Megan, 32. Wife of Eric. Mother of Grace. Twenty-two weeks along with Grace's little brother or sister. Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

If you have lost a baby, you are welcome here, and I am so sorry. If you haven't, thank you for reading gently.

[ jump to August ]

9.26.99 · Sunday

Last night was the harvest moon, and it was warm enough to sit out, so Eric and I took our tea out to the bench in Grace's garden after supper. The moon came up orange over the Stoltzfus farm across the road, and then white, and so bright that the white rose looked like it was lit from inside.

We weren't talking. We don't always need to out there. And then the baby kicked, hard, right under my ribs on the left side, and I grabbed Eric's hand and pushed it flat against my stomach and we both held our breath like we were hiding from someone.

Nothing. Of course. And then, just when he started to say "maybe it was", another one. Right under his palm.

He didn't say anything. He just left his hand there. After a while I realized he was crying, very quietly, the way he does, and so was I, and the baby kept going like it was trying to get a word in.

I've felt little flutters for a few weeks. This was different. This was someone saying, I'm here.

Twenty-two weeks today. I'm scared every single day. I'm also, last night on that bench, happy. I didn't know you could hold both at the same time and not drop one. Apparently you can. Apparently you have to.

In bloom: the asters, full purple now; the sedum going rusty pink; the white rose, three last buds.

9.23.99 · Thursday

First day of fall. I cut the last zinnias and put them in the jelly jar on the windowsill over the sink. I'm tired, the good kind. That's all for tonight.

9.21.99 · Tuesday

One year.

I thought I'd know what to do today, and I didn't. I took the day off from work. Eric took the day off too, and we both got up at six anyway because neither of us could sleep, and we stood in the kitchen in our robes and he said, "What do we do?" and I said, "I don't know." There is no book for this. Or there are a few, and I've read them, and none of them know what to do at six in the morning on the day.

So we went out to the garden and did what you do in a garden. He cut back the black-eyed Susans that had gone to seed. I weeded around her stone. It's a flat stone from the creek on Eric's dad's farm, and the man at the monument place carved it for us: GRACE, and the date, and a little rose that looks more like a cabbage, which we've decided we love.

At ten, which is about the time she was born, we sat on the bench. I read her the letter I wrote last night. I'm not going to put it here. Some things are just hers.

My mother came over at noon with a chicken pot pie, the Lancaster kind, with the square noodles, not a crust. She didn't say anything about the day. She just put it in the oven and then went out and pulled weeds with us for an hour in her good slacks. That was the right thing. She always knows the right thing, and I never know how she knows.

Three people from the group sent cards. My sister-in-law called. My friend Jen left white carnations on the porch and drove away without knocking, because she knew I might not want to talk, and she was right, and I'll call her tomorrow.

And a lot of people forgot, and that's okay. No, it isn't. But I understand it. Everybody else's year was just a year.

Tonight the asters are just starting to open. We planted them last October because the aster is the flower for September, and I wanted something that would bloom for her birthday every year for the rest of my life. They're right on time. That's the one thing this year that was right on time.

In bloom: the first New England asters. The white rose. Russian sage.

9.16.99 · Thursday

Rain all day from what's left of the hurricane. It came down in sheets. The creek behind the Stoltzfus farm is over its banks and there are buggies parked under the barn overhang waiting it out. I stood at the back window at lunch and watched the asters in Grace's garden lie down flat in the mud, and I had to sit on the kitchen floor for a while.

It's just rain. I know it's just rain. It's just that everything feels like a sign right now, and I'm tired of reading signs.

At four it let up and I went out in Eric's barn boots. Most of the asters are already standing back up. The white rose didn't lose a single bud.

9.13.99 · Monday

The twenty-week appointment. Nobody tells you, the second time, that every appointment is the first one again. I sat in that waiting room across from a girl who couldn't have been more than twenty, eating Goldfish crackers out of the bag and reading a magazine, bored, just bored, and I have never envied anybody so much in my life. I want to be bored. I want to sit in that room and think about what's for supper.

Eric held my hand so hard my ring left a mark. The nurse knows our story. She turned the screen toward us first thing, before anything else, before she even said hello, so that we could see. The heart, going like a hummingbird. Everything where it should be.

We didn't ask boy or girl. We decided that a long time ago. I want one thing in this whole year to be a surprise that's only good.

I cried in the parking lot. The good kind. There are more kinds than I used to know.

9.6.99 · Monday, Labor Day

Eric's family picnic at the pavilion by the lake. Everybody's so happy about the baby. I'm grateful. I am. I'm going to write down what people said anyway, because the group says it helps to write it down, and because I bet some of you have heard these too.

"Well, at least you know you can get pregnant."

"This one will make up for it."

"Everything happens for a reason."

"God must have needed another angel."

And my favorite, from a cousin by marriage, over the deviled eggs: "So is this your first?"

I know they mean well. I know they're trying to fill a quiet that scares them. But Grace isn't a practice run, and she isn't a reason, and nobody's making up for anybody. She's my daughter. This baby is my second child. That's the only arithmetic there is.

Eric's Aunt Ruth, who is 80 and lost a baby boy in 1946 that nobody in the family ever talks about, found me by the car at the end of the day. She held both my hands and said, "His name was Daniel." That's all. Then she got in her car. That was the only thing anybody said all day that helped.

8.24.99 · Tuesday

Group tonight. Second and fourth Tuesdays, in a room at the hospital with a coffee urn and a box of tissues on every table, which I used to think was too much and now think is about right.

There was a new couple. Their son was born in June. She didn't say anything the whole night, and he did all the talking in a very steady voice, and I remember that. I remember being her. I remember Eric being him.

At the break she came over to me by the coffee and asked, "How long has it been for you?" I said almost a year. She looked at my face, and then at my stomach, and I watched her do the math, and I watched her decide whether I was a hope or a betrayal. I didn't blame her either way. I would have done the same.

Then she asked, "Does it get better?" And I said it gets different. That was the most honest thing I had. I gave her my e-mail and told her about this page, so if you're reading this: I'm so glad you came. Come back in two weeks.

In bloom: black-eyed Susans, lamb's ears gone to flower, the white rose on its second flush.

8.8.99 · Sunday

I'm starting this because I've been reading other people's journals on here late at night for months, and they helped me more than I can say, and I thought maybe it's my turn.

Our daughter Grace was born still last September, at 38 weeks. Her heart stopped a few days before she was born, and nobody could tell us why, and nobody ever will. She had Eric's chin and dark hair and the longest fingers. We held her for a whole afternoon. I'm not going to write more about that day here. Just that she was real, and she was beautiful, and she was ours.

In October, when I couldn't do anything else, Eric started digging. He took out the corner of the lawn by the kitchen window, where I could see it from the sink, and he dug a bed in the shape of a half circle, and his dad brought the stone up from the creek, and his mom brought three bags of peat moss and didn't say a word, just helped. We planted asters and a white rose, an Iceberg, and in the spring I added everything I could think of that was soft or white or smelled good. Lamb's ears, because she'd have liked to touch them. Sweet alyssum. A little bench Eric built out of cedar, which has already gone silver.

And now there's a baby coming, due at the end of January. Fifteen weeks today. I'm so scared to write that down that I've typed it and deleted it three times.

There. I left it.

Thank you to the woman in Iowa and the one in Maryland who wrote after my first entry. I keep your letters in a folder called "Kind."

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