It's a New Year : Sebastien and excerpts from my stories

Well, I'm back. It was pretty much one of the worst year's of my life but I survived and I am still here to live another day.

For the first few months after Sebastien's death it was pretty hard. Grief is an individual thing and nobody can tell you how long or how you should grieve. But after a few month's, it started to get better and I was quite surprised at how resilient I am. Now if it had been an accident why he died rather than there was nothing I could do, it would have been a lot longer. The "what if's" can kill you. The one thing I realized is when my time comes (and hopefully, it's not soon) and I head for the pearly gates of heaven, I will not be scared. It will be a joyous occasion because I firmly believe I will see him again, when the time comes of course. Along with about twenty cats, eight dogs and a rabbit named Alfalfa Sprout.

In other news, we have been looking for a kindergarten for our daughter. We have to go to a private school because our local public schools here are pretty bad. Half the kids in third grade at the school she would go to failed the state reading exam. So like other parents, I have to not only pay taxes for a school system which is failing but now we have to pay private tuition. For a middle class family, it's a frustrating concept.

And let me tell you, touring many, many schools is quite exhausting. In one day, we toured four and by the time we got home, I couldn't even think straight. I think we found the right one and we get a discount if we become church members so we plan to go to the church and school. Today we went to church for the first time in probably fifteen years. We went to a Lutheran church. First of all, I do not sing well and we had to sing about 10 songs. There's nothing like trying to mouth the words of a song and then when you get up the nerve to start singing, you hear your voice out of tune and go back to mouthing the words. I could hear my husband finally getting the courage to start singing and he didn't sound good either but I didn't say anything or else he would never sing again in his life. Pride you know!

Then we went up for communion to take the wine and the wafer. I thought he knew what he was doing because he grew up Catholic. We were the first two in line and went for the benches to kneel down by the main alter and the woman behind us said, "No, no not yet." Then I followed him back to the pews and he went back to the wrong row. I was thinking, "I don't remember sitting behind this woman with the green sweater," and then the lady who helped us said, "No, you sit over there." Let's just say we made an impact, especially when it's a small church.

I've been working on my novel again. Not as much as I would like but it's progress. My husband says he finds me most attractive when he hears me laughing hysterically as I read over it. First, I don't laugh at something unless it's really funny and then it's just usually a smile. So sometimes in the middle of the night or such, all of a sudden he'll hear me laugh quite loudly as I say, "Oh my gosh, this is so funny" and I clap my hands like a weirdo. I guess he's attracted to women who are a little off. Maybe I should post a chapter here sometime from Finding Hope. Maybe the scene where the two female friends, Hope and Gina, go to The Lady Devine Love Club to find the men of their dreams only to encounter a class full of crazies including a stalker named Arnold who Hope refers to as her somewhat demented guardian angel.

Or the other main character, John, who ends up with one of those designer dog's (Mr. Bob) that his model/actress/Bloomingdale's part-time saleswoman girlfriend (and aren't there a lot of those in Hollywood?) made him keep when she left him. Apparently, she got Mr. Bob half-price when the Chihuahua was returned to the breeder for an erratic temperament. And boy does Mr. Bob cause problems. Just try to put him in one of those designer doggy suits!

And of course we have "Bab's", John's 65 year-old annoying neighbor who wears mu mu's and high-heeled slippers with pink feathers and wants to take John up as a young lover. (Don't all men need one of these in their life? Since so called "cougars" are in right now. :o)

There's a little of everything in it: Weight Watcher Meetings with the crazy "spandex queen" woman who lost 100 lbs, the Antiques Roadshow where a Grandma to a mob member tries to see how much a stolen painting is worth (let's just say she runs pretty fast in those support hose), Lady Devines Love Club with a "How to Find the Love of your Life" textbook with charts and cross-analysis sheets, an L.A. trip where Gina and Hope break into a star's home looking for Denzel Washington's house and encounter a Doberman named "Jaws"

Speed dating events with themes including Gothic Night where a man dressed up as a vampire has a hand licking problem, or a Cartoon Speed Dating Grand Gala Event where a very short Asian man is dressed up as Daffy Duck and tells Hope, "You pretty American lady." Hope finally gives in and they dance to Barry White's "Let's Get It On" as he lays his Daffy Duck head against her chest. And she responds, "Why not, what else do I have to do tonight." Or when Hope trusts her friend/coworker Gina, to book a hotel for a business conference in Mexico and instead of staying at the Marriott they end up at a broken down hacienda in the middle of the Mexican desert where the father of the farm/house is booking reservations to try to get his daughter and son with one rolling eyeball married off. Apparently the roof in their room isn't complete for which the father, Mr. Sanchez, argues, "It an American Skylight!"

So that's just a part of it. And that's why it's 500 some pages and needs to be cut down. There are so many funny situations they end up in and it could go on forever if books could be thousands of pages. But who would read them, right?

Also, I have a start of a book and some ideas written down for a comedic novel called, The Writer's Resort. A woman quits her job to become a writer and goes to the Writer's Resort on the coast of Florida. When she gets there she meets a lot of misfits, all with the passion to be great writers. Here are some excerpts to The Writer's Resort:

Set-Up: When Nora, the main character is talking to Mary Alice, the owner.

Nora: "Some of these people here are rather strange and a few, I think, have some diagnosable mental problems. Bernie washed his hands six times during the class and the dark haired girl with the big glasses chewed away her pen cap. Did she eat it? I just don't think these are the type of people I expected here. I thought real writers were professional and half-way normal. All I see here are people with problems."

"Imagine that, people writing because they have a problem with life," Mary Alice laughed. "Honey, you don't know the first thing about writers. Creativity and crazy go hand-in-hand. Welcome to the club."

Set-Up: Nora and the owner, Mary Alice, are sun bathing on the lawn chairs at the resort by the pool. Nora hears a commotion and looks up at the roof of the small resort.

"Mary Alice, there's a strange old man on top of your roof staring out at the ocean with a pair of binoculars. He's not a writer is he?"

"Oh, the Corporal? He's harmless." Mary Alice looked up at the elderly man dressed in an M1 helmet and army battle fatigues. "Yeah, he lives up in the attic. He was here when we bought the place. I think he was the owner's uncle or something."

"So what? He just came with the property?"

"Pretty much," Mary Alice said as she casually sipped her drink. "It was basically, either take him too or lose the deal."

They watched as the elderly man loaded balls into a small cannon on top of the roof. He picked up a bullhorn and shouted, "All clear! Get your heads down men!" A couple in front of them ducked suddenly wondering what was going on.

"Well then," Mary Alice said taking another sip of her drink.

Nora wondered why Mary Alice was taking this so casually. How many resorts had an 80 year-old man in an army uniform shooting a cannon on their roof. "I've heard of taking in a neighborhood cat with the sale of a property, but an elderly man who lives in the attic?"

"He's really not bad once you get used to him blowing his bugle at 5 A.M. to announce the invasion of Normandy," Mary Alice said.

"Great, I'm going to have to hear that tomorrow morning?" Nora asked.

"Just consider him a hands-free alarm clock." Mary Alice looked over at Nora's expression and laughed.

"This isn't funny," Nora said, "the man is obviously demented and needs help." She looked back up at the Corporal, his hands on top of his helmet as if an oncoming bomb was about to approach, "that or he's shell shocked."

"Listen," said Mary Alice, "when you buy a house, or in this case a broken-down resort, you always end up with more than what you bargained for: things the owner doesn't quite tell you about. Some people find out the place they bought has a bug infestation, some a leaky basement with mold spores; we just happen to end up with an 86 year-old World War II veteran living in our attic who on his off days, still thinks he's fighting in the war. If you ask me," Mary Alice reasoned, "we came out pretty lucky."

Next-

Disclaimer: I have nothing against the people mentioned below. In fact, I value that they live their life in honesty. But if I was scared to write because I might offend someone then the crazy characters in all of my stories would be pretty boring. And they would lose their charm.

Set-up: There are classes at the resort being offered by genre. One is called, "Gay and Lesbian Fantasy Fiction Class." Stewart, Nora's friend and a fellow attendee, tells her about the first class at lunch:

"There are only two people in the Gay and Lesbian Fantasy Fiction class and I am one of them. The other woman, and I use this term loosely, is an overly tanned Lesbian who is a weight lifter by day, writer by night and of course, just my luck, really hates men."

"Gay men, too?" Nora asked.

"All men," he said. "She is writing about this love affair between Maxi and Barbara, these two women who wear flannel shirts and stir-up pants and somehow, all the men keep hitting on them in the story, despite the two women's lack in fashion. Well, every encounter ends up where Maxi and Barbara are beating up the men: pulling on this, twisting that. It's just so not publishable. And let me tell you," Stewart continued, "she sure doesn't like it when I read the sex scenes between Garry and Larry in my book and mention the word penis. I really think she's going to throw me out of the window. She's really not an attractive lady."

"Sounds like you're going to have fun this summer, " Nora smiled.

"Wait, here she comes," Stewart said. "Her name is Billy," he whispered across the table.

"Are you sure she isn't a man," Nora said as they watched Billy walk across the pool patio in her string bikini. "I swear she has an Adams apple."

"No, she said it's from an unfortunate overdose of steroids in her youth. She actually wrote a short story about it and said it was published in Weightlifting Mania."

"You mean she shared it with you?"

"Remember, I'm the only other person in there," Stewart reminded her.

"And Professor McConnell? What did he think of her short story?"

"I don't know? He left at the beginning of the class to get a drink of water and returned right before we had to leave. Come to think of it, he had a full water bottle on his desk before he left."

"You don't say," Nora said sarcastically.

"It's okay now," Stewart said. "Billy and I have found out how to work together. When she reads her stories she omits the parts where she is bashing in men's testicles and I substitute the word vagina for penis when I read my stories. You see, it's all about finding common ground."

"I bet psychologists would love to be in the room with you two."

He laughed, "It's totally crazy, isn't it."

"Yeah, I think most people would say so."

Final thought: So by the end of it, Nora finds out that the owner is going to sell The Writers Resort because it's in disrepair and she wants to retire. Nora decides to make a big decision and buys the resort with the savings she made from her corporate job. Last excerpt from Nora's journal:

We came to The Writers Resort thinking we would be able to write our great American novel. A dream we all have as writers, to be welcomed into the sanctified halls with Chekhov, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. These were dreams of ours which carried us so far until one day, we reached out for help and hoped the strength we couldn't find in ourselves, others would be able to find in us. And that is why we came here. When I first entered this dilapidated resort, with its torn shingles and the water dripping from the ceiling, I wondered who would own such a catastrophe. And more than that, what was I doing here? I thought for sure, this was either a joke or some scheme to get hopeless writers money.

This place that I thought was rundown and needed to be torn down is now the place I call home along with many other writers. I learned this building may have lost a lot of its structure and glory but the dreams of thousands of writers have passed through its doors. I will continue the resort just as the original owners did when they opened their doors in 1920. And the magic of this old ocean side resort will live on so future writers will have a place where they will not only learn how to write, but will be encouraged to dream. #

Well, I'm done. It's way past midnight and I have to get up with my daughter tomorrow which means, I'm going to be really tired. The grammar isn't perfect, it needs revising but this is an easy-going website and at 3 in the morning, one just doesn't feel like editing copy, am I right? It needs more description and punctuation checks, but that's for another time. So I'm off to bed. Hopefully, you'll get at least one laugh.

Goodnight. Man, I shouldn't have drank that cup of coffee. My schedule is going to be so off.

The Flight of the Butterfly

It has been a hard road since Sebastien’s death on August 14th but each week it’s getting better. It’ll never be okay but life must go on so you do what you can to move forward.

We received his autopsy report back this week. Most parents begin to know their baby after birth, but the only way we can know our baby is through his few hours of life and a detailed description of various body parts in an autopsy report. But even those details, morbid or not, make up the whole of who he was as a unique little baby, details which every parent covets when it’s their own child.

When someone dies (or even a pet) we all have a tendency to seek things we can hold onto. My husband and I decided we would each get a tattoo, something to remind us of him, a permanent mark to show that he existed. What tattoo to get is another question? We thought of angels, crosses, his name, a heart, and everything else. Nothing seemed exactly right.

Today, I was sitting outside reading a novel, The Sound of Butterflies. For the past week, we’ve seen many butterflies. We went to the lake for a few hours. The wind was quite harsh that day and small white butterflies flew down the shore bobbing up and down in the breeze. At a festival this past weekend, we passed a craft booth that sold frames with real butterflies pinned inside. (They claimed no butterflies were killed and they died naturally. Whether that’s true, I do not know and I don’t believe in having art or wall hangings of dead animals.) But they were beautiful and I saw a few butterflies which were described in the novel I am reading.

As I was sitting outside today, I saw the white butterflies again and I remembered reading somewhere when you see a butterfly someone who has died is coming to see you. I looked on the internet and it says that ancient Greeks considered butterflies as the souls of those who had passed away. There are many references to different meanings but it also means rebirth.

I guess sometimes you just have to look around to see what life is telling you. So I found my perfect tattoo, a butterfly. Although I don’t necessarily believe they are souls, I would like to believe they could be and that one of those souls fluttering by would be Sebastien: free, happy and basking in the sunlight. Butterflies also signify rebirth and if there is anything I could want for my son is that he has some kind of rebirth one day, so he can experience life and maybe, see a beautiful butterfly of his own.

Our little son, 4 lbs 10 oz

In memory of Sebastien Lafrance

August 14, 2010

I just wanted to update you about what happened with our baby. Last Tuesday I went to Rush in Chicago because I started having mild contractions. I stayed overnight, ending at 4 cm. They said I could be induced or go home and wait to see what happens and I decided to go home.

On Saturday, August 14, I woke up at 1 in the morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. At 3 A.M. my contractions started to get worse. I tried to wait until Olivia woke up and by 8 A.M. we were on the road. By the time I arrived at the hospital, I was 8 cm and yelling for an epidural. Sebastien (Stéphane wanted to name him the French spelling) was coming out just as they had put the epidural in, hands first.

I heard the doctor mention that he may need to do a C-section. We knew the baby was breech but we didn’t know the hands would be out first. He did an ultra sound to see where the baby was positioned and actually took the hands out, then he went inside and grabbed the feet and then I pushed the head out. The baby was 4 lbs 10 ounces and had soft bones because of the lack of amniotic fluid so the doctor was able to get him out without any tearing which was a miracle in itself.

The baby looked a lot like Olivia with her lips, chin and chubby cheeks. He had light brown hair. He had some deformities because he didn’t have any amniotic fluid to shelter him but he still looked like a little cute baby. He didn’t wake up but he was alive (with a heartbeat) for 3 ½ hours so he was pink and rosy and we got to hold him which was a blessing. He passed away at 3 P.M.

We believe he made a frown when Stéphane touched his stomach (Stéphane is very ticklish also) but we aren’t sure if it really happened or it was that his head may have been moved to where he appeared to made a frown. At one point while he was laying down, his hand was up by his mouth like he was trying to suck his thumb and the nurse said she hadn't positioned it that way. So again, we weren't sure if he did that or not. It would have been nice if he had been alert or awake so we could see his character but on the other side, he may have been in a lot of pain if he was awake because of his physical issues. We aren’t sure. Olivia was there and she was a great big sister, stroking his arm and kissing his head, telling him how cute he was.

So those are the facts but of course, it was very heartbreaking. Despite the outcome, we couldn’t have asked for it to have gone any better except for him to be alive. The nurses were amazing, it was pretty much a miracle how the delivery went and that I arrived on time (Can you imagine Stéphane having to deliver a breech baby in the car?), Olivia was able to get to see him, we were able to hold him, we don’t think he was in pain and based on his physical problems which were evident when he was born there wasn’t any doubt that he couldn’t have lived with them so there wasn’t any second guessing or should we have done something differently. It was a nice day outside and it seemed very peaceful.

The hardest part was leaving the hospital without him. We went outside with fast traffic in Chicago, the day bright and sunny, people going about their daily lives and he was never even able to leave the hospital. There is something very wrong when a baby is left behind and never gets to go out into the sunlight.

Hopefully, he will get a shot at life some other time.

For the first night I kept dreaming I was giving birth over and over and the babies were passing away. It was pretty horrible. However, in the dream one baby came out talking which was strange and one baby was delivered by Dr. Oz from television. Even in the worst of circumstances it seems I still have a crazy imagination.

I thought it would be easier after the hard part of the birth was over. But the hardest part started after he was born. During the eight months, I always had that 1% hope that a miracle would happen. After your child passes away, all hope is gone. He is gone and nothing is going to bring him back. We see what might have been with his little chubby hands, his tiny fingers and his body which even though it's frail is still the baby we wanted. We can have other children but they will never be the one that we lost.

We will be okay. We dont' have any other choice. It’s hard but there is nothing we can do but get through it. Our story is one that many parents have gone through and yet it's very individual because the child you cry for the most is always your own. As you know, our cat Ghost died a month ago. I told Sebastien while he was still alive that a fluffy gray cat was waiting for him in heaven so he won't be alone. It’s sort of nice to think they will have each other until we can see them again.

I hope God exists or else we are all in this cruel joke called life together.

A Disconcerting Year

In January, I found out I was pregnant.

In April, I left my job because I wanted to be there for our two young children.
In my office at home, I wrote down, "2010 The Best Year Yet."
I was going to start writing more, I was going to take care of the baby and be there for our daughter, I finally had enough courage to leave my job without feeling guilty. I was ready and excited for a change.

In May, we found out the baby's bladder was blocked. The urine somehow helps produce the amniotic fluid so with his bladder blocked, I didn't have any amniotic fluid for the baby's lungs to develop. I remember the last words the doctor said that day as we were leaving, "I wouldn't have much hope."

We started having a bunch of tests and we were sent to a specialist in Chicago. We were ushered to a room with a conference table as a team of people filed in: a social worker, a doctor, a nurse and a chaplain. We were told there wasn't any chance. Our baby was going to die. I was 5 months so we could either have a late stage abortion in another state or the baby would end up stillborn or die after a day. Those were the choices. There wasn't a reason why, just a fluke of nature.


Ghost, his last month
Around that same time, another one of our cats started losing weight, Ghost. This time it wasn't as simple as a thyroid problem like with our other cat. For several months we did every test the vet could think of. After about six vet visits, $1000 dollars and many months of worrying, Ghost died on July 8th. He waited until I came home from a trip, I brushed him for a hour (his favorite thing) and I held him as the light went out of his eyes. We were never able to find out what was wrong with him which was the hardest part. A cat that sat on my computer desk for 10 years while I did my writing, a cat that looked at me like I was everything was suddenly gone without any explanation.

In June, a stray cat came up to our front porch when my daughter was watering the plants and he stayed on our porch for three weeks. He wouldn't leave and if he walked off the porch he would run back as soon as he could as if he found his home and that was it, he wasn't budging.

My daughter named him Cutie Pie. We didn't want more pets, we had enough. But by the third week of him trying to get in the front door and his health going downhill from being outside, I finally gave in. When nobody will do anything it is when somebody has to step up and do the right thing. We took him to the vet and they told us he has FIV, Feline Aids. People and other animals can't catch this, it's a species specific disease. Other than that, he was quite healthy. Cats can get this who roam outside. It's from a cat biting another cat, usually males protecting their territory. Cats with FIV shouldn't really be with other cats which meant I wouldn't be able to keep him. More bad news because now I was attached.

The vet told us we should probably put him down given the circumstance. It's hard to adopt out an FIV positive cat. For a moment I thought about putting him down. I was tired of everything bad happening and I couldn't take anymore. How would we find a home for this cat and I didn't know much about FIV. But clarity came back and I told him no, my baby was dying, my cat died and this cat deserves to be saved because he can be.

So my 2010 Best Year Yet on my dry erase board is still there in my office. But I can tell you, this will not be the best year yet, this will be the worst year. Life has a way of showing you that you are not in charge of it, it is in charge of you. The only thing you can control is your response to the events that happen. So I am waiting. Waiting for the last bad thing to happen in September, when the baby dies and hopefully, we can hold him for a few hours and tell him goodbye. That we held out and let God take him rather than deciding his fate early on. I wasn't going to be the one to end my child's life.

We all have bad years. Someone said we see people everyday, pushing carts in grocery stores, walking past us at work, but we never know the tragedies they've had to deal with in life or the ones they are dealing with at the moment. The best thing and the only thing to do is to wait it out and put one foot forward because the one thing that gets you through it all is time.



Cutie Pie, the saved cat

Back in Black

January 1st is the one day most of the world feels hope. Hope that we can wipe the slate clean and through our own individual resolutions conquer whatever problems plagued us last year. Hope that this year will be the one that changes everything. Hope that people will be kinder, our jobs will be easier, the economy stronger and the world a happier place-we all believe that on this day, change for the better is possible.


I have neglected my blog for a while now. A child, housework, the job, after preschool activities like swimming and ballet have started for my daughter. Everything has to be done and nothing seems to progress except daily living-one day at a time. Looking back a few things have happened that have been good. I now write a column for a small newspaper which reaches about 110,000 people. My husband lost his long time job only to find a better one six months later. My beautiful 13 year-old cat, which is smart enough to hit me with his paw when he wants to be pet (and unfortunately, it comes about when I am already sleeping in bed) was losing weight drastically. I was worried it was kidney or liver failure and it turned out to be a thyroid condition where he just has to take a pill everyday. God was with me on that one. And of course, the best, my daughter is healthy and happy. We take children's health for granted because they are young, but at any moment life has a way of changing. Ask those who have experienced it.

So what are my resolutions? On our way to Canada to see my husband's parents, I wrote in my notebook my resolutions. I separated mine into categories: health, house, financial and of course writing. With each category, I had about five to ten resolutions underneath them. My husband, well, my husband ended up with one and a half. Actually, he made up the half one since I told him one of his resolutions should be not to forget things all the time. He said he's going to check out a book on memory techniques someday from the library. Um, right.

How long will they last? I don't know, but with resolutions we try and we hope and that's all we can do. If we ever stop trying, then we should consider ourselves perfect and frankly, I don't believe that exists in anyone.

So here's to 2010. Where it will lead us, we don't know yet. But just like last year, I will hope that we will all be better by the end of it.

A LIttle Girl in Pigtails

This past weekend we went to the Gap Casting Call, a contest which is across the country for babies and kids. You can enter at home or go to the sessions at the store where a professional photographer will take your child's picture and you can download it at home and then enter. They pick twenty finalists and then people vote on the website for the winner. There were so many adorable looking children at the mall that I can't imagine having to pick twenty among hundreds if not, thousands of children.

We arrived at the mall at 10 A.M. and they gave us a ticket to come back at 4:00 P.M. The exact time she happens to take her nap. When we came back at 3:30 P.M. they were running early so we had to immediately wake her up to take the picture. Poor girl. But I think it turned out quite well considering she was still tired.