remembering babies - yours and mine

i found a newly bereaved mama and sent her some messages of comfort and love. she is sweet and newly heartbroken, with all of the rawness and all of the despair. i remember. i remember.

she lives in paris. she gave herself a mission to light candles in notre dame for babies gone too soon and their mamas. she lit a candle for nathaniel and her own little sun, and some other babies she's learned about.

i was so touched. i was in paris, i walked by notre dame, early, early in my pregnancy with nathaniel. i was pregnancy brain foggy and nauseated, but i remember. i remember how beautiful the church was. i remember being close to the river. i remember being with nathaniel. . .

i wanted to extend that offer here on my blog: here in portland, we have a place called the grotto. it's also "the national sanctuary of our sorrowful mother." it's an outdoor sanctuary just outside of town, and it is very beautiful and very peaceful.

i'm planning a trip there in the next week or two to light a candle for nathaniel and for little sun, but i'd also love to light a candle for your baby. leave a comment and i will make sure to light a candle for your baby at the grotto.

40

i turned 40 last week. my husband and i went to berlin and prague for the week before my birthday. we walked around and ate our way through both of the cities. i spent most of the time thinking about people and the things that they create and destroy.

wandering around two large cities, i thought about people making more people. i thought about how people have babies who, most of the time, live, and grow into children who grow into teenagers who grow into adults who then make more babies. of course, i thought about me, on the edge of my reproductive years, about us, about our family, and wondered whether or not we'll have another baby. i thought about our living children who are both on the edge of adulthood, and wondered whether or not they'll have babies, and when.

life on the farm continues to unfold. we have a goose who is sitting on a clutch of eggs. i hope that at least some of them hatch. our ducks have started laying eggs, and i found two double yolk duck eggs last week.

being on the farm is not about people, and i think that is informing the way i view the world right now. a few months ago, i would leave my house and i was surrounded by other people things: other houses, other kept yards, streets, cars, shops, libraries, restaurants. here on the farm, i mostly interact with seeds and dirt, trees, plants, birds, and dogs. our farm is not people centered, and i am starting to experience the whole world so differently. the rhythms of my life are shifting.

i talk to nathaniel. i miss him with every cell in my body. my skin and senses keep looking for him, all of the time. it's exhausting.