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By Mama Paloma, 18/07/2012 22:10

This is a tough post for me to write for a couple of reasons. The subject matter is sensitive and the situation in question has been really, really difficult for me.

It’s every parent’s nightmare…that your kid tells you that someone did something to them. You know the kind of ‘something’ I mean. In my case, it wasn’t so bad. My kid told me that another kid had introduced him to, ahem, age-inappropriate information and activity. My kid, in a very preschool manner, told me initially by acting out with me, suggesting I do to him what he was asked to do to another child. My twenty-plus years of dealing with these kinds of disclosures (had to do my first suspected child abuse report over 20 years ago while a volunteer in college), knowledge of child development, and experience helping children who have been through sexual abuse served me well. I think I’ve done okay and my kid will be okay.

But this situation has me thinking about  how damn hard it is for adults to deal with these kinds of situations on behalf of kids. This has been the worst part of the whole thing for me. In the ONE situation in my WHOLE LIFE where I should be able to just be the mom – just look after my child, just fall apart when he’s asleep and a friend is near – I have had to be an advocate, an educator, and a scapegoat.

His awesome preschool that I have loved for many reasons has flat out refused to take responsibility. Their response to my clearly articulated concerns has been to state 1) what happened was ‘nothing out of the ordinary’ (trust me, it was) and 2) that it didn’t happen.

The fact is, it did happen. My kid spontaneously described at least four interactions with two different children in three specific locations. What happened wasn’t ‘ordinary’ behavior for 4 and 5 year olds. The things that were done and said are things that a kid does and says when an adult has done and said them to the kid, or when another child who has been abused acts out with that kid. Do I know where it started? No. Do I know that it started somewhere? Yes.

Somewhere is patient zero, the child who was abused.

And this school that is otherwise so loving, so protective, so encouraging to little minds, would prefer to put their collective heads in the sand than deal with that reality. It has been made clear to me that I am the problem and that they don’t want other parents at the school to know that anything really happened.

Adult fear is understandable but can not be a reason for ignoring a problem. Kids who have been acted out with, like my son, are primed for future abuse and for acting out with other kids, perpetuating and expanding the circle of vulnerability. I can’t participate in that.

So, my son is going elsewhere and we are getting professional help to try to ensure that this stops here. There may be other ramifications for the school’s choice but I can’t control that.

Which brings me to my thought number two – what I can do. Which is why I am writing about this, my experience. Like I said, my kid is going to be okay. I have handled things remarkably well, if I do say so myself.

And I am a wreck. My eyes are constantly red and irritated from fatigue but I haven’t slept before midnight without Benadryl (hard core drug for me) in over three weeks. I get heartburn (heartburn? didn’t realize what it was for a few days…never have it) whenever I think/talk/write about it (excuse me while I get a Pepto). Mostly, I am sad. Sad, and scared. Even though I know I have done things right, that what happened was relatively minor (I have plenty of perspective on that), I worry that this will be somehow significant in his schema. I am grieving my inability to keep him protected from the seediness of the world for a little longer.

And I am mad. Mad at whatever adult started this string of acting out with some kid out there. Mad at the school for responding so poorly. Mad at our twisted up culture that links sex and shame so tidily and deeply and keeps parents and kids silent about their experiences.

It makes me appreciate how hard this is for other parents who don’t have the benefit of years of training and experience, of seeing the effects of unattended abuse and the benefits of appropriate action. Other parents who had their own weird experiences and don’t want to mess up their kids with their own ‘issues’ and so believe a school administrator when they finally get up the nerve to say something and hear “Oh, that’s normal.” Parents who are so scared to see/hear what their kid is trying to show/tell them that they hope it will just go away, that their kid will forget.

And so I am committed: to making our communities safer for kids, to expanding the circle of support for parents.

But first I am going to go about making sure my kid is all right, that he gets to learn about his body and sexuality in safe and enjoyable ways, at the times that are right for him.

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By Mama Paloma, 30/01/2011 00:17

A couple of weeks ago, a wrote a letter. Not an ultimatum. More of an eviction notice–an eviction from my life, my frame of reference, my agenda. I held off sending it because I wanted to be sure I was doing the right thing. Don’t get me wrong, I am right. Nothing in this letter is untrue or unfair or even mean. It’s thoughtful and clear and, yes, even kind.

I shared this letter with some friends who I trust to give me a balanced insight and advice. “Send it,” they said. Even the super-zen, the Devil’s advocates, the ‘hold out for the best’ said, “It’s about time.”

I still haven’t. I decided to wait until tonight. To give a full two weeks for myself and the other party  to consider and for some other options to emerge. Tonight, I re-read it. In some ways, I am ready to send it. I am pretty sure that it’s the right thing to do. There comes a point where accommodating becomes self-sacrifice and then self-sacrifice becomes self-destruction.

But I can’t send it. My meditations keep coming back to the principle of doing nothing rather than doing something destructive, of the gentle over the incisive. Right as I may be, taking this step feels like a departure from my spiritual practice.

Or maybe that’s just an excuse, and the opposite is true. Perhaps I am still attached to the outcome I had hoped for. Perhaps I am afraid that I might drop this bombshell and realizing that it wasn’t the right thing to do.

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By Mama Paloma, 02/12/2010 06:55

…to do this right.

I am facing a bit of a crisis on the financial front. This is nothing new. Started when I got knocked up which knocked my unstable but fiscally sound life off its tracks.

I have a bit of a dilemma when it comes to this stuff. Clearly, I am not doing my work for the money. I have been working on the Survivors’ Truths project-cum-organization-with-many-projects without pay for most of the past four years. Like a gambler waiting for that big break, I keep thinking that eventually I’ll get there, have a salary, be solvent.

A few years before my son came along, I made an intentional shift away from the fretting and obsessing I was raised to do, to give myself space to think about other things. Perhaps too much space. When I start to freak out, I tell myself  ’it’s just money.’

My recent trip to Liberia brought the transience of our stability back to mind. I was reminded by the places and sights of the way my life, through a bit of a crappy choice, tilted off its axis and into a whole new orbit three and a half years ago. I was reminded by the people and the still visible scars of war on the city of the potential for outside forces to strip one of everything in an instant.

Still, even as I sat and talked with villagers from communities that had experienced massacres during the conflict, the importance of resources, of access to and control of money, matters. This was a key concern for them…and not in the ‘there’s a white person in the room so we have to ask for money’ way. I know that sensation.

In the end, it was a conversation about social justice. Because justice is when things are in balance, when people have equal and fair access–to recourse and to resources. Because of how the system was set up, these people in Liberia did not have access to either. To get the resources, you have to be a formal organization, be able to write a proposal, have paper to exercise that ability on. Believe it or not, in a post-conflict environment, that last bit can be a deal-breaker. The injustice is clear. To get resources, one must have a certain kind of capacity, regardless of what other more relevant capacities and knowledge you might have. To get that certain kind of capacity, one must have resources.

It’s not that different for a new non-profit. Yes, there are grants out there. But these grants don’t grow on trees, waiting ripe for the picking. The grants are granted by foundations, usually. These foundations look for the financial stability of the organization.

To get the grants to do the work we do we have to be funded to do that work already. It’s a catch-22.

And for me, a single mom, trying to piece it all together, it becomes clear that I need to attend to my personal resources. But my heart, my vision for this work, won’t let me give up on the possibility that, soon, before my savings are all gone, I’ll figure it out.

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By Mama Paloma, 17/10/2010 23:08

I have become very fond of the term ‘growing edge.’ It speaks to an awareness of one’s capacity that is held along with a belief in the potential for expanding possibilities. As I step out, personally and professionally, I have discovered the ragged edges of my capacity and, along with that, begun to envision new directions and opportunities.

This is a very good thing.

At the same time, I am aware that one of my ‘edges,’ one of the things that has shaped my perceptions and experiences since before I can remember. This is a well-developed ability to misperceive my own limits, particularly the limits of my capacity to endure pain, work, fatigue, and difficulty.

I was trained from a very early age to ignore my own distress and to tolerate immense discomfort. When I was four, my appendix ruptured. I had complained, saying ‘my tummy hurts,’ but never cried. It wasn’t until three days later, when it became clear that something was gravely wrong, that my parents took me to a hospital. I should have died, and my parents suffered incredible guilt over this (my poor younger sister was dragged to the ER repeatedly for pangs in her belly). However, this was part of the environment that they, in their own limitations, created and perpetuated. On a regular basis, I was encouraged–no, required–to pretend that things were fine when, by any measure, they were not.

So, in this current endeavor to let my edges grow, to branch across the gaps in my knowledge and ability, I have to hold this other ‘edge’ in the balance. Last week, I was talking with a friend about this. She was bemoaning her failure to ‘enough.’ “Who says?” I asked, and we spent a few moments deconstructing where her ideas of ‘enoughness’ come from an whether she actually agrees with them. We talked about the challenge of measuring progress while working independently and realized that we are really mean bosses, to ourselves. So, there’s the dilemma–how to be a decent boss to myself and still get those other edges growing.

And, man, do they need to. I’ve taken on a number of challenges in the past few years, in combined response to what I feel as some kind of calling (my work as a therapist and subsequent development of Survivors’ Truths) and what seems like some kind of fate (an unplanned pregnancy, relocation, parenthood, relationship with my son’s father). At any one moment, I am learning about leadership and choosing a preschools and keeping track of multiple multifaceted projects at once and time management and schmoozing and asking for money and enjoying the moments and coping with tantrums and building a Board of Directors and handling international family law matters and keeping track of multiple time zones.

It’s a lot to manage. Most of the time I feel that I am not. Managing. The thing is, there are so many things that really need my attention, and some are interdependent, and there is just no way I can do them all. I am growing on the edge of asking for and accepting help. Gratefully, without shame. Before I implode. I am growing on the edge of prioritizing my needs and letting myself have fun.

Yet, all to often, I realize a moment too late that I have slipped off the edge and passed my limit. Like tonight, when my overtired son (who had categorically refused to nap this afternoon) was screaming and kicking me and I was thisclose to losing it myself. I don’t ever want to be so tired that I yell or otherwise intimidate him into compliance, but it has happened. Always when I have misjudged my own limits for sleep deprivation or hunger or aloneness. My limit is just past my edge, and I am on it–the edge–so much.

The thing is, we don’t know where our limits lie. In my work, time and again, I have spoken with people who endured things they couldn’t have imagined let alone thought they could face. They were pushed past their limits and found their ways back. I realize my life, by comparison is a freaking cakewalk. But, on a Sunday night when there’s still five or so hours of last week work that must be done, my son is screaming, the laundry is still dirty, there is a pile of dishes in the kitchen but nothing for breakfast, and I just can’t figure out this bit of HTML (I don’t know HTML) that I need, that fact can be hard to see.

So, I take a moment and think of the people who have inspired me with their courage and resourcefulness and grace in the face of much worse than I have ever known. I remember that, on this Sunday, without intention, I did not have any coffee or tea and perhaps that has more to do with this headache than the burdens of my life. I look around at my comfortable home and my sleeping son. And I find my way back to my edge. That one where I acknowledge and attend to myself, where I am a good boss and a compassionate friend. The one where I don’t have to be dying to get some care and attention. I finish my post, close my computer, and go to bed.

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By Mama Paloma, 02/08/2010 05:51

Memory: When I was a kid, my sister Maya and had a dance contest. Maya is tiny and beautiful and graceful to this day. She always loved ballet and wanted to be a dancer. Maya came out and swayed around the living room, where my parents and brothers and sister sat. Everyone oohed and ahhed at her beautiful dancing. Then it was my turn. I felt the music and leaped around, vividly expressing the emotion and story in my head. My family laughed. My mom suggested that I should do more gymnastics. I was good at the balance beam.

I was crushed. I didn’t imagine I was great, but didn’t think I was all that bad. Not so much because I couldn’t dance but because my perception of myself was so wrong. This sense of not being able to judge how I appear has permeated my life in weird ways. Like tonight, when I am feeling like a social outcast and not sure if that is a moment of clarity or a complete distortion.

Maybe it’s just because I am tired or spending too many nights alone lately watching Hulu or working too much from home/in an office where I don’t really interact with colleagues, but I feel like I am losing my social skills. What little I had. The thing is, I am actually what they call an introvert and socializing is really a huge effort. It’s like my dancing. If I can forget it, I feel I am doing all right, but once I start to think about it I realize that my mom was right. I am totally ungraceful. I should stick to gymnastics.

I have always been painfully shy, always had the sense of being an outsider and not quite knowing what is going on or if I just said something awfully wrong and everyone is just smiling out of pity and compassion, trying not to humiliate me. The effect of this is that I generally feel vaguely ashamed, awkward, bumbling.

Like this post.

People I have shared this with never believe me because, they tell me, I appear at ease in group/social situations. But I am not. I am overwhelmed and intimidated. I freeze up and get tunnel vision. I go on a sort of auto-pilot that makes remembering names (even when everyone has a name tag) embarrassingly impossible. Making small talk is weird and worrisome because I am far too likely to forget what someone just told me–about their dog, their job, their child. My brain becomes like my son’s Magna-doodle–doesn’t matter how great a picture you draw, a shake or slide of the magic magnet wand and it’s gee-oh-en-ee gone. The more time I spend alone, the harder this is to handle. It used to be just in large, loud groups but now a simple dinner party can put me in this weird head space. I am not sure what to do about this.

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By Mama Paloma, 11/06/2010 22:35

Quite a few people have been asking for an update on the AJ/his daddy situation, especially since my unceremonious announcement on FaceBook that we will be traveling to Australia in a few weeks to visit said daddy. I have received responses ranging from “That’s great!” to “Are you out of your freaking mind?” and, as usual, I think reality falls somewhere in between. Navigating these new waters of involvement with the baby daddy is somewhat tricky business, and it can be hard to explain the nuances of the various currents that I am being pulled by and my decisions about sometimes fighting, sometimes working with them.

Suffice it to say that I don’t really know what has gone on. After the email from the fiancee who was talking about planning their wedding, he told me they had been separated and breaking up for some time. Once again, my assumption is that reality falls somewhere in between those two versions.

The thing is, it really doesn’t matter. I had assumed they were together when he first contacted me about having a relationship with AJ. I have not considered our getting back together as even a remote possibility. What I have kept possible, in my heart and mind, is AJ’s eventually knowing his dad, perhaps even his extended family, and that relationship being a source of support and meaning for him.

On the other hand, I have to protect my son. I have to figure out how much I can trust the people he has relationships with. In my family, there are people with whom I have chosen to have limitations. This is because of certain things that happened in the past that I just can’t risk happening with AJ. While AJ loves them and sees them as important parts of his life, I don’t leave him alone with them. We don’t stay at their home. In contrast to my general way of doing things, I have chosen not to have a relationship with another relative, this time because of the level of disrespect she shows to everyone around her and the emotional danger that poses for AJ.

Now, as far as AJ’s father is concerned, I am torn. On the one hand, he has been nothing short of a big, fat, complete, total, unequivocal, lying sack of crap. On the other hand, he has been consistent in his commitment to AJ, has been profoundly attentive in their conversations and when they were together, and is respectful and collaborative with me around parenting and other issues. We get along very well. He backs me up as a parent (in stark contrast to some guys I have dated who have felt the obligation to coach me on how to discipline and parent).

He swears up and down that this is the only thing he has been less than truthful about with me since re-establishing contact and that he will be completely open and honest from here on out. That’s nice but all too familiar. I can’t trust it because it’s a worn-out line and because my perceptions of his honesty, my capacity to recognize inconstancy in him, have been so flawed to date. So, now everything he says comes with a parenthetical (he says) with it. I can’t say it’s true, only that it’s what he said and that’s all I know. Because I am here in Los Angeles and he is there, seven hours earlier tomorrow, seven thousand four hundred ninety-seven miles away, give or take.

So, we are going to visit. It might seem soon, but (he says) it is the only time he can take off before his planned longer visit here around New Years. I want to 1) have more time with him, to see how it is, before he comes back into our space for a longer stretch of time, 2) see him in his element, get a sense for what is really going on and 3) to meet his family, establish some connections with those connected to him, explore their hopes and my realities for their being involved in AJ’s life.

Best case scenario? We sort heaps out and have a lovely time.

Worst case scenario? I find out he really is a pathological liar, call one of my friends in Syndey, and get us the hell out of there.

Of course, I imagine that reality will be somewhere in the middle.

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By Mama Paloma, 23/05/2010 23:00

This week has been a time of adjustment, of integrating the experience of having AJ’s dad here into my world view, re-structuring my assumptions, opening to more possibility and complexity.

And then it got real.

Friday morning, I opened my email box and saw a message from Adam. He is meant to be out on assignment for some weeks, so communication will happen when it can. I smiled, thinking he would have perhaps looked at the link to a video message from AJ that I had sent him the day before.

My heart sank. For her, for me, for AJ. This was the same ‘ex-fiancee’ who turned out not to be so much an “ex” back in 2007, a fact I discovered when I was already four months pregnant.

I can see him carrying on the lie with her. If he loves her and doesn’t want to lose her, he may not have been able to come clean about the adorable two-year-old clone in America that he was only now getting to know. Still, I just don’t understand his lying to me about this now. When he first contacted me to see what might be possible in terms of a relationship with Addison, I actually assumed that they were still together and commented as much. He said, no, that they had split up after things came out about our relationship in 2007. We have had a few conversations about this. We have had more conversations about my misgivings about him and his trustworthiness and the importance of having an honest and respectful relationship if I am going to facilitate his access to Addison. He seemed totally on board with that, open and honest, answering my questions with ease.

Theories abound as to his motivations, what is really going on with her, what I should do. As far as I am concerned, that all remains to be seen, or not, and will evolve with time and more information.

More potent for me is the challenge this brings to my practices around love, good intention, and faith in possibility. I have, for the past three years, acted in good faith (with sometimes protracted moments of existential tantruming mixed in for sure), been honest and forthright, and stood against the forces that would have had me act out of anger and fear to cut Adam off from AJ forever. I have prayed with my son every night since he was an infant for his father’s safety and happiness, honestly upheld his well-being in my heart with compassion and hope.

When he indicated he was ready, I opened my mind, our lives, to him. I gave him the opportunity to step up, to treat me with respect, to build a connection with Addison. It seemed like he was doing just that.

I was deceived. Again.

Over the past couple of days, I have gone through self-recrimination (I should have seen this coming, should have asked more questions, should have…), rationalization (maybe there is an explanation that will make this all make sense), anger, and sadness.

Past all that, though, I have found an emptiness, a lack of anything meaningful to make of it all. A loss of belief in and hope for decency and goodness.

Don’t get me wrong. I know there is decency and goodness aplenty in the world. Right now, though, my personal connection to these things seems pretty frail. I want to rage, to indict, to seek and find THE TRUTH so that it can be very, very clear how wrong he has been and how in the right I am.

So, I believe that the real test in this may be the degree to which I allow acts of betrayal and cynicism to draw me over to the dark side where I can hide my hurt and shame in self-righteous indignation and harsh judgment. Certainly he deserves it, doesn’t he?

He may. I have a posse of people to back me up in that, too. But, my friends, this is just not the kind of person I want to be. More importantly, it is not the example I want to be for AJ. I still want my son “to learn that, no matter what another person does, he can choose what he brings to the table. I want him to know in his bones that he can be mad at someone, and protect himself, and be strong, and still choose to act out of compassion.”

It’s just really hard to hold on to that right now.

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By Mama Paloma, 17/05/2010 04:22

Just eleven days over three years since he was conceived on Africa’s west coast, my son AJ met his father. Adam lives in Australia and his job does not let him get away much at all, but does let him travel some so he was able to tack two days with us on to the end of some work here in the US.

I was happy that this had worked out and happy that it was only two days–what if it was awful?

I was also nervous.  What if he didn’t show up? What if he did and it was awful? Then there were the other emotions–the betrayal and hurt that I had to box up and set aside for the past two and a half years. So, I was alternately calm and rational–What’s the worst that can happen? Whatever does happen is good information. Better to know now if he’s going to be a jerk now than find out when AJ is older and more likely to be affected. Right?–and a wreck. Up until the day he arrived, I was half-sure he was going to bail. Just not show up. I shared these feelings with him and then was sure that I had just made sure he would go AWOL.

He didn’t. He showed up. He was attentive and comfortable with AJ and was kind and cooperative with me. In two days, we were able to sort out an unbelievable amount of ‘stuff,’ including establishing some legal parameters that I wanted in place and getting answers to my questions about what had happened to me back in 2007. AJ was over the moon and Adam was smitten with his son. Anyone seeing them would never have guessed that they had only just met. Anyone seeing us would never have guessed that we live on two continents and have been estranged since before our son was born.

It was really, really nice. Unexpectedly easy and sweet and wonderful.

A part of me wishes it would have been a bit harder. Would make the rest of the time easier. I don’t mean I wish it didn’t work, just that perhaps it didn’t work so well. You know, when you have guests and you like them and enjoy their company but it is (let’s be honest, here) a relief to see them go.

It was a short visit, but very intense. Still, we really get on well, were very comfortable with each other. We were able to talk honestly and be genuinely respectful.

It wasn’t that we were playing nice. I asked the hard questions and he faced the hard truths…of what he missed, of the hurt he caused…but it was with respect and compassion. It was weird. I should have been angry, he should have been defensive. Instead, we had a taste of what could have been…and were both affected by that. He didn’t want to leave and I didn’t want him to go. This was a completely, totally unexpected development.

For me, it is a bit scary because this opened up a whole new uncharted territory. I know how to be the single mom done wrong who is getting on with her life without the man. Now, it seems, I have a co-parent who is very cooperative but who also very much wants to be involved. And I like the involvement. And it is very limited, by distance and circumstance.

And, today, I am sad. I feel a bit like someone who was born without an arm. They are used to having one arm and don’t wish for another, even noticing at times how cumbersome having two arms could be. Then, they get to try on an amazing bionic prosthetic arm. But only for a day or two. For those two days, they have a different sense of balance, of ability, of taking up space in the world.

Then they have to let that arm go.

Don’t get me wrong, Adam is coming back. It’s all good. We’re working out a schedule for visits and communication.

It’s just that I have been so diligent, so intentional, about keeping space open for Adam in AJ’s life. I didn’t realize how letting him occupy that space might affect me.  I had no idea now that, once was here and gone,  that space would feel like a gaping hole.

This only hit me last night as we watched him go up the escalator to the security screening area. AJ, on my shoulders, craning for a last glimpse of his daddy, sensed my quiet tears and asked, “Mommy, you sad?” ”Yes, sweetie, I’m sad,” I replied. ”Don’t cry mommy,” he said, “Daddy be back soon.”

Yes, my son, you will see your daddy as soon as we can manage it. And we will somehow manage the rest.

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By Mama Paloma, 16/10/2009 07:43

Tonight I started a class in jewelry casting–where you create what you want out of wax, which is then encased in plaster, and then melted metal is spun into the plaster, vaporizing the wax as it takes the form of what you created. It’s a kind of tangible magic. I have done a bit of this kind of thing before, in High School and one piece since then, but started in the beginner class to get the technical stuff.

I have been looking forward to this, to being able to do something on a regular basis ‘just because.’ My mom recently moved here and that, combined with the return of Addison’s adopted neighborhood grandma and angel of babysitting Roberta, means that I can commit to doing something one night each week for the next month and a half. It’s a wonderful thing.

For me, jewelry is art and very symbolic. I don’t usually wear something because it is pretty. I will wear a pretty thing because it represents something, reminds me of some time, or connects me to someone. When I divorced, I couldn’t sell or dispose of my rings, so I went to a studio in Santa Monica and created a pendant out of wax that, for me, symbolizes the way that my marriage is a part of who I am and who I am becoming. The material is still there, just the shape has changed.

So, tonight, I had an idea of what I wanted to do. I have been thinking a lot about how our lives intersect and connect and disconnect. I want to create jewelry that is the clasp. The connection is the art and the beauty, rather than the afterthought. I am still going to do this.

However, tonight, the instructor wanted us to start on rings. I didn’t have an idea for a ring. Then, it came to me. I wanted to do a ring for Addison, that represents his place in my life. I decided that I would do it in a way that I could give it to him someday, maybe as he goes off to college or something, to remind him of the love I have for him and the preparation he has had to create his own life. I began imagining two bands that connect without intertwining, his starting off slim and supported by mine, and then broadening until mine is less visible.

This idea is challenging to carve out of wax. I started twice, cutting new bands of wax to work with, meditating the whole time on how to represent the experience that I have had of developing a secure attachment (for him) even as I let go (for him). I have written about this before, in “Mama’s here” and “Killing me softly.” For the better part of three hours, I was immersed in thoughts about this and how to express it in this new medium.

Class ended and one of my classmates offered to drop me home. I had walked up to Barnsdall Park for class pushing Addison in his stroller. Roberta came to meet us and took him to play for a bit before bed. I left my jacket in the stroller and it was cold-ish and late when we came out. My classmate asked me how old Addison is. “This is my baby,” she said, handing me a photo. I looked at what appeared to be a sleeping newborn. Then noticed the words at the bottom. “Rest in peace, little dude.” I looked at her. “He died,” she said, tears in her eyes.

All I could say was, “I am so sorry.”

I would have said, “I can’t imagine” but I can. I want to know that his life will go on endlessly, supported by my love. I want to make it real in wax and metal. But I know. This connection is tenuous, each moment a gift.

I wrote before that I want to be there when he dies, and I do. I don’t want him to face that alone, without his mama to help him over. Now I just have to figure out how to live with it if it does happen that way.

And tonight, my heart is with this other mother, who doesn’t get to go check to make sure her boy is still breathing, who will never get to hear her son call “mama.” My heart is with her, and it aches, and at the end of the night there is no magic.