It's my world too

Today I got trapped behind a woman with twins at the grocery store who seemed hellbent on telling me all about the apparent lack of two-seater shopping carts at stores in our town. She blocked my cart, then took her sweet time strapping her twins into hers as she blabbed on and on about the galling absence of the elusive two-seater. Her eyes waggled out of their sockets with outrage and disbelief at the magnitude of this horrible injustice. Like the universe somehow always owed her a convenient spot to stick her kids simply because she managed to have two of them at the same time (who, by the way, were totally old enough to walk nicely beside the cart, if you ask me).

My mistake was agreeing that the seat part on the new FreshCo carts is hard to open. But the thing is, that's where I put my purse, not my kids.

I started to explain that I use the area where you'd normally put a child as my handy purse-holder - that would have been my contribution to the conversation - but agreement was all she needed to assume that we had common ground. And she was off.

After the initial vent subsided, I learned how difficult twin wrangling is, and got a verbal map of all the stores in our area with two-seater carts. Which is all such useful information for me, isn't it?

I'm used to this sort of thing. It usually ends up being more amusing to me than anything else now - in that Murphy's Law/ Born Loser sort of way. Unless the person is particularly annoying, in which case I'd probably be irritated even if I had living children.

But there is still a little part of me that squirms under the weight of my history when this sort of thing happens.

Because, of course, in situations like this I'm a fraud. I nod in agreement, as though I know anything about things like putting kids in shopping carts or twin wrangling - or need directions to the stores with the best kind carts for multiple kids. But I nod just the same, and smile sympathetically.

Or, even worse, knowingly.

No one can tell I'm lying. No one can possibly imagine the internal dialogue I'm having at the same time - prepping my answers, absorbing landmines, concentrating on arranging my face into something that I think probably looks normal, relaxed, and appropriate. Acting, acting, acting. 

And then I walk away feeling like I've just been sliced out of a picture. Neatly and with surgical precision, I lift right out of the "normal" world around me as soon as someone reminds me that I don't actually belong there - that I will always be different because I have this whole other life that people who worry about the lack of two-seater shopping carts can't begin to fathom even exists.

Of course I have the right to explain that my world looks different; that my purse is in the spot where children are intended to be because all my children happen to be dead. But most of the time this is simply impractical. It's easier to nod and agree than it is to tell my story in the fleeting snippet of time you generally give to strangers at the grocery store. My story isn't quick or easy. And, let's be honest, most people simply don't want to hear that kind of story anyway.

So I just carry on living my double life, being normal until I'm reminded I'm not. And being me until I'm required to play some other, more palatable and socially acceptable role. 

Lucky for me I'm not half bad at faking it.

Two years

Two years ago today they started the induction process with an application of gel.

I'm literally floored that so much and so little time has passed.

It was a whole other life back then. And I was a totally different person living it. The world was ordered differently and things made sense. There was logic. Plans could be made. Prayers worked. Doctors saved. Babies lived.

For God's sake, it's like I've been abducted by aliens and I'm living in some sort of parallel universe where things appear to be normal, but are clearly very, very different indeed.

I once read in a document (intended for physicians and therapists treating bereaved parents) that most parents who lose a child find it takes between 2 and 5 years to feel "normal" again.

And by normal I don't mean the same as before, because there's no going back to the person you were before your child came and went. You can't be the same after losing your heart - after losing a piece of yourself. An amputee is forever changed, and so are we. It's just harder to tell from the outside.

So it's been almost two years. Do I feel normal? Yes and no. I feel more connected than I did a year ago. I'm faking things a lot less and that fuzzy, out-of-body feeling that plagued me when I was out of my comfort zone (at parties, social events and family gatherings) has all but disappeared. I seek out my friends more than I used to and I look forward to their company in a way I wasn't able to before.

I'm not just enduring things the way I was that horrible first year. I don't have to force myself so much anymore.

But I'm not quite there yet. I don't feel comfortable in my own skin the way I used to. I'm still a little bit of a stranger and I startle myself every once in a while. The me I used to be reacted to things very differently than this person I am now does. And sometimes I'm caught off guard by her antics - and the depth of her sorrow and anger.

But she's not all bad. Yes, there's a good deal of road rage and a lot of ranting about things that are beyond my control (like President Bush, kids with cellphones, gas-guzzling SUVs and the fantabulous infertility midway ride from hell that I didn't pay for and can't seem to disembark), but there are also some good bits in there too.

For one thing, I'm a good mommy. And, more importantly, I feel like a mother in a way I didn't when I first lost Thomas. It's different than being a mother to a living child, sure, but I am a mother. Feeling the love I have for my child is something that moves me to tears. I had no idea it was possible to feel love like this, and to be inspired and challenged by it every day.

I like that bit of me very, very much. And I'm immeasurably proud of it too.

Now if I could only figure out a way to stop flipping off drivers who tailgate and honking at ones that refuse to signal lane changes I'd be even closer to my goal. But I've got three more years for that, right?

I'm doing okay.