Space in the Middle

Here we are, the 16th day, the midpoint of the month, fifteen days have past and fifteen more are to come.

I have come to take special notice of midpoints because my birthday falls on the 16th day of a 31-day month (May), and it happens that I was born on the middle day (25) of the omer, the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot. I like to ask myself, how do I occupy this middle space?

Here in this month of remembering Halia, I seem to be pretty well through the material about my memories of her and about the "normal" parts of the pregnancy. I am aware that it is time to turn towards the hard parts of this story, the perilous last month of the pregnancy, her stillbirth, and its aftermath. 

It has been so lovely to take time for the space before all that, to remember the many gifts of that time, and to give plenty of attention to ways that I knew Halia. I don't want to move on. I am afraid to let the layers of pain and difficulty back in, but they too are part of the story.

For today, I am taking a breath, allowing this middle space to be like a palate cleanser, or shall we say pallete cleanser. In my collection of small paintings from 2010, I found this little series of exactly that: pallete cleansers. I simply took the paint left on my pallete and filled these small cards.

They are simple but they also intrigue me, and the more I look at them, the more I think they tell the story of this transition point: the transition from calm to stormy, from soothing to intense, from healthy to gone-terribly-wrong. They do so with their own spaciousness, even gentleness, closely reflecting my experience throughout.

Day 16 of 31, 13 Cheshvan 5774

Haida

I sang the niggun "Haida" often while I was pregnant with Halia, especially in the car on the way to pick up G from school. I wish I could remember how I got in that habit, but I think it had to do with one of the names we were considering for Eagle, a name that rhymes with "haida." I probably put the name to the melody, as a way to test out the name, but those memories have faded.

A niggun is usually defined as a wordless melody, but most nigguns I know have specific sounds that go with them-- nonsensical words like lei-lei-lei or lei-di-dee-die-dee or bim-bam. As far as I know this is the only niggun with "haida" in it.

 Like most nigguns, "Haida" is in a minor key but it can be quite upbeat. It has a great capacity to be whatever I want it to be -- mournful and slow one day, upbeat and strongly rhythmical another. I sing it now in many settings -- on a solitary walk back from a visit to Halia's grave, in the company of other people who know it simply as a cool round, or in a playful manner to entertain A who likes its rhythm. Tonight, as I was writing, I listened to some versions on YouTube, and G stopped to ask what I was listening to and then started singing along too.

I am not always ready to sing "Haida" because it tends to loosen the hardened edges of my grief and bring on tears. It surprises me with the tenderness it evokes, the sweet memories of singing to my girl, of imagining a future for her. And yet, it is so much bigger than those memories and associations. It is a folk song that is timeless and universal, and it never ceases to fill me with a deep gratitude for the power of song.

Day 15 of 31, 12 Cheshvan 5774 

Sesame Seeds

I took a pregnancy test early on the morning of Friday, February 26, 2010, and James and I could not believe our luck that we were really pregnant! He went off to work, and I also had a busy day. It wasn't until we gathered again for G's Hebrew School class dinner and services that evening at synagogue, that the news began to sink in. 

I remember sitting in services thinking with awe, a tiny being the size of a sesame seed is growing within me. I looked around the room at each person there, seeing each face in a new light, filled with the wonder that each and every one of us had started out that small. 

Day 14 of 31, 11 Cheshvan 5774

Moving Memories

The third week of February 2010 was school vacation week, and a "Pod" filled with items from my grandparents' house in Wisconsin had recently arrived in my parents' driveway. My father and uncle had finished dividing up the contents of their parents' home after my grandmother's death in October, and now it was time for us to decide what to do with all the stuff that had come east.

We spent at least one or two days of the vacation unloading the "Pod" and sorting through the contents. I expected the task to be difficult, but I was surprised that I actually enjoyed it. As hard as it was to say good-bye to that beloved house on Lake Mendota, it is a consolation that some items filled with happy memories came to our home, where we have joyfully integrated them into our family life.

Chair and loveseat from my grandparents home, new to our home. Photo by G, age 11. April 2010.

The other thing I remember about that time was walking back and forth in and out of the pod and wondering if I was pregnant. It was this happy little secret possibility that gave me a bounce in my step through all that moving. (And, indeed, a week and a half later, I took a test that showed that I was pregnant.) It was the first of many times that Halia's presence within brought a little lightness to those first months without my grandmother.

Day 13 of 31, 10 Cheshvan 5774 

Passover and Floods

My parents, husband, son, and I traveled to New Jersey for the first night of Passover at the end of March 2010. My Aunt Ruthie and Uncle Vinton hosted the first seder at their home, a colonial-era farmhouse. Their dining room was in the oldest part of the house, which only added to the timeless nature of the seder. 

Seder Table by Ruth Moscovitch

Various cousins were in attendance, including a third cousin of mine on the Breitowich (my mother's mother's mother's) side and a 2nd cousin once removed on the Cohen (my mother's father's mother's) side.  I think it was the only seder where we had such a broad representation of our family tree!

I was just 9 weeks pregnant, but we had had our "viability" ultrasound which showed a little bean with a strong heartbeat so we were feeling pretty confident. I shared the news a little but kept it mostly quiet, and spent most of the trip just trying to keep my nausea in check.

Probably the most memorable part of the trip was the return the following day. It was raining hard, but we didn't think much about the weather until we crossed the state line into Rhode Island. It quickly became apparent that water was everywhere. All alongside the highway we could see standing water, and traffic slowed to a crawl. We tried some side roads but then returned to I-95. We passed slowly through the middle of the state and eventually made it off the highway at our exit, only to have to try about five different routes to make it all the way to our home. Everywhere we turned roads were closed , and we learned later that only about a half an hour after we got of I-95, it too was closed.

The only other time I had experienced flooding like that was when I was seven years old and we were spending the year in Cambridge, England. The Cam River overflowed its banks that year, and I have vivid memories of not being able to pedal my bike through some huge puddles and almost losing my boots in the rush of the water. That time I thought the flood was fun and exciting. In 2010, I had an entirely different perspective, especially when, a month later, I took a walk in the neighborhood where I went for prenatal massage, and found myself in a section that had been severely affected by the flood. House after house had condemned signs on their doors. 

I have found that being pregnant makes me turn inwards, and because my pregnancy with Halia was always physically challenging, I was even more withdrawn. The flood reminded me to pay attention to the world around me, to look with utter amazement at the sheer volume of water, and to open my heart to the many people whose homes and lives were ruined by the flood waters.

Day 12 of 31, 8 Cheshvan 5774