Our Boys

I can remember the day so clearly.  My best friend, Jen, had told me she was going to find out whether she was expecting a little boy or girl and that she’d let me know as soon as she left the doctor. I was at work and checked my phone a dozen times.  I finally texted her a pink heart, a blue heart, and a question mark, unable to wait any longer.  After a bit she texted back a blue heart and then right after that she said, “I hope that you’re okay with it.”  And with that my heart broke a little.  Here she was on one of the most exciting days of her life and she was worried about my feelings; I hated myself a little for that.  I hated that I had let my grief push its way to the forefront of yet another amazing moment and it wasn’t even my moment.  I quickly responded, “OF COURSE it’s okay!” And truly, it was. But I would be lying if I didn’t say it hurt something awful too.   The hurt wasn’t born of jealously-not an ounce of that-but that our beautiful baby boys would never play together; that we would never take a picture of them together and look back at it in wonder that they’d ever been that little, as there is no doubt in my mind that Jen and I will grow old together.  

I love me some Oliver; we all do.  Sean gets such a kick out of him and Kennedy has loved him like her own baby brother from the moment she first held him.  And so I was feeling pretty sad that we didn’t get to make a vacation happen with them the way with did last summer and so I made plans to head to Boston for a day or two with Carter since K would be at gymnastics camp.  

So after Kennedy’s first week of camp we made a visit to Long Island.  It was filled with family, boat rides, and pool days.  It was great and needed but all of it was overshadowed by the fact that my baby boy looked at me, while I was putting on makeup to head to a bridal shower and said, “Mama.”  I swear to God I almost cried ever drop of mascara I’d just applied. To hear that sound come from the mouth of a little boy has been something my heart has been desperate to hear for the last three and a half years.  He is a snuggly, mushy little mama’s boy (which I mean in the most affectionate way) and he soothes my soul in ways I can’t begin to put into words. It was a great long weekend but it took its toll on the little girl and so we skipped camp this week.  

I went back and forth about bringing her with us but decided not to, which she was not thrilled with me about.  The thing is, it would make it a very different visit and I felt like I needed it to be low key and low maintenance, neither of which describes my fiery, wild-haired girl.  She was entertained by her grandparents and did just fine through FaceTime calls and some whining.  The little man and me?  We did just fine too.  

The second we arrived to Jen and I saw Oliver’s little face light up as he shouted over the pouring rain, “Hi Baby!” I was done.  Jen parked the car for me and I made my way up the stairs holding one boy in my arms and the hand of the other as he chatted to me.  The second we walked through the door Oliver directed us to sit on the floor and he talked Carter, showing off all of his bog boy moves.  Carter was enthralled by him, laughing and trying to mimic the sounds and clapping.  Separated by one year and one day, they had not yet met face to face as life just got in the way, but they acted like old friends instantly (except when poor Oliver got close enough for a fistful of hair from the Ultimate Hair-Puller). Watching them, my heart was literally fluttering.  Though in this scenario Oliver was the big boy and Carter the baby, my brain allowed my heart to remind me he would have been sandwiched between my boys in a different life and I smiled to myself thinking of the noise level with three and how they’d have been thick as thieves. Just like that, our boys were together.  And it was everything I needed it be all of these years.  

We had a great visit that ended too quickly but we had a little girl that missed us and wanted us (mostly “her baby”) back home and so we got one last picture of the little men together and headed back to New York.

We decided to add another big milestone to month ten for Carter and took him to get his first haircut. While the mullet has always made me laugh I find it less funny on the heads of my children and so I thought a good trim was in order.  I went off the suggestion of a friend and brought him to an honest-to-God Barber Shop in the town next door; the kind where the barber’s were sitting outside waiting for men in need of some grooming.  A guy that could have been Sean’s doppelgänger was “up” and instantly started talking to Carter, making him feel at ease and let him touch the buzzer and combs.  My big guy- my last baby- he never fussed or cried once.  And though every snip of his baby hair’s made me want to scream STOP!!  I knew it was really Time I wanted to stop and not this sweet man cutting his hair.  In a month and a half he will be One and I’m just not ready to be there yet. So he is still my baby.  My baby with a pretty damn cute ‘do. 

As if there just wasn’t enough emotion coursing through my veins as we got in the car Kennedy asked why we were taking Carter’s hair home in a bag.  I explained that we’d done the same for her and that I had a special box to put it in.  Naturally, her mind always loops in Jack when I say “my kids” and so she asked, “Did you keep Jackie’s hair too?”  I could barely breath but managed to squeak out “No” as the tears started welling up behind my sunglasses.  When she asked why, I couldn’t give her a good answer because I was too busy asking myself the same question Why?! Why didn’t I ask them for a lock of his hair? He'd had so much.  It was dark blond and it was beautiful and I suddenly wanted to touch it more than anything in the world.  Grief is funny that way; it comes out at unexpected times and swallows you up.  And so, as I do whenever my heart calls out for Jack, I did my best to take in every second of time with his baby brother and sister, believing that he lives through them.

My summer vacation is winding down with my return to work starting in August.  Time off never feels like enough but there has been some pretty good moments to carry my through until our beach vacation down south the end of August.  Until then, I will soak in the sun and the chaos.  You do the same, my friends. 

Bottling Summer

There is something about a summer vacation that is so magical you want to bottle up all of the feelings and sprinkle them as needed throughout the rest of the year.  There is a sense of relaxation of getting away from life for a bit and living solely for the week or two ahead of you.  The Doyles had that kind of week this past seven days on Martha’s Vineyard.  My best friend Jen and I had gone for a weekend three years ago for her bachelorette party.  I can remember taking an early morning walk and saying how great it would be to come back the next year together with our families.  By then I knew Sean and I were planning on our second baby, and I said I’d go with a little baby and Jen knew her and her new husband wanted to start a family and could possibly be expecting, but she said she’d go if she was pregnant.  It all sounded so perfect-we’d make a yearly thing out of it we’d said.  Well a lot of life happened and we hadn’t made it back there until last week and it looked a bit different than we’d planned on.  Jen and her husband Andrew were there with their first baby, Oliver, about to turn one, and Sean and I there with just Kennedy and expecting our third baby.  Things did not turn out as we’d thought but the result was still something I think we’d both pictured that morning. 

Sean and I had another vacation at the end of August booked- a beach house near Myrtle Beach with a bunch of my family and all of our kids.  We were trying to get pregnant for a while and we had said we’d just time it so it wouldn’t effect the trip- either we’d go with a new baby or we’d be expecting one in a few months.  Again, things did not turn out as we’d planned (you’d think I’d have learned by now).  A big, huge, gorgeous house, right on the beach.  Sean has been the one organizing it, making the plans, etc.  Then suddenly I’m pregnant and guess who can’t go?  Sean and Kennedy will still go down and spend a few days enjoying the place with everyone but this mama was benched and put on the no fly list.  So, I, being such a good sport, whined one night and said, “I need a vacation before this baby comes! We have to go somewhere I can go too!”  I talked to Jen, we made the plans, did our research and we booked a house back in February; scheduled our car on the ferry to cart all of the things that go with the children.  Then we waited.  As the year dragged on, and the stress of a baby after a loss piled on, I really couldn’t have waited to go much longer. 

We packed and planned, buying plenty of rainy day activities to keep Kennedy’s restless nature at bay should the weather not cooperate.  We had several jaunts down to Long Island the weekends prior for family parties, engagements and graduations, and so the suitcases had become a permanent fixture in our bedrooms.  After a quick strawberry pick and jam-fest with my mom, sister and nephews, we finally had arrived at our departure day.  Being that it was the weekend before the Fourth of July we were anticipating some pretty gruesome traffic, but the travel gods showed us some favor that day and we made it there in plenty of time.  We packed in Jen’s family’s belongings and made our way onto the ferry and, almost instantly, the stress melted away.  Well most of it anyway. 

The house was sweet.  Nothing fancy, but exactly what two families with kids needed for a week.  Well, aside from the fact that there was a lot of “natural light” in the bedrooms, which encouraged some very early wakeups from the kids every morning.  After that the days were filled with walks, beach trips (which even though requires a lot of effort on the parts of moms and dads are well worth it for the big smiles that were had), and a lot of delicious food. 

Our second or third day there we found ourselves at the beach one morning and after getting all set up another family came and set up near by.  I didn’t pay much attention until the kids came down by the water where I was parked in a chair watching Kennedy splash around and play.  I wasn’t really focused on anything in particular until something came into focus.  The little girl, probably around seven or eight that Kennedy was playing along side and then eventually with had Down syndrome.  She wasn’t very verbal, which was clear after Kennedy asked her what her name was and replied, “Huh??” every time she attempted to say, “Rebecca.”  I called Kennedy over and tried to simply explain in a way that wouldn’t illicit too many questions from my overly curious little girl that ‘she doesn’t have all of her words yet, so just have fun and play with her’.  And that’s what they did; they chased each other around, and shared Kennedy’s goggles, and splashed- not needing to say anything.  It was clear, they were speaking the same language to each other: Kid.  I sat there, unable to take my eyes off what was in front of me; a rare glimpse at what life could have looked like if Jack could have stayed with us.  I cried behind my sunglasses with a big smile on my face-all of the emotions coursing through my heart at once.  And when her mother came over to apologize in the event we were bothered, I said, “Oh no, she’s great, let her play!”

Oh and my husband decided to do a flip off the bridge there (because all the kids were doing it).  I wish he could have heard how impressed they were by him.  It didn't matter though-he was pretty impressed by himself.

The next day was an emotional one for me.  I was officially thirty weeks.  I had officially past the mark of where my pregnancy with Jack ended.  I delivered him at twenty-nine weeks and five days.  I had all the feels going on, but relief was again at the forefront.  My mind tried to again, for the umpteenth time, to remind my heart, “It’s different this time.  Everything is different.”  I gave myself the permission I needed to feel everything I was feeling and continue on with a gorgeous day in a little fishing village called Menemsha.  I snapped lots of pictures of Kennedy and Sean climbing around on the rocks as I reminded her to be careful at least fifty times and laughing to myself as I heard her say to Sean, thinking I was out of earshot, “Why is Mommy always worrying so much?”  As I listened to Sean give her what he thought, mistakenly, she would accept as an answer, I fell a little more in love with him.  I don’t know if it was the perfect background, or the way he talks to our little lady, or that seagull print shirt he was rocking, but I found myself thanking God that we made it through the other side of the storm together.

Jen and Andrew watched Kennedy for us later that night so we could grab a nice, quiet dinner in Edgartown together.  It was all perfect; from the views, to the fancied-up version of pigs-in-a-blanket that neither of us could resist, to the mocktail “Fassionola” the waitress brought over.

The rest of the week carried on with more beach and delicious lobster rolls than I could have asked for.  Kennedy gushed over baby Oliver all day, every day, so eager to help with everything except the dirty diapers; but who could blame her-he’s near-impossible to resist snuggling. 

Kennedy and Sean rode the oldest carousel in the United States in Oak Bluffs two separate days, grabbing the brass ring twice!  She thought she’d struck gold- but her genuine smiles were the real prize for me.

On the Fourth of July, we packed up a picnic dinner and made our way back to Edgartown in time to catch an adorable parade from the cutest little park and see the fireworks show down at the Harbor.  Kennedy loved everything about it and said more than ten times, no exaggeration, “I love it here, lets never leave!”

Of course, on our last full day, we went to the most perfect beach that ever was.  When we got there and asked the parking attendant which side we should go to with the kids he said, “Well, the pond is kid heaven so…”  he wasn’t kidding.  With the ocean on one side of us, separated only by some small dunes, was the gorgeous freshwater pond, clear, and shallow, and full of little fish Kennedy tried to catch with a bucket for the whole 3 hours we were there.  Next time, that’s the go–to spot for sure.

Like all good things, it had to come to and end, and as we packed, Kennedy voiced what the rest of us were feeling, “Can’t we just stay here forever?”  But we packed it up and made our way home, agreeing that this should become an annual trip.

And now to finish off the summer at home, waiting for another little boy that will undoubtedly change our lives.  Monday, we will pick up Kennedy’s first pair of glasses, which we learned she needs last week, and hopefully find out what school she will start in come September. 

If I could bottle all this up, folks, I would.