"Opportunity is missed by most because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -Thomas Edison

The cosmos is also within us; we are made of star stuff.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/we-are-all-connected?utm_source=wkly20100129&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=descr_tnVideo

Moments That Are Suddenly New Again

Part of being pregnant is discovering all sorts of new things about your body.
Part of miscarrying is rediscovering all the old things about your body and everything else. An abbreviated list of things that have made me catch my breath...

Catching my reflection in profile
Fitting into clothes I'd put away in a box last week because they didn't fit
the onesey a friend gave me in the bottom of my underwear drawer
Not needing to stop at Felipe's for a tostada after work to tide me over until dinner
A kid in my class asking me this morning "Kendra, do you have any kids at your house?" "Why not?"
Hearing about a friend's ultrasound (Not bitter! Not jealous even, just surprised to find that I'm not going to have another one.)
Taking herbs and teas I wasn't allowed to
Being offered brie and having no internal conflict (and wine and beer)
Realizing that this was my last conversation with my midwife until my next "first" conversation with her.

The closest I can come to this feeling was the feeling I had during the first two weeks of my sophomore year at college when I suddenly realized that I'd have to drop out. There's this constant sense of editing... suddenly reworking plans, dreams and assumptions. I've been practicing meditation and yoga for years now in an effort to undo my conditioning, wake up, and let go of all my plans, dreams, assumptions and habitual thoughts. I wouldn't have guessed that a miscarriage would impact my awareness so much more effectively than any think I've done on purpose! I'm grateful for all these moments when I wake up.

The youth of my youth

Here are some blurry Iphone pictures of an all-ages show I attended yesterday. I brought a couple of pentagenarians along, so that I wasn't the oldest person in the room.

"But Kendra" you may well say. "This is not really your scene." You're right. Outside of some time at Babyhead and the Living Room as a teenager, and some fantastic Kled shows, people screaming as entertainment has not been largely my bag.
But this young man is not screaming into the microphone. He's singing! His diction is so clear, I could hear it through my ear plugs.

He's also the child I cared when I was a teenager in Providence... all grown and tattooed.

Tough News

I've already posted this on Facebook, and emailed it to my nears and dears. (I'm sorry if I left you out of the loop nears and dears, it was an email error, not a statement.) But a blog is, after all, a log.

Here's the message to our friends that Z eloquently composed. http://zipl.org/toughnews.html

When we discovered I was pregnant I wrote so many blog entries in my mind... about feeling sick and about not feeling sick, about swallowing whole books on pregnancy and childbirth... about the excitement of getting to know Z as a father as well as an amazing person, and partner, a competent, clever, funny person... about the fun of having pregnant friends. About a million things. I told myself to write them, but was too disappointed about having to have a secret, too distracted by experiencing all these crazy things to sit down and write about it in any disciplined way.

It's strange that I kept this big secret for all that time, only to tell everyone right before it was all over. Very strange.

This was in every way a fantastic practice for the baby to someday come. We got to find out how our midwives are in a crisis (very supportive, compassionate and present) and how we are. (Z is everything a person could ask for.) I learned about how my body deals with pregnancy, and to a lesser extent how it is with labor. We know what a fantastic and loving community we're in. I'm grateful for all of this.

Snow pictures!

From the kitchen window, and then from the yoga room. The guy shoveling is my neighbor. Later he'll be up on the porch roof sweeping the snow off so it won't collect and tumble down on top of somebody later.

Snowstorm! (am I down to seasonal blogs now!?)

The snow started last night and is still coming down. I was going to drive to RI yesterday to attend a tree trimming at some friends' house, but after seeing the weather report, I took the train and packed some extra things in case I got snowed in. The train makes me even happier than usual in inclement weather. I sat cozily down, listened to two young friends discuss their Friday night, and began finishing off the pair of socks I've been working on for months.

I had a wonderful visit, and headed out early, which I NEVER do. It was shocking to feel ok with leaving a party midway, at four o'clock. I made it home well before the snow began. Z was cooking Jambalaya when I got there, and the house was fragrant and steamy. I sat and watched him cook, and we listened to a podcast about international soccer until it was time to eat. Jambalaya, corn bread and collards all from Veganomicon. We bought this cookbook on a recommendation from some friends, and when Z took over all cooking and cleaning responsibilities as I went back to school, he took almost all of his recipes from it. (Zak has always been a fantastic cook, but he had a hard time cooking dinner after I stopped eating meat. He enjoys complicated/amazing type recipes best, and most of the vegetarian, whole food recipes we had came from Laurel's Kitchen (which I also love) but which is terribly basic and plain.) Anyhow, the meal was astounding. I can't wait to have leftovers for lunch.

I woke up to piles of snow, and happily called my yoga studio to make sure they were open before I headed over there. My love for walking in the snow in the city has to be the greatest argument that I really belong here in the Northeast. I put on my snowpants (thank you Tyson for the hand-me-down) and my red snow boots (thanks Amber) and my fantastic Winter Tilly hat that Z got me for my birthday (with the ear flaps down, of course) and headed out. Even though the air was bitter cold, and the wind was blowing the snow sideways; at my face (beneath my hat!) everyone greeted one another happily. People were shoveling, and walking their dogs and carrying multiple cups of coffee home.

Now, post-yoga, post-breakfast, mid-teapot, I'm contentedly looking forward to an afternoon of knitting, and reading, perhaps even some banana bread baking. I should help my landlady by taking a turn with the shovel. I may even invite somebody to go to a movie with me. My Sunday stretches out before me like a long toad that I can walk as long as I like.