owlet's seedling

I have been so devastated by Egghunt's news. She finally got a BFP after a FET, and found out last week that it was an ectopic pregnancy. She had to have one of her tubes removed. Please go give Egghunt a hug at Searching for our Golden Egg. It just seems so unfair.

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We managed to find some time at the end of the day yesterday for our tree planting ceremony. I use ceremony loosely, as it was a very brief event attended by only 2 people and roughly 3 or 4 million unceremonious mosquitoes.

Mr. A and I went to the farmer's market in the morning, as we often do on Saturdays. I've been going there with a very heavy heart for years, and a heavier heart still since the miscarriage. There are a multitude of babies, young children, and happy new parents who stroll around at the farmer's market. This is wonderful, and we too would like to stroll around with our baby, except that we've had no luck making that happen. So we walk around with only our shopping bags instead.

I had a fat gift certificate for a spa in town and treated Sattva and I to a manicure and pedicure in the afternoon. It was nice to spend time with her. And very fitting on the day of the tree planting.

When I returned home, I knew it was time to do the tree planting. We couldn't put it off any longer. The seedling needed to be in the ground, and we needed to bring some sort of emotional punctuation mark to this sad event, even if it was only a coma. I think we both went reluctantly.

The spot we chose was, as I said in my last post, at the back of the property, where Mr. A proposed to me in May 2009. It took us about 30 minutes to walk back there, stopping to get mulch on the way. The bugs were atrocious, except when we walked across a breezy field. We didn't say much to each other on the way. I just said, "I hope we never have to do this again". We got to the back field and Mr. A chose a spot at the edge of the forest for the seedling to be planted. It didn't need a very big hole, but Mr. A dug it a bit deeper because we had mementos to put in: the pee sticks that revealed such happy news, a little card we'd received from a friend who was excited we were pregnant, a little note I wrote to owlet, and a tiny metal angel a co-worker gave me with this purpose in mind. Mr. A covered the hole and mulched it well.

Mr. A planting the hazelnut seedling

The bugs were so voracious (but not vociferous, Pumpkin), that it prevented us from lingering there too long. I thought about how that was nature's way of telling us to move on, and not stay in this deep sorrow too long. There are lives to be lived, and perhaps someday, children to be raised.

As I stepped out of the wood's edge where we planted owlet's seedling and began collecting things we had left on the ground, I heard a barred owl give a few hoots. One doesn't often hear owls during the day, but I'm pretty sure that's what I heard (although I am not discounting the possibility of auditory hallucination). While I know it's probably complete bullshit, I took comfort in believing that it was nature's welcome to owlet and a reminder to us that we are not alone in our grief.