the words flowed for me two years ago has dwindled. I know why. It's not just being busy with two kids and work and a commute and a home. It's that honestly, I've become a slightly different person now than I was on Good Friday in 2007. And I will tell. Here, I will tell. In one very small sense, isn't that what blogging is about? I will tell, I will share, I will have a record, I will make it known. In the Tom Cruise movie The Firm, he doesn't tell his wife that he's cheated on her, partly because he doesn't want it to be true. "Nothing's real until I tell it to Abby," he says. So, here is my record.
1. Two years ago today, I was discharged from the hospital after spending 10 days in the ICU and 2 days in a regular room. I suffered an allergic reaction, a misdiagnosis, and viral encephalitis. Good Friday was not so good to me two years ago. This was a life changing event, and it has taken me a long time to recover emotionally. I've talked with my friends about it and I'm fully recovered now, but I promised my therapist I would write out the whole story as part of working through my feelings. I will do that in my next entries. I've hesitated to do so, because my real life friends read this blog, and I feel like they must be tired of hearing about this again. I certainly faced nothing, NOTHING like the woman who survived Aushwitz did. But I need to remember, so I will tell.
2. Almost six months ago, I had my darling baby girl. How different life is today compared to two years ago! She is sitting up like a champ, chugging down 7 oz of breast milk at at time, and I think only have enough frozen for another week or so before we switch to formula. She squeals and pants and kicks her legs and wiggles her whole body when she sees me come home. Nothing makes her laugh like watching her brother jump around with his boundless energy and bright orange clothes. She laughs out loud, then he laughs, and they go back and forth, filling my heart with their inside jokes. Yesterday her bathtub was in the big tub and both kids were in together. She was fussy, ready for bed, but the bath always puts her in a good mood. And when her brother poured water on her chubby belly, she grabbed his arm and licked, causing him to burst into laughter, and she just grinned, proud of the joke she made. She rolls like a rotissiere chicken all over the house to get where she wants to go and drools on everything. If anything comes near her face, she shakes her head and with a savage gasp, she opens her mouth with a vengenance, ready to taste test. Chewing on her washcloths makes her happy. She scratches everything, even when her nails are cut short, the placemat on the table, the wall when I'm changing her diaper, herself in the bathtub. She likes the noise her fingernails make on different surfaces. She's already an Elmo fan. She shrieks with delight when you say Baby Elmo is SOO big, and tries to grab Boo Boo's Elmo back pack. She has crazy hair. It is growing in chunks, with one long section under one short section. Extreme layers that always dry funny when her daddy gives her a bath and puts her down. Her favorite game is for me to pump her legs and get gerbits and tickles on her belly. Her smile is giant, infectious, and constant. Everything amuses her, for little noises, to me shaking my head, to looking in the mirror. I am sometimes in awe that she finds life so wonderful. She loves to stand, and is a strong little one. She's going crawl very soon. She's had great head and neck control from day one, and oh, it makes me so proud to have a solid little girl. We've done a bit of solid food sampling, and she will eat her rice cereal, but is not interested in peas, bananas, carrots, or green beans. I'm perplexed, but maybe she just isn't ready. And don't jinx it, but for about three weeks, she has been sleeping from 8 pm to 4 am each night. Just like her brother did, she licks the "smell the flowers" and "look in the mirror" pages of Pat the Bunny. She is bliss. She has been very easy and happy go lucky. She goes with the flow and her birth was perfect, unlike her brother who came in a Hurricane. She is beautiful. Her story needs to be told too. I will tell.
3. Boo Boo is the sweetest three year old I know. He loves me reading the Berenstein Bears books to him, especially the ones about their messy rooms, their bad manners, and too much TV, mostly because he likes to say "I don't do that!" He is obsessed with the color orange. We have about 15 orange tshirts, some with Diego, Thomas, Lightnng McQueen, trucks or dinosaurs, and and he chooses one shirt and pair of shorts each day and picks out his own clothes. It was hard to get him to wear pants in the winter. He really likes pink too, but has very seriously informed me that he cannot like pink because that is a girl color. He is super aware of gender differences now, and delights in planning his sister's first birthday. Some days she is going to have a Hannah Montana party, other days a Barbie Mariposa party, but Aerial mermaid is the theme of the week. His lovey blue monkey from when he was six months old has always been named Shar Char, for his mommy's favorite kind of Chinese beef. But Shar Char has undergone a "curious transformation" (his words) and is now a girl kitty cat named Abby. He rocks her, and burps her and pats her like I did his sister. His vocabulary continues to amaze me. He asks for privacy, and, because we read James Marshall's George and Martha books, he knows words like furious, fuss-budget, and touchy. He says "Oh my goodness gracious!" and when something falls, instead "uh-oh, spaghetti-O," he says "uh-oh, over the rainbow!" He has pretty much memorized the movie Cars (and even in the movie, his favorites are the "bad" cars, DJ, Boost, and Snot Rod) and dances to Sheryl Crow and Rascal Flatts. For a while now he has wanted to wear nightshirts at bed time like me. He's careful not to call them dresses in front of his dad, and instead calls them his "big boy shirts" But when he asks us to play school, he always, always wants to be Georgia, this beautiful five year old with waist length hair in his class. When he's Georgia he gets to do all the girly stuff he wants to without worrying about what is boy stuff and what is girl stuff. He used to be known as the kid with such a big appetite for being so tiny, but now, in the last couple of months, like most 3 years old I know, he has gotten very, very picky. I feel like I am a great mother in almost all areas, but I have let him down when it comes to his food. He eats chicken nuggets and grapes or bananas most nights, and pancakes with chocolate chips and milk every morning. In the last week, he has gone through a huge change. Something is clicking and he can do all the 12 piece wooden Melissa and Doug puzzles in about 30 seconds, and he likes to read letters to me when he sees a sign. He used to get his b's and d's mixed up, and his u's and n's, and it is clicking now. He used to get his phonics wrong too ("wuh, wuh, FISH, fuh, fuh TURTLE") but now he can actually, for most letters, say S, suh, suh, snake. He is definitely motivated by praise. He used to wiggle when I cleaned his ears, and when he stopped, I used to say, Boo Boo, you are such a good boy for standing so still while I use the Qtip. Now, if I forget to praise him, he reminds me. And there's not much he won't do in exchange for a sticker. He is cautious and gets scared by thunder, loud unfamiliar flushing toilets, and yelling. He loves to ride his bike and do forward rolls and dance to the Backyardigans. His favorite songs are Mr. Sun and the Itsy Bitsy Spider. His favorite non-kid songs are Deep in the Heart of Texas (apparently, they sing a patriotic song after the Pledge in school. Hey, it's Tomball, Texas) and Rehab by Amy Winehouse because he likes the No, No, No part. Even with all his big boyness, he's sensitive, and will get really sad if there is no one to hug and snuggle with when the Barney "I love you" song comes on at the end of Barney. He has my clumsy gene and my quick smile, and his father's stubborn streak and desire for predictability. He memorizes books and makes my heart melt when he reads them to his sister. He is smart and lazy at once, and is beginning to push the envelope to see what he can get away with. My favorite moments are the times after his bath, when he smell fresh and is reading books with me. He is so loving and open and trusting and vulnerable at the end of the night.
I will keep telling.
