broken levees & dandelion seeds

Somewhere inside of me sadness accumulates. I see my pregnant younger sister who is enormous, I read in an email about my nieces longing for her father while she is away from him overnight, and I notice on my wife's naked body tiny dandelion seed markings in pen, trial placements for tattoos to commemorate our lost babies. For two days I feel darkly moody. I don't know what I want to do, or to eat even. Do I make a snowman outside or lie sadly on the couch reading "Fun Home"? It won't matter what I do until the levee breaks. My sadness pulls at me just enough so that I feel its tug, but not enough for me to discover whence the pull comes. Like a magnet rather than a taut rope; I can't seem to easily follow the tug to its source, only feel its force reacting within me.

The first crack starts as I feel sorry for myself for not building a snowman with my wife. Such childhood activities ought always make one happy, satisfied with life, right? Well...not so. My wife comes in, sits on the couch and the crack seeps silently. Eventually, my tears are spotted, the levee is now rent.

"I miss our babies...I miss our babies...I miss our babies" on and on and on inside my head. The words never make it out my mouth. When my tears begin to subside--"I miss our babies...I miss our babies...I miss our babies"--and again I get to cry. I fear that without the words repeating in my head, the levee will seal itself back up.

I turn to my wife, and ask her why she chose a dandelion seed and if she knows what dandelions represent. At first she replies that it simply came to her to use dandelion seeds. Then she shocks us both: most people think of dandelions as weeds, something to get rid of, but they're actually both food and medicine for us. "Ah, I understand now," I say. And then it hits her too and we both sit in awe. An apt metaphor for the general perspective and response to miscarriages.

Later I decide I want two dandelion seed tattoos as well. One on my hand perhaps, where it will remain public. For the other, I will shave a space over my heart on my chest and let the hair grow back to obscure this more private remembrance of our loss. I live in this world where, at times, I want to be asked about this pain and sadness, while at other times I want to keep it hidden from sight, just knowing it is there, so close.