“Remember me as a time of day…”

[I love the TV show Friday Night Lights, and every time the theme song pops up, closed captioning provides me with the information that it is called "Remember me as a time of day". And every time I read that I think what a beautiful sentiment that is, and I wish in some vague way that there was someone I would share such a sentiment with. There isn't, and that's cool. But I still like it.]

I didn’t write yesterday. I slept late again and was barely, groggily awakened by Chick sticking her head in my door and telling me her period had started. I chased in to work and was caught up with racing around the livelong day, pulled into meetings I didn’t think were happening, being responsible to and for others, pinned in one of those late, end of day discussions with bosses. I was late heading home and I called Chick to let her know, and was not prepared for how upset she was with me.

She had just gone through one of the worst, sad days, and I not only did not pick up on this, I was so swooped up in one of those days where your time is not your own and you don’t know where time went until the tornado drops you off at last — I didn’t even call her to check on her or find out more of what was going on or anything. It hurt her feelings terribly, and it wounded me right in the heart to know that. How does one make up for that?

And when I finally made it home, after getting caught in the CF of a gridlock due to part of the eastbound roadway’s being cut to one lane, I walked in empty-handed and triggered more tears. I don’t know the protocol for miscarriage, I don’t know what one is supposed to do or say to help or make things, not better, but more bearable. I learned that husbands or partners or caring folks usually share flowers or at least bring dinner or do something that assures their total grasp of the loss that has hit so devastatingly and killed hope so irrevocably.

Chick didn’t just ’start her period’, she had a miscarriage that wreaked havoc on her body and her spirit and came like a butcher in the night. She didn’t want to tell me everything when she woke me (after having been up most of the night her self) because she was embarrassed that she had just the evening before shown me the “pregnant” statement on the digital pregnancy test she couldn’t help herself from taking after she continued to have all the pregnancy symptoms. She claimed not to have any hope, but inside I was beaming with possibility — the blood test was wrong, or things had righted themselves, everything was going to be as we had let ourselves believe. She had hope. But in the early morning hours she was awakened by the end of that hope.

And I didn’t know and I was too grogged to take in the importance of the news she waked me with. Since she said it so succinctly and backed away, I thought she just didn’t want to talk about it, and I thought I was doing the right thing to wait until she was. But I was wrong. And I was wrong not to shut my office door and pick up the phone and call her and make her tell me what she went through. I can’t go back and undo a thoughtless day. I can learn a lesson I hope I never have to use.

The next-most-difficult thing about this is that we don’t know when we’ll get saved up for her to try again. Admittedly it won’t be as expensive because she has some embryos frozen, although we’ll need to save to pay storage until we can manage a “next time”.

I’m coming up on 2nd time I should be getting raise — I’ve been told I’ve earned one, and a bonus, and that raises will be retroactive to the ‘date’ they should have been given — but no one knows or can predict when raises will be granted. Blame the internecine war, that not only steals focus and moving forward but also frosts the money for the workerbees to get silly things like raises (and bonuses).

There’s always a conversation “planned” to try to make something happen, but the people who need to be talked with are wandered off, out of town, across the river, freaking about cash flow (which I’m told is not really a problem, but just isn’t looking like something that should be spent on raises (and bonuses)). So, every night when I come home and Chick asks me if I got a raise today, I have to say, “not yet.”

However, WHEN I get that raise (or 2, nah, probably won’t be 2), I plan to put the bit extra (I don’t predict a dramatic boost, not in the current climate) aside for Chick’s “next”. But since I can’t say WHEN or HOW MUCH, the promise seems like ice cream on the driveway- meant well but melting away.

It is just a fact that different areas of one’s life must interweave and affect each other. Taking this job and moving here – that left me for a period of time paying for 2 places to live until Chick and Snowy (at Snowy’s decision) joined me, then there was a seemingly too long period when I was paying the mortgage for the house back in the crimson nation while paying more heftily for the family-sized home we rent here, which finally crashed me financially and it’s been a rough dance since then. I’d pin my belief (for over a year I was told: “hang on!”) on the promise that I would be getting not just a raise but a bonus that would relieve that situation, but as it hasn’t happened, I’ve got to try other things.

And this means that I don’t have it in my gift to just nonchalantly pull a few thou out of my back pocket and tender it to my Chick to try to fulfill her dream. This baby, when we finally get her (!) here, is going to be one of the most worked for, saved for, scraped for, struggled for little kidlets ever.

Snowy asked Chick today if she was okay, because she retained enough of the conversation I had with her this morning before I left (telling her that Chick had miscarried, and reminding Snowy that she, too, had been through that and knew how hard that was). She wasn’t quite remembering what I said so Chick had to give her the Cliff’s Notes. She almost but didn’t quite remember that Chick had gone away and she and I were propping each other up, but her heart was touched by Chick’s situation. She offered Chick any money she had if it would help. But that’s not how we’ll make this work. And we will, somehow, figure out how to make this work.

If you could remember me as a time of day, don’t remember me as 11:59 pm. It’s not dark yet.