one thing about hong kong i have never been able to figure out is why the local women, particularly those in the retail industry wear shoes at least one size too large for them.

the results of wearing one shoe size too large (1SSTL) are likely very painful for the wearer…blisters etc, but on a petulant ME ME ME aspect – it annoys me incredibly.

one of my less than endearing quirks is that i get annoyed with the shuffling and clopping that accompanies the 1SSTL habit.

when i first got here i tried to quench my short tempered pettiness because someone told me that "they have to share shoes with their sister". i know now that statement is untrue.

but why wear shoes too large if you do not have to? and it only seems to be pumps. never a slingback.

and yes, this is an issue of the shoe being too large, you can see the space between the heel and the shoe. i sometimes bump into a salesperson if they are leading me to a product because i am so fascinated with their feet.

I DONT GET IT.

suggestions for reasoning behind ISSTL tendencies:

1) since they are worried about their feet swelling they bought shoes one size too large

2) local shoes expand after wearing a few times? (a centimetre)

???????

who would willingly wear shoes that were too big? i have put my time in retail, and i never found bigger shoes to be the answer. i was a bad enough waitress without big shoes further confusing me.

bring it on

for the past 48 hours i have not been a fun gal to be around. more like a fun-gal infection.

reason for my unsettled/snarky way?

i am tired of you smug people.

not the people reading this post, IF anyone here is against us donating embryos, you have respected our decision and said nothing. you folk are angels, and might want to consider making extra money by holding sensitivity classes for the following people.

SMUG people who have been blessed with children as a result of embryo adoption, but want you to know they felt obligated to "rescue" the frozen babies.

ah yes, frozen embryos are apparently a "problem".

and here was i so stupidly thinking they could be a SOLUTION for some couple battling infertility.

no, apparently that is giving myself too much credit and not atoning enough for freezing embryos, which reduces their chance at life. and by not transferring them into my womb, i am, yes that’s correct, abandoning them.

i have several things to say to you ever so caring people. i will limit my comments to a few and not have any swear words.

1) i’ve done the guilt, thank you. God is the only person i need to answer to, and He certainly showed more compassion that you have.

2) maybe you don’t see creating a child and putting it into a family to be loved as a wonderful thing, but i do. although, NOT your family, thanks.

3) i thought we were all working toward the same goal, to find these embryos a good and loving home. apparently i missed the middle step: to make the genetic parents feel even worse and to promote yourselves as the samaritans coming to solve the problem i, in my careless folly, created. (insert your own diatribe, i stopped listening a while ago.)

4) keep up with this attitude and there will be no more "problem" of frozen emrbyos looking for homes. if couples learn they will be treated with such condemnation for an action they cannot change, they will be donating those embryos to science faster than you can say hypocrite.

of mechanics and (bus) mothers

for anyone curious…nothing monumentally repugnant occurred yesterday. we had fun. but mc had come home, and the tuesday had been a completely horrific day.

mag char and i have been watching desperate housewives, which i find to be less dynasty goes to the ‘burbs and more twin peaks. we like! north americans commenced their love affair with wisteria lane last september, but in asia, the series started in may. however, i cant commit to being home every week at a certain time, so the only answer was to buy the first season of the show. which we did and quickly got hooked. magnificent in particular, i might add.

last saturday we were lying in bed watching the show when sebastian sauntered in, fresh from his nap. we were unimpressed that he had woken up 40 minutes early, but grateful that he hadn’t roused the triumverate.

"i’m the bus mother!" he announced, as magnificent charles paused the tv. "everyone get in and i will take you to school!"

mc and i looked at each other in despair. pausing in the middle of an episode? could it be done?

sebastian repeated his request, this time pulling at my hand. everyone out!

my mind raced. my entire education flashed before me. surely i should be able to distract him yet keep him occupied…the key was in wording…come on tess…

bingo.

bus mother!

yes, come with me.

bus mother, my husband and i are both lying down. we are going to the hospital. in the ambulance. can you drive the ambulance for us?

a lengthy pause as the bus mother considered the ramifications to her career if she changed vehicles.

yes.

magnificent suddenly remembered why he married me and smiled with relief. yay tess!

sebastian pulled up a stool beside mc’s side of the bed, we lowered the volume of the tv so it was barely audible over sebastian’s vroom vroom driving noises. i declared myself a genius.

five minutes later, the vrooming stops. and the bus mother announces,

the ambulance broke. everyone into the school bus!

i rummaged through my drawer. there would be sacrifices, but it just might work.

bus mother, wait! i have another idea!

what is it?

i’m not hearing any politeness, bus mother.

thank you, what is it please?

why don’t you take this tape (I hold out a container of scotch tape) and FIX the broken bit?

you could see the bus mother’s eyes go from suspicious to happy. he hustled over to me and grabbed the tape

say thank you

thank you

and he got to fixing. streams of tape were applied to our bed, our duvet, the floor and door and other surfaces. he criss crossed and turned around and every once and a while came to be and demanded money.

forget it! what if you don’t fix the ambulance very well?

i fix it.

so i would give him four m and m’s to keep him happy/silent. little extortionist.

by the time the scotch tape screetched to a halt at the end of its cylinder, the episode was over and we were just watching him. it was hilarious. the mechanisms on wisteria lane got nothing on the manipulations and mechanics happening at 122 pokfulam road.

resignation

To: Colleague

Charles Caldwell

Dear Mr Caldwell;

Please accept my official, and final resignation, in our co-position of parent. i am fully aware that we are colleagues and that I needn’t officially tell you of my resignation, but i thought it would be polite to let you know i quit.

however, i enjoy our partnership and am hoping we can continue our formally recognised company, which is floating quite well on the hang seng index.

in previous discussions where i have mentioned my resignation, you have (jokingly?) stated that would need to find and train my replacement. this is debatable. not sure how many people would accept the position if they listened to me promote it.

in lieu of benefits owed to me, if you could please return my internal and external status to me prior to accepting this position. please pay particular attention to two inches of droop and the torn abdominal muscles. and my memory. you probably thought i had forgotten that.  well i didn’t.

yours sincerely

tess

just call me blanche

the kindness of strangers has been a huge and recurring theme in my life.

in 2000, i was on a plane headed to chicago. the seat next to me was empty. after the plane was in the air, a girl came and sat next to me. she looked just like diana krall. we got to talking. and the words and sentences came easily. and the hours passed quickly. we talked infertility, lifestyles, mothers, careers, living overseas….and at the end of the flight we had addresses and we knew we were friends. we kept in touch, and a few months later, i decided to visit her in new york. do you know what she did? SHE MOVED INTO HER BOYFRIEND’S PLACE AND GAVE ME HER FLAT ON CENTRAL PARK WEST AND 67TH FOR 10 DAYS. i would go to her office and take her to lunch, but i had the days to prowl the city i grew to love by myself. can you imagine? she didn’t really know me! i was a stranger and she opened her heart and home to me.

in 2003, i was flying with sebastian into san fransisco from hk. we connected the flight (united) to vancouver. however, upon arriving in vancouver and passing through the APPALLINGLY LONG CUSTOMS LINE (oops, where did that come from on a day when i am discussing kindness?) and after watching everyone else gather their luggage i realise, ding dong double damn, our luggage has gone missing. so i collect my sad child, and head over to the missing luggage department, fill out terribly long forms and get terribly vague answers, and then hotfoot it over to the check in counter where we are meant to be catching a flight to edmonton.

i get to the west jet counter and the girl informs me that the flight has closed. i can’t believe it. she isn’t rude at all, and i am not screaming at her, but i am horrified. it wasn’t me, flight was on time, stupid luggage, poor sebastian…. and i start crying with the frustration of it all.

i am informed that we have to buy a new set of tickets. the girl is so sorry. i realise my sister is waiting for me in edmonton. where is a phone? i ask the girl. she points me towards a set of pay phones, and then tells me to hold on. she gets another check in person to cover her desk, and takes me with her to their staff room, where she pulls out a container of juice for my sweet sebastian, who slurps it up happily, even though it was apple and blackberry juice, and he is a purist who prefers apple. she pulls out her cellular phone and tells me to call pam. ON HER DIME! so i do.

and then she takes me back to the queue and tells me that the tickets are complimentary. incredible.

there have been smaller gestures, but equally as incredible. last summer when magnificent was gone for three weeks, a relatively new friend lucy, gave sebastian dinner and a bath at her place every day of those three weeks, so i could feed the babies, clean up their vomit and get them to sleep in relative peace. a HUGE gesture of love and support. i am still grateful for that one.

my friend shayna, whom i have never met face to face, sends benadryl and outfits to the babies. she is a busy mum, and makes time for me. when i am feeling low, she magically knows when to call and knowing that i am important to her, with all her degrees and medical knowledge, makes me feel great. shayna doesn’t waste time in girly stuff…she gets right down to the "you’re important to me."

if the only way to demonstrate your appreciation of other’s kindness is to "pay it forward", i can honestly say i haven’t done a lot in the late year, but i have done what i can where i can. there are some people i am committed to praying for each day, and they know who they are. we are on the on-call list at the hospital for couples who have a child in the nicu and are bewildered and overwhelmed. i will take a chance on a stranger.

even more important, i will take a second chance on someone who has previously hurt me. in a way, that’s even a bigger gamble, isn’t it.

my face, my fault

tertia posted on this topic a while back, it is probably a universal theme amongst mothers.

how much effort should i make with my own appearance?

what is an effort?

it can range from

1. brushing teeth

2. brushing hair

3. taking off makeup from night before

4. styling hair

5. applying chapstick

6. applying lipstick

7. applying mascara

8. applying rouge, and coverup while infront of a mirror (as opposed to using jasper’s drool bubbles as a mirror)

9. applying eye shadow

10. applying lip glass

i can confidently say that i do number one. usually number two as well. (i can do that while sitting on the toilet) maybe thrice a week i get up to a four, and once a week maybe an eight or nine.

why is this.

i really don’t care how i look. i always get a bit surprised at people’s reactions to me when i am looking disheveled, but i know they love me for me. and if they don’t, hey, i am 35 now, i can say I DON"T CARE and MEAN IT!

makeup is not essential to my life right now. my mothering abilities, patience, temper, insight, love, etc, (and i know this from experience) is not affected by the amount of makeup i wear. if it was, i would be a tammy faye.

even wearing my nice clothes, i don’t, mainly because i am still horrified by how i look in them, and secondly, it makes more sense for me to wear easily cleaned jeans, sweats and shirts right now. if i am on the floor playing with my kidlets, the last thing i want to worry about is keeping my legs crossed. so goodbye to everything but the very washable and longer cute skirts. i need to lunge to catch errant bodies, and toys. why bother getting upset with the smear and dirt marks the filthy three leave on me when i could focus on the stains on the sofa?

i don’t always look groomed. i never care. my appearance reflects my life right now. definitely, you don’t have to look like me, look at all those new mothers out there who look divine. heck, i looked great when sebastian was a toddler. i don’t mean to be an advertisement for "parenting hell" (a) because i am not getting paid for it and b) because i don’t think i am in parenting hell). my look right now is what works for my life.

i look at other mums with newer kids who have taken the time to put on their makeup and i know it is just a case of different priorities. i could do that if i wanted to, but right now, i don’t. i’d rather take the five minutes and read. talk with charles, or a friend. my face, my choice.

looking back at pictures of myself, i occasionally wonder why i don’t make more of an effort, but hindsight is 20/20.

jasper just vomitted. it has been that sort of day.

lastly, thank you for all the kind things written in the comments section. v.v. nice to read on a day like today.

a while ago, i had an email from a friend who has having trouble conceiving. her secondary infertility was a specific sort, and so i put her on to a tres cool fellow blogger (who has yet to have kidlets) with the same issue.

said friend has now started her own blog. has linked our mutual friend and listed her under her "i’m loving it" reading list. yours truly is absent from the list. there are other bloggers with children on the list (as well as tertia, she is prerequisite!) but mine is not there. i didn’t even have to ask the friend why, she wrote me and said that she is focusing on "edgy" blogs.

i apparently, am edge-free.

but i suppose that could be true.

i don’t have the time to craft brilliance and cleverness. (i’m not saying others don’t have the time either, it may just come faster to them.) such is life. is the point of my blog to be clever and edgy? it would be a nice benefit, i suppose, but aspects of my life are not edgy. holidays are making me frantic. vomit coats my potential edginess.

other times, it is a stretch for me even to be sarcastic, because when i am writing about my suburbian hong kong existence, i recollect the love i felt, and that love overwhelms even my ever present sarcasm.

i thought love was supposed to make you gain weight. i never knew it whittled away your edges.

gal pal, i guess im staying off your "i’m loving it" list, because i’m too busy loving them.

JUNE 2 – CARYS WAS RELEASED FROM HOSPITAL!

magnificent charles was travelling the day carys was released from hospital. she had been on home leave, but needed to go back for one final exam, and so i could sign the final papers, pay the final bills, say the final goodbyes.

how anti climatic for magnificent. oprah would say there was no closure.

the day i took carys in for her final check up and farewell, as with sela and jasper, nurses and doctors had brought cameras to take pictures of the triumverate. when we had taken sela and jasper home, we knew we would be coming back to the NICU that night, to see carys. the goodbyes were emotional as we manipulated jasper and sela’s hands into little bye-bye’s but carys’ leaving was the real goodbye.

the face masks and language differences were tough enough, but how could i put into words my gratitude? for three months i had seen more of this staff than i had seen of friends. they had watched me make the toughest decision of my life, they had witnessed miracles. thank you is such an inadequate word, when you are describing lives that have been saved.

we had watched children die in the nicu. walked into the room the next morning to see the isolette, charts and too small infant gone. we had watched the nurses adjust our babies positions, coax them out of apnea spells, administer medication, change iv lines, nappies, masks. they held our children and loved them when we could not. they were tender. the doctors, maybe not tender, but they certainly saved their lives. again and again.

i was thrilled and horrified to leave the security of the nicu. magnificent wasn’t at home, could i handle three babies and the very active sebastian? what if i messed up the medicines? they never would have done that in the nicu.

in the end, there were no words. there were hugs, there were waves, there were promises to come back that we all knew couldn’t happen because the babies and i were not allowed back in the NICU once formally discharged. it was a new phase of their life. and mine.

tubes, plasters, duoderms, lines, goggles, caps…all had been removed from their bodies over the past three months. the butterflies had emerged from their chrysalids and were preparing to soar.

and all i could do was cry as i said goodbye, and carried my littlest girl home.

http://home.netvigator.com/~tlyons/tripmu.htm

check out the website. can you believe it has been one year.

from the adoption files…

day five….my thoughts….

we are getting down to the nitty gritty. i am facing some tough questions.

how will i answer the question: why did you keep the others and you didn’t keep me?

will i really think i have done the right thing when i see that first baby picture?

we are still getting the occasional stray unsolicited request for embryos, but basically have told the lovely lady at the agency that she does not need to forward us any more applications. the early bird got the worm and all that sort of stuff.

there is a plan, and we just need to trust. doesn’t mean it is easy.

the other day i asked magnificent, "do you want any more children?"

he looked at me and said, "do you?"

and i said "hmmmm".

i would love a pregnancy. but only if it was like when i was carrying sebastian, feeling wonderful, staying active, brilliant short labour that i felt was not long enough. giving birth again, that final push, that squalling indignant cry. yes, i would want a pregnancy, but not for the right reason. i would want it not for the baby, but so i could look back on pregnancy and childbirth with teary smily memories.

but more children? i love my children, that isn’t the issue, is it. i don’t know if my health can take it. even a singleton. is it fair to risk my health and the mediocre mother i can be to these children for the sake of other children?

i’ll change the topic….babies are back on mylanta to help prevent the vomit. carys has both upper teeth coming in and can now growl out, bah bah while waving. magnificent is going to california for eight days on sunday.

wish me luck.

the goal that became my guilt

a few hours after sebastian was born, the paedatrician came into the room with his tape measure. although sebastian was "just" (obviously he hadn’t delivered the baby) 6lbs7oz, did we know that his head was way off the charts, in the 110 percentile?

and although i was feeling pretty good, i thought, "yes, that’s what it felt like at the time."

XXXXXXXXXX

30 may is today.

30 may was a day on which many hopes and dreams were pinned.in 2003, the day before i went in for egg retrieval, i went to babycentre.com and typed in my day of ovulation. based on that date, babycentre declared that my due date was going to be 30 may 2004.

the day i poas (that’s peed on a stick for you infertility rookies) and saw those blessed two lines, i ran to the calendar, flicked to the back where 2004 spread ahead, and circled 30 may.

the 10 days i was in hospital with ohss, i focused on 30 may. the pain of ohss was worth it. 30 may was one day closer.

30 may.

upon learning we were having triplets, 30 may as a due date was no longer possible. april 30 was the best case scenario. but still…30 may was still my target.

days of semi bedrest caused by spotting…don’t get addicted to the jetson’s and the flintstones just yet, you’ve got until to 30 may to be watching.

i was the little engine that could, the turtle and the hare and any other inspirational tale i could think of. i think i can i think i can. oh i wanted to get as close as i could to 30 may…slow and steady wins the race.

except on 23 feb, at six months exactly, i delivered my little jasper, sela and carys. or should i say they tell me a team of 20 delivered the babies while i lay there.

no more 30 may.

i had known from "the books" that at 26 weeks your child has a good chance of surviving if born prematurely, but i had never considered that i would deliver early. everything had been going so well…

i angrily looked at my daytimer where i had created a calendar that counted down the weeks. and tore my eyes away from 30 may and concentrated on day by day.

three babies, their heads the size of a small tangerines. their heads so small they were off the charts.

30 may.

30 may became the day of their "adjusted" birthday was.

"they’re actually doing very well considering they haven’t really been born yet…30 may was their due date" was a safe answer we could give people when they asked how the triplets were doing and we were scared we would start crying if we really told them how alien, still, and anguished the babies really looked.

when they got home and were in a room with another child around their age, and even though you’re not supposed to compare children how can you not, we would say, "well, 30 may is their real birthday, they shouldn’t be doing that yet."

30 may.

30 may is today. tomorrow, no matter how we look at it, carys, jasper and sela are one year old.

and right now, as i look over the pictures of how big their heads were, i can forget that they are not "acheiving" what a one year old should be, and i am going to wonder over the fact that the babies have survived and thrived for one year.

i despair over the vomit. yet there was a time when they were only taking .5ml through the ng (nasal gastric) tube every 3 hours.

i despair (thanks to the PT..like my imagination wasn’t competent enough) that they arent walking yet. i can remember a time when carys couldn’t lie on her back because that position put too much pressure on her lungs.

i despair as i run away to breathe on my own and to turn a page of a book without six hands pulling at my pants, that i am not giving them enough attention. yet i can remember a time when i couldn’t speak to them because it caused their heartrate to speed up. they knew me even then.

30 may was the day the doctors looked at them and said, "okay, you’re official. you’re here."

but even then, we were cautioned that preemies take up to three years to catch up to their actual milestones. definitely forget 23 feb, and forget 30 may too.

forget 30 may? that goal that became my guilt?

can i?

i’m trying. and i’m happy to say that 30 may feel like just any other day. except, it is 3pm, and no one has vomitted yet.