World Prematurity Day 2011

My twins were born 2 months premature.  Today, I planned to share their story, but, when I stop to think about it, I'm too bitter.  Nearly 10 years later, the anger behind nearly losing my girls hits me too hard.  We're finally at a point where I no longer dread their birthday and "Homecoming Day" goes by almost unnoticed.  Still, I hate that we have a story to tell.  I hate that others have stories with endings not nearly as happy.  

So here, I'll leave you with my bitterness, my anger, and my post from this day last year.  

In an attempt to put a more positive spin on it, I'll share this related story about how one nurse made all the difference in the world and how I'll be forever in her debt.  

Lehit ra'ot. Lehit ra'ot. Shalom, chaverim! Shalom!

Shalom chaverim, shalom chaverim,

Shalom, shalom.

Lehitraot lehitraot

shalom, shalom.

This is the park where my youngest celebrated her first birthday.  

This is the park where my twins celebrated their 8th birthday.

This is the park where the local branch of the March of Dimes holds their March for Babies every year. This year's walk here is 2 days after we close on our new house.  It will be the first walk we've missed since 2004.  

This is the park where my kids have met friends for play dates.  

This is the park with my kids' favorite splash pad.  

That tire swing to the right is where I got my favorite shot of my son and husband playing.  

Towards the center, is the covered slide my youngest loved riding down with her 6-year-old friend (who insists on being at the baby's side any time she's around).  

That ditch right there in front is the same one that damn-near made my heart stop every time the kids got too close.

That bench in the center is where I sat and chatted with friends while our kids played.  

To the right, not shown in the photo, is the pavilion where my daughters' had their end of the school year Girl Scout party today.  

In a quiet moment, I looked over at the empty tire swing.  I remembered my son playing there with his father.  I remembered my brother pushing my kids, his son and some friends on there at the baby's first birthday party.  I remembered the girls giggling with one of their best friends as another friend spun them quickly.  

This place is haunted with happy memories of friends.  Everywhere we turn, we're reminded of playing, talking, sliding, hiding and laughing with some of our favorite people. 

I didn't want to leave the park.  As the rain started, everyone else filed out.  I sent the kids to say, "Good bye," to their friends, some for the last time.  I stayed behind and looked around.  The immensity of leaving these memories, these places, these people behind hit me hard.  

Good bye, my friends.  Good Bye, my friends.

Goodbye/Peace.  Good bye/Peace.

Until we meet again.  Until we meet again.

Good bye, Peace.  

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Wordless Wednesday

Make New Friends and Keep the OldOne Is Silver And the Other Gold

This post has been brewing in my mind for months.  I can never get it to stay on one straight trajectory, though.  I wanted to tackle the topic in this post, but then it took a walk through a completely different part of my brain.

So let's try this again.

I'll write a separate post about my kids and their friends.  That has been the biggest focus of our lives (and my mind) lately.  I'm doing my best to put all my stuff on hold so that my kids (most especially my oldest who are very much smack dab in the middle of the "Best friends" mindset) can spend as much time as possible with their very best friends.  That, however, is another post for another day.

Instead, I'll focus on my reaction and my friends.

Today, I drove through a part of town where some friends used to live when our kids were small.  I passed the restaurants were one friend and I often lined up our girls side-by-side in high chairs.  Just a few blocks from there, I passed the street where another friend once lived and remembered her son's second birthday, where my oldests (just shy of 2 at the time) were introduced to karaoke.  All those friends, while still in state, have long since moved away from that neighborhood.

I won't have those moments when I move.  I won't have those friends who sat alongside me on the park bench nursing our oldest babies.  There won't be anyone who knew my kids when they were smaller.  There will be no one who has any shared experiences with me at all.

Here, I venture out to Target and run into a friend I haven't seen in years, one who attended the same "Baby Basics" class with me when we were pregnant the first time.  When my big two ask who she is, I say, "You and her son played in playgroup together when you were babies."  I won't be able to say that about anyone in Washington.

My kids (and I) want to see the newly returned elephants at the zoo.  Here, I can text a friend and make plans for the next day.  While we're there (at the zoo my children know well enough to give tours because we've come frequently ever since they were 6 months old) thoroughly enjoying ourselves, I run into a number of people I know and stop to chat.  My kids say, "Hi," to a friend from Hebrew school who passes by.  When my son was a baby, I declared, "I never go to the zoo without running into someone I know."  That has held true for years.  That, however, won't be the case when we move.

A mom I really like, but don't spend nearly enough time with, walks along side me while our girls walk ahead discussing their favorite books and our boys run around and around AND AROUND us.  She tells me, "We're going to miss you."  She has no idea how mutual that feeling is.

I look at my friends' kids that I've know since they were newborns and I realize they'll be frozen in my mind at their current 4/6/8/10 years old.  I've been there for these kids' first steps, first karate classes, dance shows, first time they wrote their names, etc., but that ends now.  When they hit their next milestones, I won't be there in the audience to see it.  

A friend posts on Facebook, "I got a girl's number at beer fest. Sweet! (making friends post college is hard!)"  I nod quietly to myself and sigh thinking that it's not fair that I'm leaving these awesome friends behind for the huge abyss that is the friendless unknown.

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On the 6th day of Randomness, My blogger gave to me...

A superhero.

Day 6 (I realize my computerzilla baby left me WAY behind with these) asks for my favorite super hero and why.

My comic-book-loving husband and brother will gasp in horror when I say this, but I don't think I have one.  If I have to choose, though, I'd opt for Wonder Woman simply because I watched the t.v. show as a child and had the Wonderoos.  I thought she was pretty damn awesome.  Even as a kid, I LOVED strong female characters and Wonder Woman fit the bill.

Day 5: Oh the Places You'll Go.

I thought long and hard about this one. For day 5, I'm supposed to share a photo of somewhere I've been.  Hmmm...which fabulous location should I pick?  Decisions decisions.

In the end, I opted for this:

Fairy Tale Forest in Oak Ridge, NJ.  I spent a good deal of my youth at that place.  There were huge plaster recreations of nursery rhymes and fairy tales.  I loved it.  In later years, they tried revamping the place with bright psychedelic colors which was more trippy than anything else.  Sadly, the redo didn't help the park and it closed in 2003.

Heartbreakingly, the site remains much as it was, just in awful disrepair. There are a few videos on YouTube where people have snuck into the abandoned site and filmed.

Here's one:

And here's another (this one absolutely breaks my heart).

Lost in Fairytale Forest has some more photographs of it in the disrepair along with some historical photographs which show it how I remember.

What I wouldn't give to get a copy of that vintage post card!

Random thought: Near the Mother Goose statue, on a walking path, when you looked up, you saw a cradle in a tree with a plaque hanging. It contained the lyrics to "Rock-a-bye Baby" painted on a piece of wood in intricate handwriting. At about 4 years old, I saw that and it suddenly hit me that the song wasn't a sweet soothing lullaby, but was about a baby plummeting to her death from up in a tree branch.

None of the videos or photographs show any evidence of that cradle or the sign that accompanied it. What happened to them? The fact that there is no proof that that even existed (other than in my memory) bothers me to no end.