Memories

 “…There's a time that I remember, when I did not know no pain
When I believed in forever, and everything would stay the same
Now my heart feel like December when somebody say your name
'Cause I can't reach out to call you, but I know I will one day, yeah…

 

…Toast to the ones here today
Toast to the ones that we lost on the way
'Cause the drinks bring back all the memories
And the memories bring back, memories bring back you.”

 

--“Memories,” Maroon 5

 

Dear Thi,

For your fourth birthday in December, we came to visit you a week early. In this year, your big brother Luc entered kindergarten. In this year, your little sister Dannica weaned, potty trained, and talked more, stringing together sentence syntax like Lego blocks that fit well together in a given sequence.

 

 

The gravestones in the cemetery seem arrested in time. Some had slowly weathered with discoloration, the etchings of names and dates faded through the decades. As we drove away, we were surprised to see that the sad columbarium wall containing cremation niches for babies lost in the womb or in infanthood had gotten replaced by neat rows of white marble gravestones, each resting place now more visible to honor and remember those lost too soon. 

 

When we had to lay you to rest, we were offered a niche in the old columbarium, and we had instead opted for a prime piece of land in the Legacy Garden of Life near the water fountain. It’s here that you play by the waterside and a wrought-iron dome of interlaced flower vines, waiting for Mommy and Daddy to one day join you. As we visit the cemetery across the years, we see its gradual evolution, where flat, grassy land gets taken over by more and more gravestones. And yet, the ones that were here before whisper of older ages, a place both changing and frozen in time.

 

This was the first time I was away for your birthday. In past years, we were buffeted by grief, picking up our shattered hearts and lives after you died. Then came the years of gentle mourning and reminiscence as the pain softened, but the memories remained. This year, we took a trip to the snow with your grandparents and auntie’s family, staying in a secluded cabin atop a hill with sweeping views of snow-blanketed treetops and a panoramic window opening to red-orange sunrises. 

 

As I watched the siblings and cousins play in the snow with bliss and abandon, I wondered how different the energy would be if you had been among them.

 

 

 

I know that your spirit isn’t bound to your gravestone home sitting almost 200 miles away, but as the physical distance and passing years stretch on between us, I couldn’t help feeling like I am leaving you behind. To make you real and feel you close, to battle how time erodes memory like faded words carved into tombstones long ago, I slid open the patio door where a mound of soft snow waited outside the cabin and wrote your name in the expanse of white. 

 

After an eventful trip of climbing and sliding down the steep slope slippery with ice, we arrive back home, where spring comes softly upon us after a winter of little rain. 

 

The camelia I planted in your honor bloomed heavily, though its blossoms and leaves looked burned this year. We make plans to replenish the nutrients in the soil for a better recovery cycle next year. 

 

The succulent planter I interchange at your graveside now thrives in our backyard in the shaded protection of your father’s avocado tree, the thick cactus leaves water-gorged and evergreen. You still come to me in cotton-candy sunsets and mornings shrouded in fog and mist. 

 

I travel to places for errands, work, and relaxation, always docking back home, a cyclic purpose to my trips, and I wonder if the path you take in the afterlife is cyclic, linear, or some other pattern that in my human life I couldn’t begin to fathom. Sometimes I feel you visit, and it’s still that aching longing of seeing something so beautiful and much-wanted, something that could have been, but nothing that I could gather into my arms to hold. Sometimes my vision of how you would have looked like strikes stark and clear like lightning in that space between awakeness and dreams…but sometimes it fades like spiderweb silks adrift in a breeze. 

 

And so when I’m surrounded by nature’s beauty and bounty, in a place bigger than how far my imagination could stretch, I make myself remember by etching your name into sand and snow. Soon, the waves stretch inward to wash the sand smooth once more. Soon, a blanket of fresh snow turns the landscape a stark and pristine white. But underneath the surface, I picture that my etchings are still present, like a hidden scar of a little girl's name that still remains across the healing terrain of my heart.

 

A Second Ode to Breast Milk: Liquid Love

Some say it’s nature’s “Liquid Gold,”
A gift more precious than anything sold.

Some say it forms a bond like no other,
Of connection and trust between baby and mother.

Some say the milk babies get from their mamas
Is the super food you can make in your pyjamas.

Some say it’s unique and cannot be matched,
Its secrets imparted when baby is latched.

Some say, from Hera’s breast, the spray,
Formed what we still call, The Milky Way.

Some say it’s a powerful healing elixir,
A mysterious, milky, all around fixer.

Maybe it’s a little of all of the above,
Or maybe it’s simply Liquid LOVE.

--"Breastmilk," by Grainne Evans

 

In truth, my nursing journey with her wasn't as pleasant as with her brother's. Dannica would choke and sputter at my aggressive letdowns. Even as she was the better eater, she was the one more prone to spitting up. She bit harder when nursing as she was teething, to the point where I'd cry out in pain, frantically trying to unlatch her. She somehow managed to simultaneously chug breastmilk and drip rhythmic droplets of drool down my side until I shoved crumpled tissues and rags below the corner of her mouth to staunch the warm, wet trickle. She fed on one side and absentmindedly played with, tweaked, twisted, and molested my other breast. She distractedly popped off to give her undivided attention to something else in the room, only to screech discontent when I lowered my shirt to tuck away the food source that she had abandoned just moments before. 

 

And yet, Dannica's nursing journey lasted longer than Luc's. I weaned him at 14 months, and he gave it up so sweetly, without a battle, settling contentedly for snuggles or reading a book. I didn't think I'd nurse Dannica for close to 24 months, starting to wean her a month before her second birthday. It helped that I wasn't dragging along my Medela pump and all the parts, accessories, and milk bottles to work for long. At the start of the pandemic when the work-from-home mandate came out, I abandoned the plain and lonely little lactation room in the building that I'd have to walk to twice a day to pump, and I was able to continue doing so in the privacy of my home, along with giving Dannica more frequent access to breastfeeding.

 

 

Some things were still familiar: setting alarms and blocking off my work calendar to pump milk, the drone of the pump's motor, the satisfying splash of letdown in the plastic bottle, the top two shelves of our freezer reserved for milk storage. 

 

 

I diligently labeled the Lasinoh bags, froze them flat, and organized them in gallon-sized Ziploc bags by date and volume. In time, I marveled at how the milk changed colors, based on a system of checks and balances to provide what Dannica needed most at a certain age, or when she or I fell sick. 

 

 

  

 

 

The watery layer gradually lessened to make room for more fat, my milk deepening to a creamy, rich gold as Dannica needed more nourishment to grow. 

 

 

 

 

I started out taking supplements to boost supply and baked a few batches of chocolate-chip-oatmeal lactation cookies, but I quickly went back to being an oversupplier, producing more milk than Dannica could consume.

 

 

 

 I swallowed costly probiotics recommended for breastfeeding and took daily sunflower lecithin capsules to stave off clogged ducts. Having learned my lesson from my time breastfeeding Luc, I didn't let clogs stick around long enough to become mastitis, attacking them immediately with hot compresses and antibiotics when I felt fever and aches set in.

 

 

  

 

Pump and bottle parts piled high and waiting to be washed became a common sight near our kitchen sink, and Tung would have to spend the night hours after the rest of us tucked into sleep to go at it with bottle and nipple brushes, racking up all the parts to dry and for me to reassemble the next morning.  

 

 

Once again, I took to donating my milk to a local mom-to-mom group, meeting moms and dads who made the journey to a complete stranger's porch for contactless pickup of breastmilk to nourish their babies. I'd do the balancing act of saving enough frozen milk to send with Dannica to daycare while reaching out to see who could relieve me of batches--hundreds of ounces at once--so we could clear up freezer space for food, especially when I started to freeze the baby food I pureed for her. I chatted with the parents through private messages, we'd swap stories of our babies close in age, and they'd send me pictures of their little ones when we'd touch base again after a few months so I could see their children grow and thrive off donated breastmilk.

It didn't take long for Dannica to quit her paci. Some time spent swinging to sleep in Daddy's arms with her Celtic Woman songs playing made her quickly forget about her favorite pink-owl pacifier. But she didn't give up breastfeeding without a battle. I dropped her feeds slowly, first the post-daycare nursing when she could be otherwise entertained with an activity, and then shushing her and patting her back to sleep when she woke up at night crying and nuzzling into me, seeking the scent of my lavender-vanilla body oil that I lathered on to keep my skin supple.

 

The bedtime nursing on our side of the bed was the toughest for me to give up. She'd crawl up to where I reclined and ask to "mum," her word for nursing. Even when I teased that mumm'ing was for babies and she's getting to be a big girl now, was she sure? She'd nod emphatically and say with conviction, "Mum!" It was during that time when we'd wind down from the day and bond, when I'd caress her chubby cheeks, run my thumb along the soft skin of her forearms, and smooth her fine, silky hair. I'd look into her eyes and return her occasional sly smile; I'd listen as her breathing grew steady and deep when she suckled herself to sleep. These hours that we passed as the seasons changed, cozily wrapped in our nest of blankets and pillows, or gazing out at the play of leaves and shadows, watching the sunset paint colors in the sky--they're what I treasure most about nursing both of my children. Time stands still so that we could just feel, and be. 

 

 

Dannica was roughly weaned after 6 weeks of effort. I gave away my last batch of frozen milk on May 23, 2021, thirty-six last ounces that I hung on to for almost half a year "just in case," but decided to put to better use than be our security blanket in a journey quickly ending. There is a quiet sort of grief in giving up breastfeeding with a child that you feel will likely be your last. Even if I could experience the joy of grandchildren, there's no do-over for next time with nursing, this very special bond between a mother and her baby. There's the emotional impact of crashing hormones as your body gets the cue to close shop on endorphin-producing breastfeeding. There's tucking away all the nursing bras with the lingering scent of shed milk, and gaining weight more rapidly without the aided calorie-burn.

At night as she closes her eyes, I'd whisper to her, "I love you, Dannica," and she'd reply, still unable to pronounce her L's, "I you, Mommy." In the darkness of our bedroom when she now falls asleep without the crutch of nursing, I sometimes hear her suckling softly at air, as a distant muscle memory lulls her to her dreams. Even though it wasn't as deep and profound a journey as my first experience at breastfeeding, I'm deeply grateful for my body providing--not just for my two babies but quite a few more families along the way--and thankful to sustain this rite of motherhood across the first two years for my baby girl.

Total ounces frozen: 3,467

Total ounces donated: 2,649

Total babies donated to: 14

Weaning began: 6/12/21

Weaning ended: 8/15/21 (after 9 weeks)

 

To Luc, on His First Week of Kindergarten

 

 

My coworkers say to me dismissively, “My kids are grown now,” as if it’s a short story to tell. They glibly jump to another topic like a stone skipping water, tapping lightly on the surface without dwelling, and like some defiance of physics, bouncing a few times before sinking. Like a coordinated dance, a feat made to look easy even though there is an art to it. They don’t tell you about the first five years when their kids must have seen Mom and Dad as their entire world, growing tentatively but safely within the shelter of their parents’ sure arms. They don’t pass along stories of the difficult adolescent years when the opposite is true—moody teenagers craving their space and solitude. They don’t revisit the college years, the transitional time when they’ve taught their children enough to step into adulthood and make their own way.

 

Kindergarten is a mini-college. You move from your small, single-family-home daycare to a new teacher, new classmates, a much bigger school. I pack your Pixar Cars backpack with some supplies and throw a favorite snack into your insulated lunch box with new name labels on everything. I wake you much earlier than you’re used to getting up. We go through our morning routine of breakfast and getting ready. We drop off Dannica to daycare, and then Mommy and Daddy take you to school. You hold Daddy’s hand as you walk from our parked car to your check-in gate, and I get flashbacks of the first day we walked you to daycare, hanging on to Daddy’s finger with two hands, not yet walking independently. 

 

 

You used to cry all the time at daycare drop-off, but on your first day of kindergarten, you keep up a brave front: saying hi to your teacher, trying to engage your new classmates in conversation, and proclaiming as you line up with your class, “This is fun!”

 

Every day, we’d leave work midday to pick you up, a new afternoon routine from having you in daycare all day. You have a tough time the first few days as you navigate the newness of it all and have to become a lot more self-reliant, keeping track of your belongings and packing them up before the bell, opening the packaging to your own lunch, and remembering all the rules. You hate waking up before the sun. You worry yourself sick, wondering if we’d come pick you up. You sigh heavily when we give you yet another new instruction at the end of the day to make your school day go smoother. And yet, you constantly improve and learn to do something new. 

 

I’m not the parent at the forefront when dropping you off and picking you up. I’m short in stature and sometimes get lost in the throng of parents. You often crane your neck to look for me, eyes roving the crowd. On the first day of school, after a long check-in process and with the students getting to wait in proximity to the parents, the teacher finally marches everyone in a single-file line to the classroom. You are among the last few kids, and as you round the corner, you turn and wave bye to me without any tears. I know the courage it takes for a shy boy to move out of his parents’ line of vision. I see you trying hard to make friends, saying hi to them, asking for their names, seeing if they’d like to play in the few minutes before and after school. I see their own shyness and awkwardness and indifference in return, often walking away from you—some with their parents and some with their own paired friends—not returning your warmth and enthusiasm. You’re not crushed by it, and you continue trying with different classmates another day. This is one of the best lessons I could hope that you’d learn: resilience from failure, determination to try anew. Even though I disappear into the background, giving you space to ask your questions and find your own way, I see you all the time. I see the silly, caring, wonderful little person you’ve become, and I’m so very proud of you.

 

 

The world is calling, my boy. As you take yet another step away from me, I hope you’ll continue to meet it with the optimism and tenacity that you’ve shown me you’re capable of.

 

 

Goodnight, My Angel

Goodnight, my angel, time to close your eyes
And save these questions for another day
I think I know what you've been asking me
I think you know what I've been trying to say
I promised I would never leave you
Then you should always know
Wherever you may go, no matter where you are
I never will be far away

--“Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel),” by Billy Joel

Dear Thi,

Every night, there is a thunderstorm in our bedroom. To lull Luc and Dannica to sleep, we’d put on the soothing white noise in the background, muffling the sounds of Daddy’s nightly routine to freshen up and finish doing the dishes before settling in. We discovered that Dannica likes to listen to songs by Celtic Woman, and so your daddy made a playlist for her that we’d play on the speaker to get her to fall asleep through restless nights rough with teething pain and sleep resistance. When the song, “Goodnight, My Angel,” would cone on, my heart would seize up a little as I am transported back to the day of your funeral service when we had it playing for you.

In the third year, the grief softens, like holding a treasured photograph with edges singed by fire, tracing your finger along the blunt, jagged edges ravaged by a past wrong while the heart of it remains intact. We’ve experienced a strange year, with a global pandemic forcing us into a slower pace of life. Your father and I have been working from home since California’s shelter-in-place in late-March, around the time we also both changed jobs. 

Around the holiday season, we strung up lights on the outside, shopped for a Christmas tree, decorated the hall, and made a gingerbread house with your siblings. 

 

 

 

We hung your commemorative ornament up high on our fresh noble fir. I think of you often throughout the year, even though my visits have grown more infrequent to your gravesite, but around Christmastime is when you’d more often cross my mind. Instead of the expected sense of dread and a pervasive grief that blankets my mood, I once again find wonder in the sparkling holiday lights and feel the warmth of the season’s spirit. 

 

 

My heart swells with joy when my children’s excitement over sticking on gumdrop candies becomes contagious, and I experience the magic anew when I discover firsts through their eyes.

 

 

Perhaps people wonder what your mind is like after you’ve dealt with trauma. Even after you’ve roughly recovered, able to go about your daily life appearing to be normal, there are times when anxiety pulls you back down into the dark. In moments of sweet solitude as I sit in bed and nurse Dannica, I’d imagine your lonely soul outside, tapping at the window, wanting in on a bonding moment that we two had never been able to share. Even when I gazed at Dannica’s peaceful, sleeping form and felt her weight and warmth safely nestled in my arms, I would think that I was dreaming it all up, like one of the many dreams I had before she came along, where I’d have a baby girl, only to wake up to the emptiness of a desperate yearning. With our health at the mercy of the pandemic and an overwhelmed healthcare system, I’d mentally put myself in plights during the worst times in human history: when mothers would have their babies ripped from their arms as looters ravaged their homes; when children are forced to take to the streets and beg for food, dying of hunger before they could reach leftovers carelessly flung in their direction by a disinterested passerby; when the bodies of little kids would wash up on shore during wartime, bloated with seawater, or hastily dumped into a ditch already piled high with corpses. Their faces and shapes would so sharply become those of my own babies suffering the same fates while I watched on, a helpless ghost unable to save them or even soothe them in their final moments.

Imagination can be a fearsome beast when it grows dark wings of despair experienced. All this from a sense of helplessness of having no control over the grander scheme of things. This is the year I turn forty: four full decades of having experienced the up’s and down’s of what life has to offer, and what it could take away. I resolved to live and love hard in the next decade, not just to survive, but to experience. It is this strength in the face of adversity that I hope to pass down to my children, so that they cherish life as a gift and not become defeated by it. 

Dear Thi, you weren’t able to experience this gift. You were a wish started but unfulfilled, a dream that slipped through my fingers like fine sand. But you remain a memory in my heart, and as years soften the grief, so too do I feel that I am stroking your indignant spirit, placating our mutual anger at this lost opportunity. I promised I would never leave you, and I never will be far away. So goodnight, my birthday girl, my angel baby. It’s time to close your eyes.

Letters to Dannica: Beaches, First Steps, What Will I Be? (Month 12)

 

Dear Dannica,

You round out your first year of life, and we had an exciting month preparing to celebrate your birthday. Your father and I had envisioned a grand outdoor party with hired cooks for our summer baby, but like how the COVID-19 pandemic has altered many of our plans this year, we had to opt for a quieter and much smaller celebration. We took some family pictures at our favorite nearby park to commemorate the milestone.

Then Daddy and I decorated the house with a rainbow theme much like for your baby shower when we were expecting you, our welcomed and loved double-rainbow baby. We were rewarded for our efforts when you looked up in fascination at the decorations and reached up to touch the paper hot air balloons that dangled from the ceiling. Seeing the wonder in your eyes convinced us to leave up the decorations as a sort of entertainment for you even after your party.

On your birthday morning, I prepared a traditional game: you were to pick from a box filled with items that may hint at your future profession. I included things like a forehead thermometer (doctor), a toy "gavel" (judge), whisk (cook), book (teacher), pen (writer), paint brush (designer/artist), computer mouse (technology), ruler (architect), home magazine (real estate agent), and dance robot (engineer). After initial hesitation and very careful consideration as if your future really did depend on it, you picked the dance robot, so Mommy hopes you will rise to become a strong, competent, and compassionate female leader in a corporation, engineering useful products for the future generation.

We let you open your gifts and play with them, Luc leading the way with his expertise with how toys work.

 

Luc and Mommy spent a weekend baking rainbow unicorn cupcakes to share with your friends at daycare.

We spent the rest of the month taking you to a few local places, such as Stanford Shopping Center.

 

Visiting beaches became a favorite past-time for us, so that you and Luc could get some time playing outdoors. You love spending hours digging in the sand and quickly worked up the courage to chase waves with your brother, who in the last year has become enthralled with them.

 

 

We also visited Vasona Park and took you onto the lake for paddle-boarding.

We spent weekends off work relaxing into domestic life. You'd pull what we call a "Dannica-ism" by climbing into the slit between the mattress and the headboard and slip halfway down before we'd have to hoist you out. Despite being "stuck," you seem to like doing this, maybe to seek our attention.

We take walks to the park and watch our summer crop of sunflowers and dragon fruits grow.

You are now very steady on your feet and could stand for long periods of time, even on uneven surfaces like the bed. Shortly before your 13th month, you took your first few independent steps.

The year has become very different than what we envisioned. We thought we'd show you the world by traveling more with you, introducing you to many firsts in your first year of life. However, we've come to settle into a slower pace of living, happy to have extra time to spend with you, walking you to and from school, watching you grow, happy and content. Thank you for making our hearts so full, Baby Girl. We love you and are so proud of you every day.