colleen

I thought birth in a birth center remote from a hospital was as far as I would want to go. And then, in the last eight weeks, in this, my last semester of midwifery school, I was in women's homes, I was with their partners, I smelled the essence of their family when I walked through the door. And in their beds, and on their floors, I caught their babies. And it was the closest I've come to a religious experience up until this point in my atheist life.

The winters here are better.

The cold air still makes its way through my jeans, leaving my legs chilled. And every once in a while the wind is such that as it blows by my face it robs me of my breath. But mostly, the winters here lack the sharp edge of New England winters: the freezing temperatures, the piles of brown snow, the treacherous sidewalks and that ominous lack of a will to live that I couldn't seem to shake.

I don't mind the winters here. I've stopped thinking about the season as an integral part to my happiness.

But then, without warning, spring arrives; the last few days of winter drop away and I realize what an important role sunshine, flowers and warmth play in my constitution.

Summer 2004 - I pushed with her, holding my breath and I almost passed out. And when the baby's head came, I was astonished at the size of it, at what women's bodies are capable of and I cried.

Autumn 2005 - On my Maternal and Child Health rotation, the only birth I saw, as just a student standing in the corner, a mirror made the difference for her and her pushing became so effective and I cried with her birth.

Summer 2006 - I was training to be a labor and delivery nurse, with all the detailed protocol running through my mind, I watched many births through tears, consistently impressed with women's power.

Winter 2009 - I have long stopped crying with births, but have not stopped being awed by the process. For the very first time, I get to have my hands on the baby as it is born, slippery and fast and squishy and hard in my hands, my heart beating fast, my brain flooded with endorphins. I was high for a week.

I'm glad I like what I'm about to do for the rest of my life.

I just bought this from a shop on Etsy called EarthArt.

It's perfect and I love it for so many reasons. I can't wait to hang it above our bed.

( What is a Blessing Way? )

Last Christmas I received these pearl bracelets as a gift. At first I didn’t think they were real pearls because my image of pearls were that they were perfectly round, perfectly white, perfectly flawless.



But these pearls are real. They’re collected from the Yangtze River in China. And to me, they may be more real because they’re natural, you can see their rough edges, their bumps, their flaws. Their beauty lies in their imperfections.

All new parents worry about making mistakes raising their children. I need you to know that you and Aaron are going to be fabulous parents because you have your daughter’s best interests at heart. And I need you to know that you won’t be perfect, not one of us is. We’re all flawed. But, your daughter, she’ll be beautiful, maybe because of her imperfections, her character.

This flawed pearl is for you, to remind you that none of us are perfect but that the beauty of life lies in its imperfections.

I don't imagine anyone has ever understood me like this.

I never thought I would be so deep in a relationship that the idea of someone other than my partner understanding me, completely, would be so foreign, so impossible, so remote.

But I'm there, deep in it.

And it's Obama for the win!

Here I am.







Here is my beating heart.








Ripped from my chest, held in my hand, on display for you.

This weekend, nestled away in rural Pennsylvania with 25 friends in a giant renovated barn, was more welcome than I had originally thought it would be. Of course, any vacation weekend in the middle of a busy semester that barely allows time for breathing would be welcome but more so after getting robbed early Friday morning.

We were home.

I walked down the hall after I thought I'd heard a sound.

I locked the deadbolt but didn't turn on the light.

They were there, in the room.

I went back to bed without walking all the way into the living room because I was scared but also, I doubted myself.

Who would come into our apartment?

I'm always paranoid at night.

And then, sometime later, another noise, like the door, I'm half-asleep.

And then, the downstairs' door slams, and I think "The neighbors must be fighting again", and I think, "I should get up and look out the window", but instead, I go back to sleep.

Right now, it haunts me. They were there, right around the corner from me, in the room.

And in the morning, when I tried to use the internet, there was no connection, and I looked across the room at our router. Our TV. It was gone.

The gaming system gone. The video games, DVDs, Ipods, backpacks. Gone.

The deadbolt was undone.

They were in the room when I locked the deadbolt. They were in the room when I locked the deadbolt. They were in the room when I locked the deadbolt.

It's just stuff and we're safe. And for a brief period this weekend I forgot.

But we came home this afternoon and our apartment doesn't feel the same to me. And it's because they were in the room when I locked the deadbolt.

We know the rules. We’ve been told. We know what we’re supposed to do, where we’re supposed to be, how we're supposed to behave. And yet, here we are, shoulder to shoulder, crowding forward. There are shuffling feet and hair twirling and big eyes gazing around. There’s anticipation for what’s to come. We’re gathered around him, listening to his stories - stories told for the pure purpose of distracting us from our forward progress. We’re really just waiting for his signal. And as he walks a little to one side we start inching forward, shuffling those feet a little more, pulling on that overstressed strand of hair. A sharp “Ut ut!” makes us halt, all three hundred of our eager souls put back in our place by one single man.

The group psychology and social norms that surround three hundred people waiting to board a train fascinate me. We’re waiting beyond the point they tell us to, we’re technically disobeying the rules – the rule that says wait behind that door so the passengers getting off the train have a clear passage to the station, the rule that says you can’t move forward until your train has officially been announced, the rule that says don’t push and play nice. And we all know we are. And we all feel slightly guilty about it, otherwise, the simple but sharp “Ut ut!” of one man wouldn’t be able to hold us back.

One man. Three hundred people. Just think about that. A tiny percentage of our total could overpower him without effort. And here we stand. Not an independent mind among us.

And as I’m standing in this vast sea of business people I can’t help but smile to myself. Not a little smirk, but a huge beaming smile. Group psychology and social norms, the same ones that allow for the dissipation of personal responsibility, also keep us in line, like kindergarteners at 1:59 on the last day of school.

When I'm happy, which is most of the time, I usually sing little songs all day. I sing about doing the dishes, I sing about staying in bed all day, I sing about eating sandwiches, I sing about putting on my pajama pants. Most of the songs only have one verse and most of the time, even if the song was amazing, I forget the words or the melody and it's gone forever. Since school started I've been singing a lot less. Here is a graphic representation of this situation:



Yesterday, I had class. On a Saturday. I got up at 5:40am and got ready and was out of the house by 6:15. On a Saturday. I drove the hour or so it takes to get to school and was a bit too early so I waited around for about 40 minutes for class to start. On a Saturday.

Class was all about hands-on skills development. There were six hired men and six hired women to teach us all how to do genital exams on them. I was really calm and collected with the woman because I have been observing speculum exams and women's vaginas for over two years now and they have lost all sexual meaning in a healthcare context. I never work with men though and the penis still is a sexual organ for me. I was nervous when I met Ray. But he was a good teacher and now I can find the vas deferens and the epididymis and do two kinds of hernia checks. Just so you know. In case you ever require my services.

After my hour and 20 minute commute home I napped and when I woke from that nap I wrote a song about my learning experience. I sang it over and over yesterday. I even shared it with 10 or 12 people at Lucas' record release show last night. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do:

Ray is a skinny man
He's only five foot tall

He had shaved his pubic hair
So we could see his balls.

Baltimore city's roads, like many cities' I assume, are in varying states of disrepair. Potholes and cracked pavement are rampant as are the uneven and hurried tar patches the city slaps down to fix the most dangerous and egregious of asphalt errors.

Riding a bicycle on these roads becomes an exercise in attention and dexterity. Weaving in and out among the holes and cracks, a constant worry of warped wheels, broken or loose spokes, and flat tires weighs heavily on my mind. This constant adjustment in direction to avoid catastrophe adds energy expenditure to my riding, especially on an incline, so much so that it hardly feels like riding anymore. It has become much more a close approximation to rock climbing with weighted shoes.

And like most cities, Baltimore is in the slow and never ending process of repaving the roads. I know where the newly finished and smooth roads are: Howard street above North Avenue, Keswick Road in Hampden, and now, thankfully, Biddle Street on my way to work.

Riding a bicycle on a freshly paved road is the closest I've come to heaven. Even uphill, it's no longer a battle but a joy, easy and light - like air, like eating chocolate mousse, like settling into an overstuffed chair with a blanket and a book, like the most perfect of Sunday afternoons. It's as if riding a bike was all my body ever knew how to do.

So here I am, lonely Saturday afternoon, reading in my Health Assessment book about caloric intake necessary for weight loss. It says, as a rule of thumb, that to lose weight you should eat 25 calories per kilogram you weigh.

That's totally manageable. I don't have to survive on 1200 calories a day!

I have this weight loss notebook, something I have been using sporadically for over 5 years. When I use it and accurately track my caloric intake and exercise regimin daily I find that I always lose weight. It keeps me honest.

Here we go. A new school year. A new schedule. A new gym. A new diet.

I started school this week. I think the combination of a crazy long commute (one hour and 40 minutes each way), mental exhaustion, and being physically worn out has done wonders for my sleeping habits. I have slept so deeply the past few days that I wake up sore in the morning from not changing positions.

Deep sleeps were great for comic relief in my previous relationship. Deep solid sleep allows me to get to some great REM cycles, crazy dreams, just under consciousness. I used to wake Shawn up, saying nonsensical things and he would inevitably push me to see how far he could take it. I would wake more and more as the conversation continued and then man, he was in for it. Waking me in the middle of the night. What a jerk!

I must not have been having the same kind of deep sleep in the past two years because Lucas knew nothing of these midnight conversations, until recently. Two nights ago I had to get to the wooden spoons, the wooden forks and spoons.

And last night, apparently, as Lucas was coming to bed I angrily turned to his side of the bed and exclaimed "You always get credit for bringing the Canadians!" He was all, "What?" And I said "I bring all the Canadians but you always get credit for bringing the Canadians!"

Lucas was convinced I was awake because my speech was clear and loud and after he pressed me and asked me leading questions like "Are you awake and just messing with me?" to which I answered "Yeah" he was positive I was awake.

I however, have only fuzzy recollections of it. I just want to know what kind of dreams I'm having that I'm thinking about wooden forks and spoons or bringing Canadians over the border like a reverse underground railroad.

I come home from a pretty awesome haircut and I get this awesome birthday present from Matt in the mail!





She's fierce!

On my way home on the shuttle from work tonight I overheard a woman talking to someone on her cell phone about how the United States is really great but there were some major drawbacks. Here they are in the order she listed them (with approximately the same wording):

#1 - We highly underestimate our children. In elementary school we teach kids how to color. It's not serious at all. When she moved here in seventh grade she was three grades ahead of her peers. She thought it was a joke. That's how she learned english so well, she just sat back in her classes and did nothing but absorb the language. They skipped her three grades ahead in math.

#2 - Although geography is painful and annoying and nobody really uses it, American children are not taught it. She learned all the countries in Africa when she was in sixth grade and could point to them on a map. Americans can't do that.

#3 - The television is awful. There is nothing smart on TV. She appreciates that there is Animal Planet and the History Channel but even those channels have nothing smart on. It's all about witches and mysterious forces and aliens invading earth and stuff. In Romania they had really good, entertaining, smart TV.

#4 - Our parents are unreliable. We can't depend on them and they are irresponsible. We have no one to turn to as role models.

It was fascinating to hear a non-American's perspective on America.

Lucas' account of our vacation:

I just got back from a delightful vacation to Seattle, Portland and San Francisco. It went like this:

Day 1:

My dad drove me and Colleen to BWI at 4am the day after Thanksgiving. We flew to Chicago and had a three hour layover, then on to Seattle. We had been in Seattle less than 15 minutes before Colleen decided she wanted to move there. Mostly because of the bus system, which was awesome. We found our hotel near the Space Needle and took the monorail downtown. There were a shitload of people out shopping. One dude stood out on the corner with a sign that said "FREE HUGS". Colleen took him up on it. We walked around for a while, looking for somewhere to eat. We settled on a Sushi restaurant in Belltown called Shiro's. It was, by a great margin, the best sushi I'd ever had. Seriously, it was like I'd never had sushi before. If you're ever in Seattle, you should go there. Then we went to bed cause we'd been up since four and it felt 3 hours later than it was.

Day 2:

We woke up and went to the Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum. The EMP was pretty stupid. There was a pretty good video about Jimi Hendrix, and the Northwest music exhibit was pretty cool. It had guitars owned by The Ventures, Greg Sage and Kurt Cobain. Other than that, not much. Apparently we just missed a punk exhibit which had been replaced by an exhibit on Latin Americans in rock music. There was a whole thingy about the Miami Sound Machine. Really, guys? The Miami Sound Machine? Anyway, the Science Fiction Museum was even worse. 75% of the exhibits there were just books. Really. Books. Behind glass cases. With a little panel saying what the book was about. Not, like, "This book was owned by Philip K. Dick" books, but like "You could just as easily look at this exhibit at Barnes and Noble" books. It sucked. We went to Pike's place market and picked up some tea for my parents. We waited for the dudes to throw the fish, but no one ordered any fish. Then we went to the aquarium, which is not nearly as good as Baltimore's. We ate at Shiro's again, but it was kind of a disaster. I spilled Miso soup. Then we went to see No Country for Old Men, which ruled.

Day 3:

We went to a local sports bar to watch the Seahwaks/Rams game. It was really fun being in a room with lots of other people who like the Seahawks. Also, the game was really exciting. When Frerotte fumbled that snap, the room exploded. It was awesome. We went up the Space Needle, which was expensive and not all that fun. We chilled in the hotel for a while, then walked over to El Corazon to see Dateless open for Afroman. Chris got us in for free! Thanks, Chris. Dateless was good. They did a DBA cover (Capable of Anything). I couldn't really get a read on what the Afroman fans thought of them. Then this crazy band played nu-metal in weird costumes. There were like twenty of them. and they were nuts. Colleen said it was kind of like Gwar. The afroman fans were not amused. At one point, a guy in a military uniform and gas mask went into the crowd and tried to start a pit, while a guy in a devil outfit shot water out of his prosthetic penis. I caught a glimpse of a kid who was probably stoned out of his mind and he looked absolutely terrified. We left before Afroman started.

Day 4:

We caught an Amtrak to Portland. It was a pretty ride. M Welch met up with us at the station and we went to his apartment. Then we went out for pho with him and his lady friend. It was pretty good. We hung out at a pretty cool bar for a while. I drank O'Douls, which the bar called O'Dulls. Get it?

Day 5:

We went with M welch for breakfast, then to downtown portland. We went to Powell's for a while which ruled. I bought some books. Mike had to go to class so me and Colleen went to a couple other independent bookstores, then caught the Portland streetcar to the Northwest for conveyor belt sushi. It was pretty good. We had 16 plates! We went back to Mike's apartment until he got back from class. Then we went to the opening party for a new magazine that Mike's girlfriend was involved in. It was at a bar full of arcade games. They were all set to free play for the night. I was in heaven. Some bands played. One of them was pretty good. I don't remember what they were called. I was busy playing Star Wars. Then we went to another bar that used to be a tunnel that pirates used to kidnap people and talked Sex Cells business.

Day 6:

I should mention that it rained almost the whole time we were in Portland. Anyway, today we went out to lunch with Mike and Nate Schmoe. Then chilled at Mike's where he thrashed me at DS while Colleen read a book about midwifery (which is pronounced mid-whiff-ery for no good reason). We went out and ate burritos for dinner with Mike and another friend of his who was really cool. Then we hung out at a bar with one of the best jukeboxes ever. I kept trying to get in touch with a friend of mine from Indiana who lived in Portland, but to no avail.

Day 7:

We went to the airport, flew to oakland and caught the Bart into SF. We were staying at a hostel, which was OK, except our room was right next to the common area which was constantly full of loud europeans. First impression of SF: It smells like urine and everyone is crazy. The homeless dudes don't even have it together enough to ask you for change! It was pretty overwhelming. We walked down Haight street to Amoeba records where I bought some CDs. Then we decided to stop and see a movie, cause our legs were tired. We went to this mall in Japan town where everything was Japanese. They had japanese record stores, bookstores, restaurants, travel agents, etc. I bought some Kobo Abe books in the bookstore, cause I can never find them anywhere else. We saw the Darjeeling Limited at a Sundance theater, which claimed that you could choose which seat you wanted, but that didn't seem to be the case. We walked back to the hostel. I could tell we were getting close when it started to smell like urine again.

Day 8:

We had breakfast at the hostel, then walked through Chinatown to the water. We went to the Aquarium, which was OK. Then, we went over to Alcatraz. It was pretty neat. We ate at a place on Fisherman's Wharf. We went to Ghirardelli square and picked up some chocolate. We went out to see a movie. We got about an hour into Fred Claus before realizing that it was one of the worst movies ever, so we left and went to see the Mist instead. We got back at around 1:00, and the Europeans were still being loud.

Day 9:

We took the Cable Car and stood on the outside. I sort of can't believe they still let people do that. It seems dangerous. We rented some bikes and rode them over to the Palace of Fine Arts and the Exploratorium. The Exploratorium was pretty fun, but got old before we'd done everything. We rode our bikes across the Golden Gate Bridge and back. The Golden Gate Bridge has emergency phones which double as suicide hotlines. There was a sign that said "The Consequences of Jumping from this Bridge are Fatal and Tragic". We ate some pretty good sushi. We had to walk our bikes up some of the hills. Those hills are ridiculous. You must have to be in awesome shape to live in SF. We rode down Lombard Street where it's all curvy, then returned the bikes and walked back (up more ridiculous hills) to the hostel.

Then, the next day, we flew home.

Hooray for Vacay (tion)!

I'm pretty sure I never gave much thought to what Craig Murphy's future held as we sat next to each other in our high school physics class discussing ska and punk, the best falafel in providence, the minutiae of teenage dating, or his after school job at a video store where he watched bizarre porn videos in the back. Not many of us thought beyond what college we were going to or what we'd do when we finally got out of our parents' houses.

I certainly didn't expect Craig Murphy's life to be cut short at 26, in a violent accident.


Too often I feel like my life has a certain permanence, that Lucas' life has a certain permanence, that my closest loved ones will be here tomorrow because they are here today and were here yesterday and every day before that.

I lay in bed this morning, awake since midnight, listening to Lucas' even breathing, in and out, and I treasured each moment. Each breath.

It's not even that Craig and I have spoken since he graduated a year ahead of me. His death has just thrown my tenuous existence into sharp relief.

An unexpected trip to Binghamton, NY to see the second to last A Study In Her show last friday night, partying until five am, an unplanned day trip to Ithica, NY where we jumped off a waterfall and I had my first swim of the season, a hotel room, an independent french film, a long drive home with my love, my heart. Yes - this was a good start to my vacation.

And now, off to San Francisco for 6 days!

"Hope is a powerful thing" he said to me as I sat next to him in the van with tears welling up and spilling over, leaving lines on my face.

Today hope brought a 19-year-old to my hospital to give birth at term to a baby with no lower limbs, intestines spilling out, unidentifiable sex, and a twisted spine. And I cried with her for her loss, for her imperfect birth, for the two hours she pushed to see this full term, malformed baby spill from her womb. I cried afterwards for the nausea that swam over me at the sight of it, for her misfortune, for her hope.

I'm nauseated still, with a pounding headache. And still, my tears come and go without notice.

It's a night like this that makes me incredibly protective and defensive about my job.