A Lost Art

I've been reading my old xanga entries, and wow, I used to write a lot.  Granted, I was young and anguished as young people often are, but I was also creative, spontaneous, and funny.  Where did that go?  Whatever happened to the quirky dialogues I used to write for no particular characters?  They may not have been brilliant, but they still draw laughs from me, egotistical as that may be.

It feels like my mind is one big empty space where it used to overflow with people and places and ideas.  I was always writing, always daydreaming, always somewhere else.  Now all I think about it knitting, because it keeps me away from the dark places in my head, because it keeps me from crying.

I want to cry, desperately.  Every minute that I let my thoughts go, they invariably return to that cold little body that I didn't get to hold for long enough.  My beautiful, broken boy.  I'm sad and angry and ashamed.  It's just a stillbirth, right?  Get over it and have another baby.

I don't want another baby, I want Gabriel.  I want the son I felt moving inside me for all those months.  He was so alive, so active, so . . . real.

I keep coming back to that word.  He was so real.  I had to stop myself several times in the hospital from saying, "He looks so real, he's like a real baby, he feels so real."  Like I was holding a doll.  It, the situation that is, didn't feel real to me.  This wasn't a baby, it was a body.  Of course it's my baby, look, he has my hair, my chin, my nose.  Look at how big his feet are, no wonder those kicks were so strong.  But . . . he wasn't quite real.  There was no soul in that body.  Whatever it was that was Gabriel was gone already, had been gone for three days, if not more.  All that was left was a shell, a corpse.  And we all smiled through our tears and pretended like he was real, like I was holding something more than a dead body.  And I talked to it, and cuddled it, and kissed it, and where was he?  In Heaven, of course, but was he watching?  If there are no tears in Heaven, what did he feel, what did he think when he watched his mother sobbing over a piece of meat?

What does he think now, when I still can't stop crying when I think about him, even though he's in the most wonderful place, in the Presence of God, and I selfishly want him back on earth where there is all this pain and suffering, fear and hatred, and . . .

Kittens.

Are there kittens in Heaven?  Does Gabriel understand the joy of kittens?  Are there trees?  Is there ice cream?

I'm torn between Heaven and earth, and I don't know how to move.

I don't want to move.  Every day, every minute, I'm moving farther and farther from the time when he was alive.  I have to, because I'm human, and I'm mortal, and I'm subject to Time.

Someday, I will have to do this all again.  As everyone so helpfully reminds me, I'm very young.  I have a good ten or more years of healthy childbearing ahead of me.  I'm in love with my husband, and such love bears fruit.  I'll get pregnant again, and somehow I have to bear up through it to the end without succumbing to a fearful paralysis of losing another baby.  And when that curse is broken, what next?

I'll just do the best I can, and miss him always.

Ramblings

Have I mentioned that I love my husband?  I love him.

We went to see the last Harry Potter movie last night.  I only cried a little, though there was a woman behind me who bawled through several scenes.  I felt sympathy for her, but I did the majority of my crying when I read the book.  I thought the movie was nicely done, and wrapped things up well for all that they had to cover their backsides from all the important details left out of previous movies.  The books were so intricately written, with so many points from previous books winding together, that the movies were in over their heads on bringing it all to the screen.

I loved the scene with Snape's memories - it was pretty much perfectly done, much as they had to leave out some parts.  This review is a pain to write without spoilers.

I still don't buy the Hermione/Ron romance as the movies sold it, and the worst part is that the movies ruined it in the books for me too.  Rupert Grint has great comedic timing and is a fine young actor, but he isn't Ron, and the writers never really wrote him to be.  Ginny/Harry wasn't well-handled in the books or the movies, and particularly in the movies the writers clearly wanted him to be with Hermione.  Honestly, I would have liked to see him fall for Luna - how sweet of a couple would they be?

The music was incredible, and the sound-editing was interesting, but I don't know enough about it to say if it was truly good or not.

In other news, I resisted the urge to buy more yarn.  Yay me!

I hereby solemnly swear . . .

A few nights ago while winding down in the hotel in Minneapolis after a five hour car trip, I managed to keep the Hilton's wireless network's (really lousy, Paris, by the way) attention long enough to order five skeins of Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool.  I'm going to bravely and insanely attempt to knit Teva Durham's Cabled Riding Jacket.  Oh yes, oh yes.  I'm going to do math.  I'm going to make one of her crazy designs fit a body that she never conceives of designing for - a plus-sized breastacular post-partum blob.

In efforts of cleaning up my knitting act, and avoiding buying more yarn after this major purchase, I'm committing myself to this vow: once this yarn arrives, NO MORE NEW YARN, NO MORE NEW PROJECTS.  However long it takes, until the last end is woven in, I'm going to finish or frog what I've started.  Projects that are on hiatus because I ran out of yarn will have to wait until the others are done before I buy any new yarn to complete them, but I'm hoping they'll be in the minority.

My first priority is to finish everything that I'm knitting for other people.  To kill time on the way to Minnesota, I cast on for the Half-Pipe Hat for my husband (after ripping out the Pub Crawler sweater I was making for him, after discovering that there was no way I was going to find more Lion Wool in Pumpkin before I got bored of the project), so I'm determined to finish that before starting the Jacket.  I am hopeful and delusional that my yarn substitution will not drastically alter the pattern to the point that I have to give up or restart.  The hat was designed for two strands of DK held together on size 9 needles; I'm making it in worsted weight on size 10.  I'm getting gauge, but it's still coming out very small looking.

After that, I need to finish his flip-top mittens, which only need the ends woven in and the convertible bits tacked down.  I hate finishing, or this would have been done ages ago.

Then there is the dog sweater that I'm knitting for my former coworker Rachel.  Let me just say - I adore Rachel, her dog is sweet, I like dogs, I HATE DOG SWEATERS.  There is something in me that balks at measuring a dog, at knitting for a dog, at a dog wearing something that I knit.  I really do like dogs, but I think they don't wash their hands, as it were.

However, Rachel bribed me by letting me teach her to knit, so here I am, knitting a little purple cabled dog sweater.  It's only acrylic; I don't know how warm it will keep him, but more importantly - it's washable.  And with any luck will be finished before winter, now that I'm dead set on finishing it at some point.

I'm not very good at knitting for other people.