The Beautiful, Little House

It has been so long. There has been so much life that has been happening around here that if we haven’t been on the go, it would first off- be a miracle, and second probably only mean that we have fallen asleep.  

Once spring rolled in it has been nonstop, starting with an amazing trip to Disney World with my cousin and his family.  It was a rare, unicorn-like Disney trip where, honest-to-God, every single kid was happy each day, an the adults didn’t need a massive drink by ten in the morning. It was really wonderful; it has also been all systems go from the moment we returned. Miss Kennedy’s life has all but taken over, with the constant shuffle to and from the various fields she is playing on, pushing gymnastics to the back burner for the spring; but she is happy and immersed in the little life she is making for herself.  My baby no long resembles anything close to a baby, with the exception of his delicious chubby cheeks that are accentuated by his nearly ever-present smile.  He is all too happy to tag along on a jam-packed days and would literally follow is big sister to the end of the earth.  

And then the real reason it’s been so long:  We are moving.  We are doing what I swore up and down we’d never do; we are leaving our home and moving to a new one.  It’s exciting, it really, truly is.  We are moving to the kind of house I never imagined I’d live in at (almost) thirty-four. It’s gorgeous and will be an amazing house for my babies to grow up in and for Sean and I to grow old in.  So, yes, I am so excited.  But, as with everything else in my life the last four and a half years, my excitement and joy is very tightly intertwined with so many other feelings.  

Seven and a half years ago as we sat in a room, signed our names what seemed to be a billion times, and ended with keys in our hands, I really did think they were the keys to our forever home. 

 I was pregnant with Kennedy and couldn’t wrap my head around all that came with that, let alone think there would be more kids.  Our beautiful little house was perfect for a little family of three. 

We spread out, laughing as our girl’s stuff started to take over.  It was the three of us-we had plenty of room-even a guest room!  We loved it; we’d cram people in the backyard for parties and inside when we were feeling bold, shifting all of furniture around to make it work.  And then we decided to expand our family.  We dragged our feet getting the house in order to shift Kennedy over to he extra bedroom and change her, pretty, tiny nursery into a room fit for a little boy.  But we never got a round to it.  Our sweet Jack came too early, and he left too soon and so the door was shut and left untouched for two more years.

In a desperate attempt to change a home that had seemed to me then to be so damaged by the hurt and loss I covered up all of the beautiful warm, dark paint that had drawn us in in the first place.  I painted all of the walls a light gray, I covered the red bricks of the fireplace white; literally trying to cover the darkness that had settled within the walls of the home I had loved for almost three years. And it worked, my little house adapted and felt like home again.  It graciously accepted the roots of the little tree we planted in our boy’s name, nourishing it and allowing it to take hold and grow.  I swore we would never leave it.  

And then a new light came to our little home.  A little boy we needed and wanted so badly came home to our house and the rooms were now as full as our hearts.  And it was perfect.  

But the difference between beautiful little houses and beautiful little children is the beautiful little children grow.  They grow and they grow and they grow.  They run through the halls of a home no matter how small they are.  They fill the rooms with their things, no matter how small the rooms are or how small their things seem.  

And so Sean and I talked about it.  We talked, we argued, we agreed and disagreed.  We looked into making our little house bigger; trying to change it to be what we needed it to be.  It just wouldn’t work.  It just wouldn’t make sense to try and make our beautiful little home anything more than what it was always meant to be for us, even if I would never allow myself to call it such: a starter home.  A home to start our life in.  And we did just that.  

There has been so much life in this house.  There has been so much love, and so much loss that happened within the walls of this home.  

This is the home that my sweet baby was supposed to come home with us to; this is the only house he was ever supposed to be in and my broken heart can’t help but ache knowing we are moving to a place he was never meant to go to.  This home will be the home Sean’s dad visited us, staying in our little makeshift bedroom under the basement stairs, buying Sean the silly little push mower it took hours to mow the lawn with because that was good enough to get the job done; it hearts my heart to leave here.  

And then there is the tree. How am I supposed to leave the tree? I have been asked so many times, by so many people that love us and know how much we love the tree, “You can’t leave the tree!”  As with most things in my life, I have had to stop and have conversations with myself about guilt and not allowing it to consume me.  I will miss my gorgeous little tree; the beautiful little tree that grows in place of and in honor of my son.  The tree that seems to, appropriately, bloom a little later than the others like it around the neighborhood.  The tree that love grew.  But I can not allow myself to forget that the tree is not my son.  Jack is gone, even if I dug the tree up, and it by chance survived the transplanting and took root in a new spot, he is not here. But he lives in my heart, he goes where I go.  And so we will leave the tree here to continue to bloom and grow.

We will leave the little tree with the beautiful house that grew a beautiful family.  We will leave the beautiful little house to a new little family to grow into and likely grow out of down the road as well.  And if that is meant to be the legacy of this little home, to grow families and send them out into the world bigger and stronger and full of love, than I am so honored to have been a part of its story. 

Until next time, which is hopefully sooner rather than later and from within the walls of the new home that the Doyles will fill with memories and love...

The Ones that Made the Choice

For the ones that made the choice to let go:

To lose a child is a horrifying experience.  It is something you can never really get over; you will eventually move forward but never past it.  It is something that will walk parallel to you for your entire life.  While, thankfully, many people will never have to walk this awful path, the ones that do could tell you how tough it can be.  But there is a smaller sub-sect of loss parents; the ones that have had to make the earth shattering decision to let their children go.  To have to say that you will allow your child to leave this world, withdraw care?  This is an entirely separate burden that makes the path forward feel, at times, too difficult to travel.

To the ones that had to choose:  I remember barely being able to choke out the consent too.  When Sean and I had to make the impossible decision to go the palliative route for Jack, having the doctors and nurses just keep him comfortable until he passed, I couldn't even believe the words were leaving my mouth.  Every fiber of my mother-being wanted to scream ‘No, save him, do whatever it takes! Just, please, don’t let him die!’ But, rationally, I knew that it was inevitable and we had to let him go, that it was what was best for his little life; that no amount of love could save him and no medical intervention to make up for that.

To the ones that made the choice, I too beat myself up more than anybody could probably even imagine.  Asking myself what kind of mother gives the okay for her child to die?  For a long time, I hated myself.  I sometimes hated Sean for having agreed with the decision and not fighting me to fight for him harder.  I should have believed my sweet boy could have fought.  These are the lies I told myself; the lies I allowed to almost break me.  These are the lies that, more often than I’d like to admit, steep into my subconscious when I think of Jack and sometimes they damn near destroy me.  I have to remind myself that I loved that boy in that moment, that we loved him so deeply in that moment, that we could not allow him to suffer any more; yet it is still a choice that weighs heavy on my heart each day.  

To the ones that had to choose to let go, our road feels longer than the others. Not that either l path is one any of us wanted to take but when choice is taken out of the mix, I wonder if it feels less treacherous?  If the responsibility does not sit on your shoulders, does it make it any easier to breathe? Unfortunately, I suspect not.

To the ones that had to make the choice: I am with you.  I walk this road with you. My shoulders sag with the same weight yours do and I second-guess my decision almost every day.  But we mustn’t lie to ourselves.  We loved those children in a way that most will never have to experience. And because of that love, we had to let them go.

Another Sound of Love

So we are on day three of Summer Vacation with Kennedy.  I finished the week before her and so I had a few days to unwind and get my bearings. I got to attend her Kindergarten Fun Day, which she loved, and her summer kickoff carnival (and by the way: being at both of these showed me my child is wildly different in school than she is at home; more reserved, a little standoffish, even somewhat clingy). It was so nice to be able to show up for my kid, though there was a fair amount of guilt attached to it as I realized that this is more of a regular thing for many of the other parents, and I made a silent vow to myself that I would do more of that next school year for her…and me.  We finished off the last day with a little get-together at our house for her friends and their parents that have become our good friends. It was a great entryway into the summer months I yearn for all year long.  

All of that carried me through until about two o’clock Monday afternoon.  We met two of my girlfriends and their kiddos at the park and the moment we got in the car to head home Kennedy started complaining that she was bored and ‘what were we doing next’.   I immediately started yelling at her that she was not going to bombard me with boredom declarations all summer long.   Part of the problem is I generally jam-pack our weekends and so when you are six and used to either school days or days filled with all of the things you are in this constant what’s next mindset.  The other part of the problem is my kid, God love her, can be a bit of a pain in the ass (if I’m being honest).  When I called my sister to whine about Kennedy’s pain-in-the-assery she countered with her own tales of annoyances.  Being that she has a brand new baby on top of my other two nephews, she wins, but we seem to be rowing in the same boat. 

A day later she sent me a text if she thought our grandma and grandpa were yellers. She went on to say how she feels terrible that she yells so much.  Here’s the thing:  my mom and dad were yellers.  They are two loud people; they talk loud normally and when they were angry with us they yelled loud.  None of us were afraid of it; in fact it became somewhat of white noise to us as we grew up.  You were able to recognize the varying degrees of anger in the yelling and so many times it was just another mode of communication.  Flash forward to today and my sister and I seemed to have inherited that lack of control in the volume of our voices. I thought about her text for a while, all the way into today.  I yell a lot, I do.  I too am a loud person with a strong inherent desire to be heard and I am learning that as a mother that is, often, hard to come by; sometimes inadvertently, often very intentionally.  And so I yell.  I yell to make sure she heard me, to make sure the message is delivered, to make sure she remembers my voice the next time.  I yell.  

I yell at her for being fresh or rude when she is speaking to me, her father or another adult.  I do this because I would hate for her precociousness to be a trait that overshadows her kindness.  It is a kindness that lights up the room and will make her the kind of kid that people want their children to have as a friend.  I don’t want anyone to hear the sarcasm that comes frighteningly easy to a six year old and decide she isn’t welcome at their dinner table before they get to know that she would do anything to see people laugh and smile and that’s what the intent is.  So I yell.

I yell when she isn’t nice to her baby brother (I’ve caught her twice this week being mean to him). I remind her no one treated her meanly as a baby because I would never allow it.  I yell because I need for her to learn that your siblings are your tribe. They will annoy you and steal your thunder, get you in trouble or blame you for things.  But they will also protect you on the school bus, lie for you to keep you out of trouble, and hold your hand through anything.  She had a late start in navigating the sibling waters and we have a lot of ground to cover.  My kids will be no different than anyone else’s: sometimes they will treat each other badly- I accept that but I will teach them that at the end of each day it is the two of them.  And so I yell.

I yell when she does something dangerous.  I yell when she rocks on a chair too close to a glass window after being told nicely, twice, to stop.  I yell because the thought of anything bad happening to these two babies literally makes me feel like I could vomit (no joke-I feel sick right this moment typing about it).  I have already seen the worst side of parenting and do no think I could survive anything else.  I hover by the playground, and freak out during near choking episodes, and bring my kids to the pediatrician and urgent care much more frequently than I need to. I shout be careful at least fifteen times a day.  I’m scared; there just isn’t any other way to explain it.  So I yell.

I yell when she says bad words or uses potty-talk.  I yell because there are millions of beautiful words to be spoken and she has to learn to use some of them before she mixes in the words that will bring her down to the level swear words come in.  I say this as someone that loves words.  I also say this as someone that loves the word shit. It’s about balance but she’s six and balance is not something she can manage yet.  And so I yell.

I yell when she doesn’t listen to her dad or me.  Not because I can’t tolerate disrespect (I work with middle school kids for crying out loud) but because I need her to understand that we are her parents.  We are not her friends.  We will laugh with her and joke with her and forgive her all of her imperfections but when it comes down to the line what we say goes. And so I yell.

Do I feel like shit about this at the end of the day?  Absolutely. I go to bed trying to count how many times I had to yell at her, often stopping after I get to ten because then I feel downright lousy.  But here’s my thought (and maybe its just be trying to rationalize my own bad behavior and parental shortcomings):  yelling can be just another sound of love. And so while sometimes I worry all I am doing is yelling I stop to remind myself of all of the moments where there wasn’t just no yelling, but instead honest-to-god awe that a child could be so amazing:  When I watch her mother her little friends so effortlessly, or hear her tell me how excited she is to have the special needs students in her class next year (“One of the boys has Down syndrome, Mama.  Like Jack. Isn’t that awesome?”), or plan to ambush her dad with Nerf darts as he comes through the front door from work and giggle because it worked.  There is no yelling there.  There is praise and telling her how proud I am of her, and laughter-so so so much laughter.   Love is the language I speak.  Every single syllable I speak to my kids is spoken in love. My goal in life is to make sure that even if I am yelling at them that they can translate it into love.