I have much to say, much on my mind, much that is crying to get out, popping up in my meditation, beating in time to my heart. But we are getting up at 4am to head for Canada, to spend the week with my folks. Ada didn’t want to go to sleep she was so excited. She’s wearing the Big Sister shirt my mom bought for her this summer. It was to be a birthday gift.

I was going to pass it along to someone else until a friend who lost her first child, her son, at 28 weeks said, Let her wear it, she is a big sister. With that permission came a flood of tears and relief. We gave it to her on Ben’s due date – along with the Mr. Potato Head she’s been asking for. She chose it tonight to wear to bed and for our travel day tomorrow.  Watching her put it on broke my heart wide open.

Big sister.

Sometimes I try to imagine what my family, my childhood, would have been like if my younger brother had died before birth.

Impossible.

I am, and will always be, a big sister. I wonder if my daughter will ever feel that way.

If things had gone according to plan, I would be the mother of a three month old child. Maybe a little sister for my sweet girl who so desperately wants a sibling to hold.

If things had gone according to plan, I’d be as big as a house, feeling anxious about going into labor (having not experienced it the first time around) and wondering if a VBAC would bring our boy into the world.

If things had gone according to plan, I would be typing one-handed, our week-old son at my breast, having been convinced a second Cesarean section was necessary at 39 weeks.

If things had gone according to plan, my little preemie, born at 30 weeks, would finally be home with his family.

If things had gone according to plan.

If things had gone according to plan, I would be in Santa Barbara tonight, sending lanterns into the night sky, celebrating a life too short for his family, though perhaps perfect for him.

If things had gone according to plan. My plan.

Instead I am home, nursing my living child back to health, breathing love into my fear, breathing. And I am grateful to be here. Alive. A mother, daughter, wife, friend, sister, soul. So grateful. And so sad.

Tonight, on what was Benjamin Burton Sheeren’s due date, my heart goes out to all the lost children, however they were taken, and the people who love them, miss them, mourn them. They are smiling on us, telling us not to worry. It is up to us to listen.

Over the last two days we have been saying goodbye to one space and hello to another. I love the light in our new home, the airy feel of it, the color of the walls and floor, even though they were chosen by someone else. I am happy to be in a house again, still catching myself wondering about noise, out of habit, when Ada is at her most exuberant. We have new floors, new carpet (though I could do without the off-gassing), new kitchen, new table tomorrow and new washer and dryer on the way. In many ways this move three blocks away feels like a fresh start. At the same time, we bring ourselves along, our habits, our fears, our mental chatter, our tendency to accumulate more than we need.

As with everything since Ben died, I am working to do things differently. When the clear voice inside me says, Give this away, and the other voice immediately starts with, But it’s perfectly good Corningware and you use it all the time, I am learning to turn back to the first voice, which reminds me, You don’t love it, give it away, create space for something new. I listen. I am learning to let go over and over again.

When I visited Karen Maezen Miller for a Jizo ceremony in her beautiful garden, she gave me incense and instructed me to say ceremony for Ben for the next seven days. I managed six. When I was packing, I found the last stick hidden in the folds of the ceremony program. Today as we were cleaning out the old place, I lit the incense and walked out to my little spot in the sand, in front of a cement wall decorated in chalk drawings. I said ceremony. I said goodbye. I cried.

The space we left absorbed so much love, grief, fear, joy and so many tears in the last  year. I wonder about where that energy goes. Does it hang around like an abandoned puppy or wander off to some war-torn country to hover over a young woman’s head? Is it absorbed back in to the infinite or does it coagulate on the beach like tar, sticking to a teenage boy’s heel as he shows off for the tanned, bikini-clad girl three towels over?

I think that’s why we clean when we move into a new home. Sure, there’s the dirt from the last tenants, but really, we are scrubbing the energy, hoping that life will be good here. As I walked through the space tonight with my sage, my heart held open, beating slightly faster than it should, I hoped for peace, for clarity, ease, and love.

Now I just need to figure out where everything goes.

Like yesterday’s storm, grief rolled in this afternoon, surprising me with its sudden fierceness. Just as quickly, it was gone, the skies cleared, the sun shone. The wind has picked up now and the moon is full. I am being swept clean, waiting for the next front to move in.

Tonight is the last night in the home that sheltered me while my body sheltered the miracle of dividing cells that became Benjamin.

The illusion we call time marches on.