It may or may not be International Blog Delurking Week. The first full week of January is when we’re supposed to slither out of the reading closet and check in with an “I’m here” comment.  Which would have been last week since the 1st fell on a Sunday.  But since we usually allow everyone’s hangover to pass before we ask them to delurk, I waited until the second week in January to request everyone reading to raise their figurative hand.

Which seems to be what most people have done.

So welcome to International Blog Delurking Week.  I make a badge every year to mark the occasion, and I give you full permission to right click and grab it for your very own.

My reward for remembering to do this (when I could have just as easily forgotten) is that you have to delurk for this worldwide holiday (which is just as serious and important as all other worldwide holidays … such as International Harry Potter Reading Day.  And International Font Loving Week.

It is fairly easy. Leave a comment in the comment section below admitting that you’re here. You can simply raise your hand and meekly admit that you’re here with a simple, one-word “here” comment; or you can proudly raise your hand and tell us all a bit about yourself (my preferred method); or you can tell me what type of cookie you’d be if you were a lump of cookie dough (see, I’m trying to make it easy for you by even providing a comment prompt). The point is that I want to know about the people who read me, since there is a huge discrepancy between the number of readers in actuality and the number of readers I actually know are reading. Or a tongue-twister like that.

And that’s all you have to do to celebrate.

So (clears throat to nudge you along), who is here?

Sometimes I play Russian Roulette with my blog, believing (probably improperly) that my real feelings will bubble to the surface when faced with needing to make a choice.  I write a post that I feel on the fence about; not on the fence about in terms of writing it because I always think it’s worthy to take the words out of my head, but on the fence about posting it.  Perhaps because I’m worried that I’m not saying it well and I’ll offend someone, or it truly is offensive and therefore I will surely offend someone, or it’s just a waste of time for someone else to read, or it makes me squirm on the inside to send these thoughts into the universe.  There’s a whole host of reasons why I don’t hit publish.

But sometimes I schedule a post to run at a certain time; usually hours away.  And I give myself that time to think about how I’ll feel when the post goes up.  If I’m still anxious about it, I’ve been known to dive at my computer with two minutes to spare and hit unpublish.  Or sometimes the hour passes and the first comment comes in, and I remember about the post and realize I was probably at peace with it if my mind rested.  And then there are times when a lot of other stuff mentally gets in the way so I inadvertently stop thinking about how I feel about the post.  Then the post goes up, and I gulp and have a “should I have published that” moment.

That last post was one of those posts.

I wasn’t worried about being seen as a bitch because frankly, I have my moments and I can be bitchy.  And I own that.  I wasn’t worried about the twins reading it in the future and what they’d think in terms of their placement on my emotional spectrum — I think our life is nuanced enough for them to know they’re not a replacement or a stand-in or any of those sorts of things.  They are just the ChickieNob and Wolvog; their own beings and I am so glad that they are here, that I get to be the person to mother them.  I wasn’t worried that I was being cruel to those pregnancies that didn’t continue — I think I conveyed clearly that I still grieve the fact that those babies aren’t here.  I wasn’t worried about being too open about my wonky uterus because that ship sailed about 5 1/2 years ago when I started this blog.

I don’t know what the hell I was worried about, but I had one of those moments where the first comment came in and my heart started pounding, beating out a mantra of “crap crap crap you forgot forgot forgot.”  By which I mean that without knowing why I felt that way, I totally understood when Esperanza said that it terrified her to post her comment.

Do you ever schedule posts to run in the future (hours or days) just to give yourself more time to think about posting?

I am also, I guess, surprised that it resonated with people.  By which I mean that I am an incredibly poor judge of knowing what will resonate with people.  Perhaps we are all poor judges when it comes down to it.  I know I am not the only one who has been beyond surprised that a certain post has elicited an effusive response while another that I thought everyone would nod their heads in agreement with has gotten a sort of bobblehead-in-the-breeze reaction.  By which I mean a few head nods, but certainly not due to the impact of my words.

Blogging really is just a game of vomiting it all out there, and then sifting through each other’s verbal puke to see patterns like reading wet tea leaves to find answers to our own thoughts.  Nu?

Last Wednesday night, I was cutting the ChickieNob’s nails before her bath, and I cut her thumb nail too deeply.  A dot of blood welled up, and she first started to cry and then changed her mind and looked away from it.  She asked her questions as I quickly cut the rest of the nails before I took care of it, trying to keep ahead of the blood which was threatening to run down her thumb.  How did I know that the blood was going to stop?  And did I think this was a big cut?  And have I ever bled before?

Everyone bleeds at some point.  Who can even remember all the cuts that seemed important at the time?

She wanted me to tell her about different times I’ve bled.

I didn’t say what was really in my head.

I told her about various times I’ve nicked myself shaving my legs.  Times that I could remember falling.  And I told her about a time when I was doing an injection and I hit a blood vessel.  When I pulled out the needle, an unexpected geyser of blood sprayed onto our apartment’s carpet.  We crawled around with a bottle of seltzer trying to dab up the spots.

At least, I thought Josh had been in the room with me.  I couldn’t remember what I had been thinking beforehand; only the moment of surprise when I saw the spray of red, like rose petals being tossed on a stage.

*******

After she went to sleep for the night, I took out my diary and read the passage.  I had been alone in the room.  The reality was that I had been trying to be nonchalant about the injection, telling myself that I was a huge fucking baby for not being used to them by now.  I had hurried through it, trying to convey to myself just how comfortable I was with needles.  I probably would have hit the blood vessel even if I was going slowly — it’s not as if you can see these things with a sub-q injection.  But I blamed my carelessness, my trying to pretend that I didn’t care.  This was apparently for my own benefit seeing that I was, after all, alone in the room until after the incident when Josh arrived with seltzer.  Apparently, I lied about how infertility affected me even when I was by myself.

*******

ChickieNob got into the bathtub, first holding her thumb out of the water despite the fact that I kept telling her that it was okay to submerge it, and finally holding it rigidly under water as if she had somehow ended up with someone else’s hand on the end of her wrist.

She asked me in the tiniest voice what happened to all the other babies that the doctor had tried to put in my belly.  Sometimes I think she is like a shark who can smell blood on the water miles away.  She knew exactly what was in my brain when I hesitated as I cut her nails, told her about the shaving nicks, the scrapes, the blood vessel.

“Well, they really weren’t babies.  They were zygotes or embryos.”

Sometimes, when I don’t think she really wants the full answer, I throw enough science-y terms at her, and she fills in the blanks however she needs to fill in the blanks at the moment.

She splashed around for a bit and then said, “wow, I could have had a lot of sisters and brothers.  If all of those zygotes and embryos had become babies.  They must have been just like an egg.  It would be like losing an egg.  It wouldn’t be like losing a baby.  Because where would the baby even go?”

She asked me why some birds leave their eggs in another bird’s nest and asked if birds will always sit on another bird’s egg, keeping it warm for them.  She spent the rest of the bath marveling at the idea that a bird could have a strange egg in its nest and not even know until the bird hatches.  She told me that she read about this in a non-fiction book.

*******

The diary covers a period of time before we started trying and goes until 5 days before we found out about the twins.  I’m not sure why I chose that day to stop writing because I didn’t journal again in any true sense of the word until I started this blog.  What was it about that day that made me put the pen down?

The reality is that the twins would not be here if not for all the zygotes and embryos that didn’t make it; the cycles that were cancelled or just failed outright.  They would not have been the ChickieNob’s brothers and sisters because if any of them were here, the twins would not be here.  And maybe it is because I have that part to the story that I can close the book on those early losses and not think about them.  That is only half the truth — an invented truth — just like I lied to myself that I didn’t think injections were a big deal; like I misremembered Josh being in the room. I do think about them.  But I don’t wish they were here like I did before the twins came.  That sometimes feels like a terrible thing to say; I obviously wanted all of them.  But they are the children I don’t know.  Would they equally move like a Muppet like the ChickieNob or curl up like a comma as the Wolvog does each night in bed?  I can’t imagine life without these particular children.

Right before Christmas, I was speaking to someone about their sibling’s miscarriage, and I told him a brief version of our history, so casual as if we were discussing the best way to make a crepe.  I went home and thought about it on and off all night.  I hated myself for speaking calmly about that point in time, as if the only proper way to discuss infertility or loss is to scream until my stomach turns inside out and the contents of my body are spewed all over the floor.  And I congratulated myself for being able to speak so frankly and calmly about something that had been so emotionally difficult in the moment.  Well which one is it?  Am I cold?  Am I healed?

The reality is that even in the moment, eight or nine years ago, I never named those losses.  I didn’t feel attached to them, per se.  I never felt the baby kick.  I never saw my stomach swell.  Those early losses never made themselves known in anything more than nausea.  What I felt attached to was the hope that this was finally it.  And again, I feel cold writing that, I berate myself for writing that.  I don’t feel like I’m explaining it well.

It’s not that I didn’t mourn those losses; I still felt a deep grief over them even after the twins were born.  I still light a candle for them on October 15th.  But because my story continued, it is something different because to long for those children means now that I wouldn’t have these.  So I don’t long for them.  I just think of them with the same sadness that I apply to infertility in general.  They have fallen backwards, blending with the rest of infertility so it is just one ball of grief rather than a ball of grief with five spikes sticking out of it.  It is still a ball of grief; it just doesn’t rub me raw as it used to do.

I am so acutely aware that this is the luxury of not only time, but the story continuing.  Of having the twins here rather than being back on that day when the journal ends.  They certainly didn’t erase all that came before, but they reframe it; simply by existing.  And by existing, they create this dichotomy.  I both wish and don’t wish that those other cycles were successful.  Which makes me feel cold.  Which makes me feel at peace.

And how will I remember this years from now?  This conversation with the ChickieNob over a clipped nail.  Will I remember Josh into the room?  Will I think that this was the conversation when I explained pregnancy loss?  Or will it fade from my memory entirely, just like a cut which felt so important in the moment but disappears from the mind by the time the Band-aid comes off?  Will I forget it until it read about it here, one night, in the future, after a different conversation?

I’m starting this on Thursday night, while the twins are finally asleep after standing by their windows post bedtime calling out to us, “I think I see something moving out there, something that is even faster than a plane.”  It makes me understand Christmas Eve, why people follow Santa on NORAD.  Except that it is even more exciting because Befana isn’t coming to any other house in our neighbourhood as far as we know.  The twins asked several times today whether she was visiting any of their friends, and I kept repeating, “no, she only comes to houses of people who believe in her.”  And they couldn’t wrap their minds around the idea of someone not believing in her.  What could possibly be gained by not believing in her?

So I pose that question to you: what is gained from not believing in magic?  In not believing in all the one million impossible things that our minds conjure up?  I guess I’ve never understood why people don’t continue to believe in at least versions of the things they believed as a child.  I still look in the Bay for Chessie every time we’re by the Kent Narrows.  I’m sure I’d do the exact same thing if we lived near Loch Ness.

I’m asking this as a serious question: why stop believing in unicorns and monsters and fairies and wizards?

*******

I meant to blog about or at least Tweet about the 2011 Creme de la Creme list closing to new submissions, but since I forgot, I’m keeping the list open until tonight.  11 pm EST tonight (as in, January 6th) is the last possible moment to submit a blog post for the Creme de la Creme of 2011.  The rest of the blurbs will be going up slowly over the course of the month.

*******

The twins and I have signed up for Codeacademy, which may just be the most addictive website ever.  The Wolvog already knows Javascript, but the ChickieNob and I don’t, and he is along for the ride (he is seriously the best cheerleader in the world.  I feel so freakin’ good when the boy is congratulating me for figuring out how to create a new variable.  He is so earnest that he actually makes me feel smart).  We like to bark at each other, “code academy!” like we’re drill sergeants and we have talked about making our own t-shirt uniforms to wear when we sit down together for lessons.  Not that we’re geeks or anything.

Is anyone else doing Code Year?

******

As of writing the Roundup, the Kindle version of Life from Scratch is still enormously on sale as part of an Amazon promotion to fill-your-Kindle (assuming, of course, that you just got a Kindle for a holiday gift and it is empty).  So if for some crazy reason you haven’t read it yet, here’s your chance for 99 cents.  A huge, huge, huge enormous thank you to everyone who has been helping spread word via their blogs or Twitter or Facebook or email or however else you are telling people about this.  Thank you thank you thank you.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Gifts Worth Giving” (Miss Conception)
• “Little Girls” (The Lotus Flower)
• “Turn Turn Turn” (MissOhKay)
• “Well, Hello 2012” (Unruffled Lanie)
• “Resolutions of New Years Past” (Clay Baboons)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Our Own Creation has a lovely, brief post on what should have been Zoë and Lennox’s fourth birthday party.  It is so quiet, so filled with all the hope she felt for those children, that you can’t help but feel your throat close as you read it.

Uppercase Woman hits it out of the park with her post on body acceptance.  I love this thought, “As Americans we attach so much virtue to dieting, to the idea that the only times our body are mildly acceptable as fat people is when we are in a perpetual state of hunger and deprivation to try to chisel ourselves down to a smaller version.  But I won’t go there again.”  I love her usage of the term “body acceptance” instead of “fat acceptance” (because frankly, there are plenty of reasons why people hate their body).  And this final point is great: “It’s hard to love ourselves and treat our bodies as objects to be treasured when we don’t like how we look. Trust me. I live this every day.”  A must-read post.

Too Many Fish to Fry has kicked off a series to balance out the mainstream media’s coverage of outlying fertility cases.  She is presenting just your average infertile woman, in this case, Bodega Bliss.  The idea in and of itself is fantastic, and the accolades need to go to both writers; Bodega for giving her story and Fish for how she presents it.  But moreover, it’s just a beautiful, heartbreaking post to read; both unique and at the same time accessible to anyone who has experienced a loss or wants to understand.

Lastly, Infertile Fantasies has a post kicking off 2012, that is also about the various reasons why people blog and how certain blogs read.  This obviously resonated with me: “For myself, I blog to think. More than that: I connect to think.”  It is about not being done with a space, but not really knowing what to write.  And sort of being comfortable with that is a valid place to be — and blog from — too.

The roundup to the Roundup: Why stop believing in the things that made you happy to think existed as a child?  Creme de la Creme is still open for another few hours.  We’re doing Code Academy; how about you?  Please help me spread word about the Kindle deal.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between December 30th and January 6th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

Long term readers of my blog know that every January 6th, we celebrate Befana Day even though we are not (1) Italian or (2) Catholic.  The short version of the story is that I picked up the tradition one winter when I was in Florence, Italy.  The longer version includes a convoluted story of very loud sex partaken by other hotel guests staying at the same palazzo, and a conversation with the owner’s daughter which ended with her announcing that she needed to go fill her child’s shoes with candy.  A lot came between listening to the people having sex and the candy in the shoes, but none of it is very important.  The bare facts you need to know is that I’ve been celebrating Befana Day since 1994ish even though I am not Italian or Catholic.

Befana Day — also known as Epiphany — falls every January 6th.  On the night of January 5th, the witch Befana flies through the air, delivering toys and candy to children who believe in her.  She comes to our house because we believe in her wholeheartedly.  The twins draw pictures of shoes and set them outside their rooms (since we all agreed that actually putting the candy in their mangy shoes was twenty kinds of gross).  In the morning, they open their gift before school and at night, we eat a meal of potato caramelle (the recipe will follow below).

I started celebrating this holiday back when I was in graduate school, before I knew anything about infertility.  So it’s sort of strange that I would fall in love with this holiday where infertility and loss feature so prominently in the story.  This is the story the owner’s daughter told us about Befana:

Once there was a woman named Befana. She was cooking and cleaning and just trying to get through her day when three men came to her house and asked directions to Bethlehem. They told her that a baby had been born who was G-d in human form and they asked if she wanted to come with them to see the new baby. Befana said no because she thought she had already used up too much time giving them directions and she went back to her cleaning and cooking.

A little while later, she thought about how she had just missed this amazing opportunity because she had been so focused on this end goal of having the house clean and dinner cooked. She ran out of the house with her broom and apron and tried to find the three travelers (who were, of course, the three wise men). Befana still goes from house to house to this day, trying to find the baby and leaves gifts and candy at each house she visits.

She also gave a second version of the story that hits much closer to home:

Befana was an old woman who was finally a mother after many many years of infertility. The king learned that a baby would be born who would be G-d in human form and he ordered all baby boys to be murdered. Her son was killed in front of her but in her grief, she refused to accept the loss. Instead, she piled together all the things she had made for him, all the hope she had infused into these tangible items while she waited for him, and went out wandering around the world with this sack on her back.

One night, she came to a manger and in her grief, she thought she had found her son who she believed to be lost rather than dead. She placed these items in the manger and the baby’s family saw how deeply this woman grieved from not having her child that they named her Befana, the giver of gifts and gave her a special blessing. One night out of the year, she is a mother to all of the children in the world. On that night, she travels from home to home, leaving presents for children, to remind them how much they are wanted.

I’m not sure how much I love this second version of the story which plays into all the stereotypes of crazy grieving mothers, but there is a part of me that connects with Befana and her grief.  I imagine the modern-day Befana as a thirty-something woman, making her toys in the middle of the night when no one can see her crying.  She holds it together during the day, possibly working an office job so no one suspects that she really has magical powers, and at night, she just sits with her hope, making things for children until the day she can parent her own.

Interestingly, in poking around the Internet about the history of Befana, I came across an article that mentioned that she comes from the Roman goddess Strina or Strenua.  And in looking up information on this Sabine goddess, I discovered that she is the embodiment of strength and endurance.  Which — I think — says a lot about the women in this community.

So.

Caramelle pasta is also a Befana Day tradition (at least, according to the hotel owner’s daughter — I’m not Italian, so if I’m getting all of this completely wrong, it’s her fault).  The shape is meant to resemble the pieces of candy that Befana leaves.  We stuff ours with a creamy potato and balsamic-glazed onion mixture.  I make them ahead of time and freeze them, and serve the meal with a salad.  You do need a hand-cranked pasta machine to make these, but considering they cost about $20, I think it’s one of those things every kitchen should have.

Fresh Pasta

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
5 eggs
pinch of salt

Place the flour in a huge bowl (I like to knead inside the bowl in order to minimize the mess). Make a well in the center. Crack the eggs into the middle of the well and add a pinch of salt. Using your hands, knead the dough together until it is smooth. You will possibly need to add a bit of water or a bit of flour in order to bring it to a satiny finish. Once you have a smooth ball of dough, divide it into 4 parts, wrap each with plastic wrap, and let it rest for an hour while you make the filling.

Caramelle Filling

Ingredients:
2 medium potatoes
1 onion
2 tbsp of balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp of olive oil
a few sprigs of fresh thyme
2 tbsp butter
1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Wash and prick the potatoes and set them on a foil covered baking sheet. Create a small nest out of a second piece of foil and place inside the onion in 4 quarters. Cover the onion sections with the thyme and balsamic vinegar and a splash of olive oil. Close that foil nest and place on the baking sheet too. Put the whole thing in the oven for 45 minutes. The potatoes should be soft when you stick a fork in them to test them.

Allow it to cool a bit and then peel the potatoes (the skin will come right off). Place the drained onions (discard most of the thyme), the potatoes, butter, and cheese in a cuisinart. Puree until smooth. The filling will look like this.

Caramelle Pasta

To put the pasta together, dust the first section of pasta dough with some flour. Run it through the machine on the widest setting (usually 7). Pass it through again two settings down (usually 5), and finally do it a third time at a low setting (I always use 3). Using a square cookie cutter, punch out as many squares as possible.

I use the leftover dough a second time (running it through the three settings), but then toss the rest because it becomes too tough. Fill the squares with a dime-sized amount of filling.

Fold the dough over the filling and continue to roll it until it looks like a tube. Then, pinch the two ends closed. This also works out the air so the pasta will stay closed during the cooking process.

I lay out the caramelle on parchment paper and flash freeze, finally transferring them to a tupperware container.

They cook in about 5 minutes in boiling water. (You’ll need to stay close by and try one or two because the cooking time varies depending on whether they are fresh or frozen.) I serve with butter and a bit of additional cheese.

Buon appetito!

A little tradition you can take and make your own if it speaks to you as it did me.  If making your own pasta feels like too much work this year, feel free to still honour Befana with a slice of pizza or a can of Spaghetti-os.  I use the holiday to say a wish for myself and for the entirely ALI community.  Maybe it’s just me, but sometimes you just need to embrace these outlets.