I'm working on it.

Out of the blue, a gift. A longed for, hoped for, wished for, dreamed of, gift. A surprise. Two little pink lines. And then two more lines. And then two more. Because for whatever reason, the first test is never believable. Neither is the second, but as they say, third time's the charm.

Ten weeks went by. Ten secret weeks of silent excitement.  Ten weeks of whispers after bedtime, talks of tiny sleepers and diapers and little hands and feet.  Ten weeks of secret list making, names and dates and ideas and plans.  Ten weeks of smelling everything, eating less, needing spice and feeling sick.

The night of my younger daughter's fourth birthday, we knew.

An emergency trip to the obstetrician confirmed the bad. And we were sent home to wait. To wait.

Nobody talks about what happens to you when you lose a baby.
No one tells you what will happen.
No one tells you about the utter awfulness of it.

There were some vague instructions from the nurses, and hugs and many quiet 'so very sorry' whispers, and one ugly, abrasive, "I can't help you, have a nice day" from a member of the frontline staff, and that's it.

We went home into the unknown, an unknown that turned out to be dark and hard and painful, physically painful, emotionally painful, utterly awful, and secret.  Secret like the first ten weeks.  This time a secret sorrow, that time a secret joy.

Our baby died and we watched life go on around us.  Two different friends had babies that week, and we could see their newborn pictures in our news feeds, tiny little hands and feet, tiny little baby sleepers, tiny little diapers.  Another pregnant friend complained about her growing stomach, all the while my own seemed to grow smaller and more empty with every minute's passing.

On Sunday, two people stood next to me and asked me if we were trying to have a baby. Was there anything coherent in my stammered reply: "no, not really, well, not right now, I mean, we would love a baby, but no, I guess not really now".  And in my mind, 'bite down hard. don't cry. smile hard'. So that's what I did.

Our children do not know yet. When they ask, "Mommy, why are you crying?" we just reply with a vagueness of our own: "Mommy's heart is just sad, honey.  Sometimes grown-ups have sad days, too".

The other day the words came out, out loud, to a friend. And that night to another. They cried for me. They knew, too. They knew the utter awfulness, too.

Our baby died.

My dear friend sent this poem, along with her love and prayers and the kind of hope that only comes from knowing the truth of life.  It's page has been open since she sent it; I read it and read it and read it.

Our baby died, and is gone, undiminished, to the other shore. We know the One who stands there, receiving those lives, receiving our tiny gift, our little undeserved surprise, the never-dying-soul we knew for a secret ten weeks, and so we have hope.

...the one when circumstances make clear the necessity of change.
...the one when nobody's guessing what comes next.
...the one when doubt becomes impossible.
...the one when you finally get it.

heart. break. ing.

In the end, it's all ok.

Right now though, it's time to shake the dust off our feet and move on.

Still working it out.  Still working on it.

It is only Tuesday afternoon, but I already feel like I'm running out of time in the week. Sick children and ballet practice, overdue library books and overflowing laundry baskets, dental appointments and language assessments, races and grocery trips - these things seem endless. And I can't imagine what it would be like if we did more than one extra-curricular activity each.

What happens to the time?

...

Math takes up a lot of room. There are lots of pieces to math. Lots of worksheets. Lots of counting blocks. Lots of money. Lots of rulers and shapes and flashcards and erasers and balances and clocks and cubes and charts and stuff. It takes up a lot of room.

There are lots of pieces to school in general. Lots of pens and pencils and erasers and markers and crayons and colored pencils and glue and scissors and paper (and lots of kinds of paper) and folders and pictures and books and more flash cards and more worksheets and rings and binders and more folders. It takes up a lot of room.

And science and history and art and music and geography. These things take up a lot of room.

And we don't even have a real globe yet. (Ours is a blow up model that often sees time spent as a ball.) Or a real microscope, or safety goggles, or a piano.

Also, in addition to all the pieces, these things take up a lot of mental space.

I have long ago forgotten all the reasons why the a and the i and the a and the y say "aaaaa". This is also true for why the e and the a say "eeeee" sometimes and "eh" others. These reasons are filed away in the dark storage room of my getting-older-by-the-minute brain, and it is hard to find the folders, dust them off and recall the facts I used to know.

I have long ago forgotten the names of the properties (all but the commutative) and the rules for where you are supposed to start drawing the four and whether or not it has a square or a triangle as its base. I can't remember what order I learned all my facts in, and if I liked it or if it was beneficial or if it was destructive to my overall comprehension of mathematics. It is all filed away, in the same room as the phonics and grammar rules, albeit a different drawer.

How does one keep up with all of these facts? There are a lot of facts to know. There are a lot of facts to remember, and then there are the reasons behind the facts. This, I've discovered, is the beauty of the teacher's manual.

I have decided today that teaching multiple subjects to multiple ages is hard. After three years of homeschooling, I now understand the joyful existence of co-ops and academies. OHHHHH, so *that's* why you add that one-more-trip-out-of-the-house to the weekly activities list: so someone else can keep up with the science facts.

...

Thank God for the sunshine and the warmer air. The trees are still missing a lot of leaves, but the air smells like spring and the light is finally staying longer in the evenings. I like how it feels to have the doors open in the daytime. The birds are chirping nearly all day, and their songs make for a happy energy.

Soon, soon, soon, I keep telling myself, that soon it will be spring - lovely, color-filled, sweet smelling spring. And then summer, hopefully a long, warm, sunny one, spent by the ocean with these fast-growing girls of ours.

...

Last night, we cooked dinner for two nights. That means tonight I don't have to cook. That is a blessing, a huge, warm hug of a blessing. It removes so much stress from the day to have one less thing to do. The dishwasher will still have to be unloaded (for the third time today) and re-loaded, but that is so small in the grand scheme of things. And I think it also makes the dinner taste even better, to know that it comes with little more effort than warming up a chop or two.

As I sit here listening to the girls sing and color together, all of us waiting for the man of the house (and let's face it, the hero to each of us) to arrive, life seems more manageable than it did fourteen graphs ago. Perhaps it's the coffee.