A year and some - an ode to the drink

Time, it's supposed to be the great equalizer or normalizer. Somehow, and I don't know where or how we all got suckered into believing this, it's all supposed to get better or easier with time.

But I'll tell you this, it's been a year and five months and I am as rudderless, as numb, and disoriented as I was when Dana could not find Maytal's beating heart. The shock is still with me, and it has just occurred to me that I've been running from the truth that my baby girl is dead. D - E - A - D.

So what have I done in the past year? Great question. The only thing I know is that as disciplined as I was to take prenatals during my pregnancy, I have (without much thought mind you), had copious amounts of scotch, wine, margaritas and beer. I think I consciously missed maybe two (not in succession) days. I drank scotch (always my drink of choice - but more so this past year) with such great abandon that you would think that I was in a class with Hemingway. For all this, I did manage to finish graduate school, move to SF, undertake a remodel (with my parents partially funding and offering their very sweet and capable Korean contractor), entertain my three year old, transition him (and myself) to preschool, nurse my geriatric, insulin dependent feline children, and somehow stay married (remodel and all - can you say culture shock i.e. my husband is jewish and oh so not Korean (as I found out during this renovation)... I write this not in any way to get a pat on the back, or to garner sympathy or kudos, I do this only as an exercise to say how the fuck could I have done this without a little grease in the wheels, a little ghee in my pan?

I discovered Rye Manhattans thanks to Barb who so lovingly entertains my erratic mood swings (can you believe that I just put two and two together - lots of alcohol - mood swings.... hmmmm). Call her my enabler if you will, and I would have too prior to losing a child, but I call her my dearest confident, best friend/sister. She stokes my will to live, not an easy feat.

After graduation, we took the little one on an Amtrak train up to Portland, Oregon. It was our first trip since Maytal died, and it felt like our first trip as a family. Tamir and I had forgotten how to be together. Forever with Iphone in hand (he actually devised a piece of "jewelry" for his earphones, so he could keep the earphones on him at all times - plugged in to all manner or podcast, or tune out - alcohol for me, NPR for him - whatever floats your boat, whatever gets you through the day I say). The lil one doing his best to make sure that I wouldn't start to cry out of the blue, or act irrationally. Oregon is beautiful, the coast stunning like California's. Barb came to meet us, and brought humor and fun to the trip. She entertained the lil one, as Tamir and I got reacquainted. We used my quest for drink as tour guides. Microbreweries and rye manhattans (whose got the best?) our soundtrack, as well as NPR.

Sidenote - Poor boo, the effects of losing a child in this manner affect the living child no matter what. I never wanted to fetishize Maytal, the dead baby, making her more real than had she been if she were alive. And yet, there I was crying, reacting irrationally from my hormones rebounding after pregnancy. Seeing her in every rainbow (see first post), talking about her when people ask me if I have only one child... Trying to explain to him why our friends got to have babies when ours died, it's all so impossible.

So, as this period of grieving starts to tip over to a year and a half of mourning, I have come to some sense in realizing that the drink, while serving its purpose, is now doing me a disservice. It will take some time to say good bye to these old friends, but as I read the lil one his favorite book - Goodnight gorilla, every night, I, in my mind's eye, footnote it with my own version - Goodnight Santa Julia Temporilla , Goodnight Honig Sauvignon Blanc, Good Night Reposado Tequila, Goodnight Hanger One Vodka, and goodnight to you beloved Remember the Maine.