High in the Carpathians

February is a  hard month for me. I'm in Romania at the moment and spend my mornings walking down the mountain.  We walk around 20 minutes into town, have a mooch for postcards. They are proving a challenge. My young son is with me and we move with cautious curiosity.  Cautious curiosity is pretty much how I have approached every February since I was 8.

This year, I feel heavier and lighter at the se.time

It marks the 32nd anniversary of my being raped as a child, the 20th year since I had an abortion, a day I still wince to remember.  Even now, I don't think I have ever felt that cold.  I drove myself home from th clinic and I couldn't cry for days.

It marks the 10th birthday and yahrzeit of my son, who barely made it three days, who never got to feel the grass on his feet, sunlight or raindrops on his skin.  And 5th year commemorating my mother's accident on the Oklahoma Turnpike, the one that would leave her body in a simulataneous charred and gelatinous mess.

Since the death of my son, I have struggled to keep my head above water every February. I have come closer to taking my own life in this month more times than I have ever cared to admit or acknowledge.  I have tried running roughshod over the month, white-knuckling  through even though the ramifications would reach far beyond the month. I used to think my sheer force of will would protect the people around me from the worst of myself. 

This year, I decided to take my friend's advice and treat myself with grace, give myself time.  I don't have the luxury of leaving my melancholy at the door but I can take it with me, wrap it up in a blanket and feed it cups of tea. I can sit in a room of strangers, laughing and crying at the same time.  I can bring my tears, my heartache, and my joy with me and not worry about whether I am holding anything at all together.  So here I am, in the mountains of Transylvania, almost divorced, almost a single parent, standing still, wondering what my eldest son is doing on the other side.