Golden

Today would have been Hudson’s golden birthday.

Eleven.

I’ve explained what a golden birthday is to each of our kids old enough to understand. Archer has already had her golden birthday (turning 1 on the 1st), but Anson, Maddox, and Marlowe have a ways to wait until theirs.

Anson: “Not only will my 13th birthday be my golden birthday… it will be the year I become a teen. I’ll no longer be a kid, Mom.”
Maddox: “On my 27th golden birthday, I’ll finally be able to introduce you to all my kids in Catland.”
Marlowe: *oblivious and in her own world because imagining what 19 would be like when you’re 4 is simply incomprehensible*

It’s somewhat incomprehensible to me that we have watched eleven momentous years pass without Hudson. And yet, here we are. Stronger despite all our aching parts. Closer to each other, even though there’s forever something someone missing. Proud of the life we have built and of the many ways our kids embody who I believe Hudson would have been while being fiercely themselves.

Twelve summers ago – the summer we should have spent always seeking shade and slathering a newborn in sunscreen and cramming her scrawny limbs into teeny tiny American flag swimsuits and sleeping seldomly but whenever we could – that summer, I sought solace outside and started noticing little white butterflies everywhere. Her first birthday, we celebrated with a butterfly cake (and the good news that we were pregnant with her little brother, THANK GOD). That butterfly a tradition of epic cake creations every year. A butterfly with Hudson’s name on it lives in the hallways at the hospital where she spent the majority of her brief life. Our oldest kids see white butterflies and shout “It’s Hudson!” and often, a chase ensues.

This year, I see butterflies too. And this year, those butterflies are golden.

I’ve never noticed so many Monarch butterflies this time of year, and I have been seeing them everywhere. I’m not sure if it is Hudson’s doing, but that’s what I’m going with.

On my 1st Hudson’s Heroes 5K of the year, I saw two of them dancing in a front yard while I slogged by, and I thought of Hudson and her Grandma Ruth up in Heaven together sparring with quick wits and sly wisdom. I saw another golden-winged butterfly along the side of the small pond at the park that I ran around and thought, “That’s Hudson, she can move wherever she wants and she’s beautiful.” All grown up. Golden.

Naturally, I’ve looked up what monarch butterflies symbolize.

They represent strength, endurance, spirituality, trust, sustaining what they believe, transformation, and evolution. – Well+Good
Monarch butterflies are symbols of change, transformation, and hope. In some cultures, butterflies represent the souls of deceased loved ones. – WikiHow
In some cultures, monarch butterflies are viewed as symbols of transformation, renewal, and hope. In others, they are associated with themes of rebirth and regeneration. – A-Z Animals

I’m sensing a trend, are you? And then there’s this:

According to some sources, a Monarch butterfly in particular is a sign that you are on the right path to achieve your goals. – Save our Monarchs

Something I haven’t captured here – because, I write here once a year these days – is the struggle I’ve had in the last two years figuring out how to be a mom with four kids to raise and a business to run. I am regularly overwhelmed. My fuse is significantly shorter. I have lost my temper with my children in ways I am utterly ashamed of. There are days I am barely keeping it together, and others where I’m admittedly not trying that hard. 

And in those moments, on those not-trying-that-hard days, perspective brings me back. 

“To create a wonderful world of love and discovery for myself, my husband, and my children.” 

My most important value, identified in 2008 before I even married Mr. Whiskers, before I even had an inkling of Hudson, before 4 more momentous human beings joined our family.

When I wrote those words, I was in my 20s and they meant one thing… something aspirational. When I read those words today or recenter on my values in those everyday moments of frustration or apathy, they mean something so much more; something fully integrated into who I am, something everyday, something routine and also something forced and focused. 

That value has transformed from something I imagined would be possible to something I can choose to embody every single day, in moments big and small, in the choices I make and the words that come out of my mouth.

And like that value, I’ve transformed in these eleven years without Hudson. Our family has transformed. 

Strength 
Endurance
Spirituality
Trust
Sustaining what we believe
Transformation
Evolution
Change
Hope
Renewal
Rebirth
Regeneration
You are on the right path to achieve your goals.

Sweet, golden Hudson. You’ve brought out the best in us all.

In our eleven years without you, we’ve become stronger by carrying the weight of losing you and also stronger in how we have bonded together because of you. Our trust in one another and in our ability to endure any obstacle has its impetus in your life, sweet darling.

And hope? Oh girlie, when the devastation of your short life was all I could focus on I still had hope. Because your wonderfulness had been previously unimaginable. What else could there be? What other potentials and possibilities were waiting, if I were only willing to face potential ruin again and again and again. (and again, as it would turn out)

My goal for this year, as I reflect on 11 without you, is to have as much grace in my transformation as you have had in yours. I imagine you growing up and I know that right about now, in some alternate universe where I get to watch you do that,  I’d be thinking “when did my baby grow up?” I’d be looking at you and seeing more pre-teen young lady than precocious little girl. I’d be your agent for babysitting jobs. I’d be screaming myself hoarse at sports games and clapping my hands numb at curtain call. And I’d be wondering where the time went. 

Of course, I do that anyway. These past eleven years have been overflowing with milestones and memories, experienced without you in some cases but forged because of you in many. You gave us all a gift when you arrived on the scene, my sweet golden Hudson. You gave us the gift of perspective, presence, awareness, purpose, to live fully into the time we get instead of allowing the time to pass in a fugue state. 

“To create a wonderful world of love and discovery for myself, my husband, and my children.” 

You are on the right path to achieve your goals.

Every birthday of yours has been a celebration, Hudson. And this year, we will be making that celebration golden. Someday I’ll get to tell you to your face the ways I’ve missed you in the time we’ve been apart, I’ll get to hold your sweet face and study it, I’ll get to watch you without you knowing and marvel at all we’ve created and all you’ve become. But until then, I’ll do the same with the life I get to live and the people I get to live it with. I’ll tell my children and my husband to their face how much I miss them when we are apart. I’ll hold their sweet faces and study them. I’ll watch them without their knowing, and marvel at all we’ve created and all they’ve become. I’ll make the years that come even more golden. I’ll create a wonderful world of love and discovery for myself, my husband, and my children. 

Today, on your golden birthday, I’m on the right path to achieve my goals.

10

Over a decade ago, I fired up a wordpress site to capture the musings and misadventures of our first pregnancy. The name, whimsical. The URL, never intended for the depth of the content that would end up living here.

It was for fun.

I never knew how much the words I would capture here would end up meaning to me… it was unfathomable, over ten years ago, that these words would be some of the only things I have left of our daughter today.

I got up early to run a 5K, because that’s what you do with four kids. You just make it work.

And on my run, I thought. I thought about what an entire decade without our baby has been like.
I ran past the school I will never drop her off at. I ran listening to songs that I am CONFIDENT she would have loved as much as her mama does. I ran, and noticed little white butterflies fluttering by.
I ran past a cemetery, and thought of the many ended lives were memorialized there… lives that were complete, and many that were not. Lives that were full, and many that were not, and such a mishmash in between. I thought of these lives as I slogged past, and I wondered how many of the people buried there might have tolerated less if they’d known how long they had left.

I thought about my friend’s daughter who is buried there, whose death at just 12 years old is still take-my-breath-away tragic to me (and I’m certain to so many others), a series of inconsequentials that added up to a deadly fall.

“What if it had rained that day?”

I thought how unfair life can be, and how strong we can be despite it all.

I ran harder downhill, trying to make up a little time and in a bit of a rush to get home to my baby who would undoubtedly be waking up any minute, hungry and looking for her mama.

I ran my hardest the last half mile, because we keep more in our tanks than we realize most of the time.

I ran off the two generous helpings of Disney Castle-shaped birthday cake I ate yesterday.
We have a cake, but no birthday girl to blow out the candles.

As I ran, I thought of the wonder of life, and I wondered what Hudson at 10 would be like. I never have a realistic comparison to make, because I only have my own 8 year old, and other people’s 10 year olds simply don’t compare.

What Disney princess would have been her favorite? Or would she have preferred monster trucks and dinosaurs?
Would she hold still for Mama to braid her hair, or prefer it wild like her sisters?
Would she want to be a doctor, a teacher, an actress?
Would she play sports, piano, or both?
How I wonder what you are.

Hudson-at-10 in my imagination is a melding of all the best and some of the worst parts of her siblings, but as any parent knows, a certain tendency or predisposition in one child is no promise of the same in the next. The kids asked me what color her eyes were and I frankly don’t remember… were they blue? My honest, albeit sad, answer was that she never opened her eyes in her lifetime on earth. Maddox responded definitively, “She did. I saw them. They were brown like yours, Mama.”
If I live ’til I’m 102, I just don’t think I’ll ever get over you.

I ran home to my family. When I left for my run, I caught a glimpse of the Blue Mountains in the distance and they were moody and blue. As I neared the corner to turn back into my neighborhood, those same Blue Mountains were bathed in light, golden and brilliantly lit against a still-moody backdrop.

If mountains can change so much in a mere 30 minute run, how much could the world have changed with 30 more minutes of Hudson?

I sprinted to finish the last 3/4 mile, because I wanted to feel my heart pumping and because I have the privilege of a beating heart.

A brief stretch, and I walked into the home we have built, a little salty but not from my tears. Two of the four children I get to watch grow up were awake, waiting for me. My strong, stoic husband as well.

“I thought you had left me,” Maddox said, big sorta fake sad eyes boring into mine as I walked back into the house.

“I would never do that on purpose,” I responded, and held my so-strong red head in my arms with a flicker of a thought.

“I would never do that on purpose.”

I thought about future conversations with our oldest child in heaven. How much she may have processed of the life she missed out on here on earth, I don’t know. God, the Universe, whomever, they don’t go out of their way to clarify how too-short lives get coached through the disconnect between what should be and what is while they wait to be reunited with the Ones Who Carry On Down Here.

But I imagine if we were having an eye-to-eye conversation, Hudson would throw her strong arms around me, her red hair flowing over my shoulder, and then she’d grab my face and look me in the eyes and state firmly:

“I would never leave you on purpose.”

On the day my oldest daughter should be ten, I came home from an early morning run and I relished the many things I get to do with our four living children that I never got to do with Hudson.

We did birthday things, because if we had a 10-year-old today we most certainly would have indulged in bear pancakes, gone to the pool, cuddled on pillow beds watching a Planet Earth show.

We had fun. Hudson, while I can’t imagine precisely what she would have been like, would without question have been fun. She’d have been unbridled joy and calculated whining and perfect timing and surprise vocabulary and violent presence and beauty unawares. It would have a brilliant whirlwind, these past ten years with Hudson.

And they were, even without her.

It may seem like a stretch but it’s thoughts like this that catch my troubled head when you’re away and I am missing you to death.

Infinite

Every person is an infinite number of possibilities.

And perhaps, in an alternate universe, Hudson lived. And we got to watch her grow up, and do all the incredible things she was destined to do.

Of course, we live in this universe without her. Her death is the worst thing that’s ever happened to us, the thing I would change in a heart-beat if I could go back and reverse one thing in our past. Perhaps the ONLY thing I’d change. 

I obsess a bit over time travel, because of Hudson. 

This universe without her would only have shone brighter with her in it. Yet it shines brightly. And she shines in the stars, she shines in the way her siblings love her, she shines in the acts of kindness and generosity that seem to come out of the woodwork in July and throughout the year from those who know her story.

I just finished a fantastic book called “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig. In it, there is a lot of philosophy and in particular, there are a lot of Thoreau quotes. This one really stands out to me as I ponder what life would look like with a nine-year old and contrast that against the beauty of the life we live even without her.

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”

I see Anson’s thoughtful heart.
Maddox’s nearly-violent independence.
Marlowe’s hilarious defiance.
The protector’s heart of her daddy.
The abundant promise of her surprise 3rd sister. 

And the resilience of us all.

With her, life would be brilliant. Without her, life still shines. When I look at the life we have, the life of all of us really… it would be easy to see all that is wrong. All the ways this world isn’t fair. The ways we are being screwed over, or fooled, or overlooked, or mistreated.

There’s plenty of that, if that’s what you’re looking for.

But I look at the life we have, the life of all of us really… and I see infinite possibilities. 

And because that is what I see, that is what this universe is for me:
Infinite, beautiful, change-the-world kind of possibilities. 

Happy 9th birthday, Hudson. Nine years without you, and you continue to change the world every day.

The Story of Our Lives

Pretend for a moment that you are the author of your own life’s story.

What kind of story would you write?

What would be the most interesting parts of your story?

Where would we find your life’s story if we were browsing a bookstore…

Is it a raucous comedy? An inspirational love story? A heartrending tragedy?

Over the course of the last few days, I’ve been thinking a lot about stories.

The cake in question 🙂

This weekend we celebrated what would have been Hudson’s eighth birthday. Every year I make an elaborate birthday cake for Hudson… and we gather with our closest family to contemplate the impact her sweet and short life had on all of us. I say elaborate because it has become my own form of therapy to make birthday cakes that are just outside of my comfort zone (in terms of recipe and design). One particularly elaborate year, I made a 5-layer cake with a hazelnut meringue crunch disk between each layer, coated with rainbow-colored buttercream pedals.

Every year I scour Pinterest, and review my mother’s recommendations, and make a determination based on a mix of my own abilities, the deliciousness factor, and how much time it will take to secure any off-the-beaten-path supplies.

This year, I chose to also consult with my children.

Now, if you have children of your own then you know how ill-advised it is to have your children chime in on anything related to a party. You end up with weird mish-mashed themes, unrealistic expectations, sweat and stress! But the kids chose the theme for their Daddy’s birthday cake this year and got a taste of that power, so when word was out that a cake was in the works, they did not hesitate to chime in.

Plus, Zeb’s cake adorned with a tableau of him punching a shark out of a wave turned out too good for me to not at least take the kids’ ideas into consideration.

They took the task seriously. Anson asked me “What did Hudson like?”

She liked it when Zeb and I would read to her.

I don’t have much in the way of physical evidence to support this – in Hudson’s three days, she gave little indication that she knew what was going on in the world around her – but she did hold my finger, and her heart rate would react to our touch, and reading to her was about the most normal parenting thing we got to do with her in those three days… And at the end of the day, I just believe in the magic of parent-child connection enough to not even hesitate when answering.

She liked it when Daddy and I would read to her.

“Let’s make her a book cake!”

And so it was decided.

Every weekend I’ve been running a 5K and donating what I would have paid in race fees to the Forget Me Not Foundation in Spokane. On each run, I’ve tried to be intentional in my thoughts – focusing in on a theme I want to contemplate while putting one foot in front of the other. The first run, I thought about leadership. And this weekend, on Hudson’s 8^th birthday, I thought about the story of our lives.

I am writing this on the 8 year anniversary of the worst day of my life. Eight years ago, I held my baby daughter for the first time… as her heart slowed to a stop. This is the tragedy of my life. The unequivocal worst day. There was disbelief and bargaining and anguish and hopelessness.

This should not have happened to her. This should not have happened to us. Life isn’t supposed to be like this.

For weeks after, I would show up with a brave face during the day and crumble to uselessness at night. I remember one particularly awful night I thought I felt Hudson kicking, which led me to weep silently on my side until Zeb realized I was crying and turned to hold me. “I just want my baby” I explained.

Eight years later, and I’ve felt three more strong and incredible babies kick. I’ve held each of them within the first moments of their lives on earth. I’ve watched first steps, marveled at first words, been simultaneously delighted and frustrated by them.

And I’ve read them thousands of books.

On the morning of Hudson’s birthday, I asked Zeb over breakfast “Eight years ago, did you ever imagine life could be so great?”

“No way.”

Our story has some sad, sad pages. But our lives are filled with joy. Joy that is made even more beautiful because of the sad parts.

Hudson’s book birthday cake was designed to look like an open children’s book. I used fondant for the first time ever, and wrote in my most careful storybook cursive the words “She Believed She Could… so she did.” These words were on the walls of Hudson’s nursery that she never got to come home to – they are on the teeshirts for Hudson’s heroes runners … and they’ve come to symbolize that indomitable spirit of a 7 lb. 14 oz. redhead whose eyes never opened but whose life changed the world.

At Hudson’s birthday celebration this weekend, my grandma – GG – asked me, “What do those words mean to you?”

Those words are a rally cry for me.

She believed she could – so she did.

– if there is a dream on your heart, it is a belief that you just haven’t put action behind yet.

Even short stories can be life-changing.

None of us get to choose how many pages the story will have. But with every new page we have an opportunity to choose where to take the story next.

The Hudson’s Heroes teeshirts have the dates July 11 – July 14 printed on them – and under the dates of her short life, the words “The best three days ever.”

Looking back, I have to say that July 11-July 14 were probably NOT the best three days of my life but they are some of the most pivotal. They are a major turning point in my story – marking a turn of the page from what I expected life to be for me and what I needed to make life for myself.

No one’s life can be characterized by one genre of story. I opened this by asking if yours was a comedy, a romance, a tragedy. But my life is all of those things, and a thousand more. As I look at where I’m at in my life’s story, Hudson reminds me that you do not need 37 years or 100 years to make an impact. She reminds me that every single day is a page in the story and we can decide anytime we choose to make that story a lifechanging one.

ANYTIME. Not just when something amazing happens. Not only when bad things happen. Any random Tuesday, you can choose to change the story, to play the hero instead of the victim, to become an adventurer, a conqueror, a lover, a fighter, a champion for yourself and for others.

The most interesting parts of a well-written story are not the things that happen to the hero. It is the choices that the hero makes, the actions the hero takes, who the hero becomes in the process.

Your life’s story is being written right now. Choose today to make it epic.

….

Follow our family’s story by subscribing to the Work Hard, Mom Harder podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts.

And then, there were seven

Today started with hot, fat tears.

I had meant to send a note of appreciation to the social worker who was such a pivotal part of our experience with Hudson at Sacred Heart. I accidentally stumbled upon an online gallery of photos taken of Hudson on the night that she died.

Seeing that beautiful face, through the lens of our experience now, was bittersweet and heartache-inducing.

Anson, Maddox, and Marlowe are there. Maddox’s determined brow. Marlowe’s ridiculous lashes. Anson’s little butt-chin.

They’ll never know their big sister, not in this lifetime. But they’ll know a life with truly joyful parents.

Losing a child is a disaster. A life-wrecking event. Unrecoverable.

And yet.

We have joy.

We find it.

We create it.

It’s in Anson’s frantic, kinetic dance moves. It’s in his breathless laugh when he’s wrestling Daddy. It’s in his pensive expression when he needs an extra snuggle. The way he helps out willingly with “keeping Marlowe entertained.” “Who’s the best baby in the whole wide world? YOU ARE!”

It’s in the silly facial expressions Maddox makes when she’s talking about bird poop. The way she requests “Spicy Man” soap during bathtime (that’s Old Spice). Her exuberant “I love you in the whole wide world!” (no, I’m not accidentally leaving out words there)

And it’s in the weight I savor as I lift Marlowe out of her crib. The softness of her baby skin and the way she throws her head back into me when I pretend to chew on her ears, the gooey smiles she’ll give you in return for a high pitched, overly-expressive hello.

I don’t get to hold Hudson’s hand, braid her hair, take her to her first day of the 2nd grade, teach her to ride a bike, listen, work hard, or project from the diaphragm. These aren’t privileges I get in this life.

But I had her for three days, and she changed the way that I’ve looked at life these last seven years.

We’ve started a new tradition of bringing a Mylar balloon to Hudson’s stone at Veterans Memorial Golf Course on her birthday. Each of the “big kids” gets to pick one out. This year, Maddox chose (or perhaps, I chose for her…) a large unicorn balloon. Anson chose a butterfly.

Unfortunately, the unicorn untethered from its string and floated into the sky while we were loading the kids back into the car to head to Hudson’s stone. We tried to make the most of a bad situation, encouraging Maddox to look out the window and spot the balloon as it floated up to heaven.

Maddox moaned and cried, exclaiming “It’s my fault.” Her brother comforted her by saying, “Maddox, it’s okay. That balloon was for Hudson, and now she has it.”

When we arrived at Hudson’s stone, Maddox eagerly “planted” the roses we’d brought out and then asked if she could water them. Then, she asked, “Why don’t I see Hudson?”

“Because Hudson died, sweetie. We won’t get to see her in this life.”

It’s around this age that Anson started to understand death, too. 

But at bedtime, Maddox requested that I sing “Happy Home” and that I include Hudson in the song. “With Hudson in the family, happy happy home…”

“Hudson’s mybig, big sister!” Maddox said, trying to keep her heavy eyelids open.

“Yes, my darling, she is.”

“I love her in the whole wide world.”

And that about sums up my feelings about her, too.

Though the day started with tears, it ends with a heart full of joy. What gifts we have, when we choose to see them. What joy we can create, when we are mindful about creating it. And what a life we can build out of the ashes of tragedy, when we see how much life can be lived in just three short days.

 

What six years without you look like

Well, Hudson… another year has passed.

Another year of missing you. Another year of having a thousand things to be thankful for, and one gaping hole where you belong.

A lot has changed since you would have been 5…

Your little brother Anson is a dashing, charming, big-hearted ball of boy, who is curious about you, who loves his little sister and his Mommy and Daddy and really just about anybody he’s ever met. Today, I told him I would get him from “school” early so that he and baby sister could pick out balloons to bring to your memorial stone.

“Why?”
“Because, it’s Hudson’s birthday.”
“Again!?” (We had cake for you with our family this weekend)

I just caught a glimpse of a little white butterfly who fluttered up against the window to say hello.

Your baby sister, Maddox, is not so much a baby anymore. She’ll be two in October, with a head full of red hair just like yours, a mouth full of new words that she surprises us with from time to time, and a heart full of spunk that I think she also got from big sister.

Your Mommy and Daddy are pretty excited that you’ll have one more baby brother or sister this November!

Your family is really, really, incredibly and genuinely happy.

But we miss you.

I got an email from a photo storage service today: “Your memories from this week six years ago!” Guess whose face I got to see?

Yours.

Your beautifully formed little face, sweet girlie. A face that never smiled at me, eyes that never opened, but a heart that changed my life. 

Last night, your Daddy and I went on a date. We got to talking about you, because, we love you and miss you daily, but think about you an extra lot this week in particular. Even though we miss you, and this world isn’t right without you in it, the resounding theme in our conversation wasn’t of sadness and disappointment, but of gladness, of hope, of happiness. How lucky we are that we had three days to spend with you, even though we would give anything for even a few hours more.

Even though life isn’t perfect, we are still abundantly happy.

Even though we lost everything the day that you died, we somehow have ended up with more than we imagined we could ever have.

Six years go by fast. I remember the agony as we waited for weeks to pass, months to pass, how far I wanted to get from losing you even as I mourned how far I was from having you. And there is comfort in time. The years have gone by, and filled with moments and memories and whole new human beings that we love with a fierceness that probably gets an extra touch of intensity because of you.

That’s right, Hudson. Because of you, Anson and Maddox get loved on extra hard. Because of you, I look at people as miracles who deserve to be respected and honored and heard, who deserve to be seen, who deserve to matter. Because of your life, I’m living mine with more intention and focus. Because of you, I became a Mommy and I found a new place in my heart I couldn’t have imagined.

That new place in my heart made it hurt much more to be broken.

It also helps me to love even harder, and to feel love more deeply.

I miss you so much, Hudson. I yearn for the life we would have had these last 6 years, for the milestones we never got with you, for a world with you in it.

I’m also thankful for the life we have. For the world as it is, broken though it be, and for the amazing people in it because of you.

I guess what you need to know is, we miss you, but we’re happy, cherishing the love you brought to our lives and looking forward to our family being as complete as it ever will be come November. We don’t know what life would have been like with you in it for longer than those three days, but we know what you’ve helped to make it in six years.

Beautiful.

 

…still in the family

Five years ago today, we met our firstborn.

It feels like a thousand years ago, and yesterday, all at once.

This past weekend, we celebrated Hudson’s beautiful but short life with close family. I want for Hudson’s brother and sister to always associate July 11 with celebration instead of grief, so every year, I make Hudson an elaborately decorated birthday cake and share it with those who shared those three awful/wonderful days with us in Spokane.

We have very large pictures of Hudson on the walls of our home, and have never been shy about talking about Anson’s big sister. Now three years old, Anson is beginning to have some small concept of mortality. While decorating Hudson’s birthday cake this year, Anson asked who the birthday cake was for. I told him it was for his sister.

“Baby sister?”
“No, this cake is for your big sister, Hudson.”
“When is she coming over?”
“Oh honey, Hudson isn’t going to be coming over.”
“‘Cuz why?”

Ugh. I quickly contemplated the various forms of response that I could serve up to my 3-year-old to explain where Hudson is and why she can’t come to her own birthday party. She’s in heaven crossed my mind as perhaps the rosiest of responses, but instead I just shot him straight.

“Because, Anson. Hudson died.”

No sugar-coating or fairytale-ing it.

Anson looked at me for a moment as if he knew this meant something important, then returned to decorating the frosting patch I had given him to distract from decorating the real cake.

During story time before his nap, Anson looked up at me and said “I’m so disappointed that Hudson died.”

Me too, buddy.

At bedtime, it felt important to include Hudson in our night-night tradition of “With — in the family, happy happy home”. A heavy-lidded, PJed Anson interrupted me mid-verse:

“Hudson’s not here anymore, but she’s still in the family.”

Well put, my wise little man. While Hudson’s not here anymore, she is still our first-born, the first to make the Hubs and I parents, a true heartbreaker who didn’t get much time with us, but somehow still managed to change the world.

My sister-in-law has a grandmother who is turning 101 while we celebrate what would have been Hudson’s 5th birthday. Think of what Hudson could have accomplished with 101 years. She moved mountains in just 3 days.

And while she’s not here to blow out the candles on her rainbow layered birthday cake, to rule the house and boss her little brother and sister around, to sass and dance and skin her knees and sneak a lick of frosting from the bowl, she’s still in the family. I see her in the beautiful blue eyes of her siblings. I hear her in their belly laughs. She’s the extra squeeze in our goodnight hugs.

She’s in those moments when we stop doing what we think is important and focus on what is truly important.

Happy birthday, girlie.

Hudson’s Sister

I have been silent here for so long, it almost felt like sacrilege to sit down and write again.

But Hudson has a baby sister, and I think that might be the best way to close the journey we share here.

Meet Maddox Debbie Sue.

Yes, her hair is red.

She’s our little unicorn baby, with her sweet disposition, her little buddha belly and her love of the camera.

The only way life could possibly be better was if Hudson were here to show Maddox the ropes.

 

If I had a Three-Year-Old Today

…She would be sticky stinky campfire smells.

…She would need a bath. Now.

…She wouldn’t want to go to bed. Ever.

…She would test her Mommy’s patience daily.

…She would shout “No, I love YOU” and laugh from her belly.

…She would be soft and sweet and droopy eyelids.

…She would be told every day how much she is loved.

But my three-year-old daughter only lived three days, and I have missed out on every day with her since.

It has been three years since Hudson died, and today I am melancholy for all the things we are missing.

We won’t get to teach our three-year-old daughter her A, B, Cs or her 1, 2, 3s. We won’t get to teach her right from wrong, left from right, her colors or her shapes, the names of her dogs or the names of her siblings. We can only wish for these things now, and cherish every second we have with her baby brother.

Because it’s all we get, I’ll live with it, and I’ll be thankful for it. But every once in a while, and especially on the 14th of July, all I wish for is a world where things went differently.

I wish I had a three-year-old today.

So much gratitude

Of course the obvious subject of today’s post would be Anson. My heart is juicy, oozy full of love and gratitude for our son, this incredible little being who made the Hubs and I parents again.

My husband would make another excellent subject for today’s thoughts on gratitude. After all, he has kept me sane through life’s trials, he challenges me daily to be the best version of myself, he is a tremendously thoughtful and engaged father, and he is not too hard on the eyes.

Being a family with these guys is pretty damn swell.

But there’s always the one that got away: Our sweet girl, Hudson.

And today, I am thankful for the family we are because of her.

I have had a difficult time writing lately. I haven’t had the energy, the creative juices, the subject matter, frankly.

This blog was intended to be a place to share my sometimes comical musings on pregnancy and parenthood.

Tragedy struck, and this blog became something entirely different.

I have felt like what I want to write about now is…

,,,Superficial.

…Trite.

…Too much sunshine and rainbows.

…Lacking in profundity and thus unworthy of being shared here, where Hudson’s life is captured in as much detail as I could muster.

So I don’t write for weeks, months. And when was the last time I cried because I miss my daughter? Is this moving on? Getting over it? I am no longer awash with envy at every new pregnancy announcement.

I almost feel guilty for how happy I am.

Hudson made me a mommy, put life in perspective, broke my heart and somehow still makes every day of my life better simply by having lived at all.

And so today I’m thankful for legendary red hair

for a little girl with a big name

for strong arms to hold me when my empty arms ached

for a little boy who completely owns me

for family.