theology&geometry

My brother and his fiancée are so funny and cute together. They had me shoot some photos of them while I was in town last month. I have finally gotten around to uploading them! Here are some favorites.

I just got word that my nephew has been born! Welcome to our crazy family, Levi Brantley Turner. Can’t wait to meet you!

They’re from the late ’80s, when my brother and sister and I would leave our boombox on record for hours on end, until the tapes would run out. They are packed with preciousness and hilarity. I have fuzzy memories of making some of these recordings in our old house, perched on a bunk bed with the bedside lamp on, a blanket hanging from the top for some privacy.

My mom let me hear some snippets when she was in town this weekend because she has a tape player in her Explorer. I have got to find a tape player so I can get them all recorded digitally before the tapes themselves melt or worse.

Here’s a bit I caught on my phone of my mom and me listening to a tape (meta!) where I am singing a Bon Jovi song and then, later, trying to get my 2-year-old brother to talk.

Evan and Lindsey on tape in the late ’80s

Hope you enjoy my drawl, y’all.

ETA: ARGH WHY WON’T THIS PLAYYYYYYYY

Friday night. Taking a break at work while I wait on my pages to get the go-ahead. Coffee to prop up droopy eyelids, even though that’s ill-advised at 10:30 when I know I’ll be trying to sleep in two hours. I spent my entire morning and afternoon chasing naps after Holden decided 4 a.m. was as good a time as any to get up. That boy has put us through the ringer this week in the sleep department. We got spoiled to his sleeping 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. thing, even if 6 is painfully early for me to rise after getting home so late. But this week something’s up: At least two nights he woke up every 2-3 hours, and not because he was hungry. Just because he wanted to party. Buds McKenzie, you know better than that!

I am trying to get psyched up for the weekend. We’re hitting the road tomorrow morning and heading to Shiloh, where my dad will be taking part in the huge 150th anniversary to-do. Of course he wants me to photograph the battles and encampments at the crack of dawn, but there is no way that’s feasible for me and I’ve tried to explain that to him so he won’t be disappointed. I remind him often that back in November, remember that time I had a baby? Yeah, he is still here, the baby, and he is in charge, and he does not want to go hang out in a grassy, hot-ass field all day while the dulcet tones of gunfire and cannon shots echo around us. My one clear objective for the day is to photograph Mom and Dad’s vow renewal ceremony, which is taking place after the battles end and before the big ball begins. It’s where all the men in their dressy wool with brass buttons and the ladies in their giant hoop skirts and lace will join hands and dance a respectable distance from one another. My parents are going to do this thing in full period regalia, a fact I have repeated to people around me a dozen times and the novelty never seems to wear off. They’ve been planning it since their 25th anniversary but time got away from them. This year’s the year, though!

Then we are going to attempt our first overnighter away from home because I am 100 percent positive I am going to be exhausted and have a major headache by the evening. The prospect of an overnighter away from home is sort of terrifying but a little less so thanks to our week of broken, weird sleep patterns that have spooked me out of my hard-won comfort zone. If ever there’s a time to break routine, I guess this is it. Our bedtime routine is pretty sacred so I wonder to what degree Holden being away from his bed and his creature comforts will result in his not understanding that it’s time to sleep for a long time. On the other hand, the bedtime routine could be total superstition on our part, but I’ve been too paranoid to break it or else risk a completely sleepless night.

My parents are giddy at the prospect of getting to spend more than just a few hours with him, which is sweet. They speak often of longing for the days when he can spend weeks in the summer on the farm. That’s all well and good but he is NOT ALLOWED to ride four-wheelers until he’s 30. Okay? Okay. AND KEEP HIS TINY BABY HANDS AWAY FROM THOSE HORSES’ MOUTHS!

It would be really great if Sunday could be extra laid back and leisurely, with me catching up on five months’ worth of lost sleep while the family passes the baby around while sipping tall sweating glasses of sweet tea out on the veranda beneath the whirring fans, but I am not delusional enough to think that’s a possibility at this age. Also we don’t have a veranda with a fan; this isn’t The Help. I am sort of diplomatically letting go of the notion of ever being able to truly relax again. At least not until he’s grown.

Christmas at my parents’ was even more hectic and insane than I could have imagined. I was up at 5 but wanted Ray to get plenty of sleep since he’d taken the night shift, so we ended up not leaving until well after 10. I managed to get a shower and blow dry my hair — the latter of which is reserved for special occasions now — and get a non-pajama outfit on, but Holden decided after our final feeding of the morning to puke on my shoulder. No big whoop, I thought, and wiped it and him off. Except that he did it again, this time in my hair too, at which point I had to change shirts because for holidays I’ve always tried to have a one-puke limit on my clothes. And that was when I was single! (Rimshot.)

Anyway, we got to my parents’ after noon, and there was a huge spread of finger foods laid out (Ray was so grossed out by the term “finger foods” — is that a regional thing? I would feel like a phony calling them hors d’oeuvres). Holden was passed around quite a bit and Ray and I were on edge thanks to my parents’ idiot yipping dog that kept making like he was going to jump on the baby (that for some reason they wouldn’t put in the basement … grrr) but did fine except when he got hungry and wanted to nurse. It was loud — my family yell talks — and crazy and we were only there six or so hours but it made for a long, exhausting day. I didn’t even have a chance to eat any of my birthday cake, and no one got a picture of Ray, Holden, and me like I wanted. Bleh.

My sister made us a sweet DVD of photos of me and Ray as kids and of Holden. I asked her to send me the file so I can see if I can upload the little movie. It’s pretty cute. It made me cry. I am a sentimentality factory these days. Oh please, more like always.

My family was here days and days ago but it’s taken me this long to post pictures! My sister and nephews are hopefully coming up this week to meet the beebs, so that should be fun.

My dad was already talking about getting the boy into Civil War re-enacting. I was like, Dad, he can’t even hold his head up yet! So we have quite a battle ahead of us.

My family came up Sunday to do a furniture swap of sorts with me, and I saw my dad’s chin for the first time in my whole life. As long as I have been in this world, he’s sported a full beard. Not sure why he decided to shave it in that spot, but he’s already heard that he looks like Paul Sr.

Even wackier — this is the first time since my parents have been together (for 32-odd years, mind you) that my mother has seen my dad’s chin.

He sure does look a lot more like my aunt and my grandfather under all that hair.

There was a moment during today’s early morning ultrasound (big thanks to the Mid-South Maternal Fetal Medicine for squeezing us in at such a late notice) when I felt the bulk of worry lift off me. I squeezed Ray’s hands as the tech, who was so nice and so thorough, went organ by organ, noting how everything looked great, all of it right on track in size and function. That bright bowel the Flinn Clinic had flagged twice was nowhere to be seen (what’s unclear is if they overestimated it or if it resolved itself; I feel like they overestimated it because they never turned the monitor down to compare bone vs. bowel), which automatically greatly reduced the chances of us having to worry about genetic or other abnormalities.

It seems it’s just that pesky two-vessel cord we’ve got to worry about, but Dr. Bors-Koefoed came in and essentially told us what I’d already read online: That it’s rare but not that rare (it’s common enough that they refer to it as a variant rather than an abnormality), and that it just means I’ll need to pop in for more frequent ultrasounds and growth checks than the average pregnant lady would. I can handle that. A nice surprise was that when I asked if it’s true that two-vessel babies don’t handle labor as well, the doctor shook his head and let me know that my homebirth plan is still viable, as long as there’s no growth restriction or related complications leading up to the due date. I honestly was expecting to be told I was considered high-risk, and that I’d need to report to the hospital for labor or a scheduled C-section no matter what.

Mom came up for the appointment, and my midwife Amy was there too. It was a packed room but I really enjoyed getting to hear the good news along with them. My mom cried when she saw the little beating heart appear on the screen, and she kept saying, “That’s my grandson! What a miracle!” A pretty special moment, right there.

I can’t stop looking at the 3D pictures of his little face. I guess that’s an added perk of having a mandatory level-two ultrasound. I see Ray’s forehead and my mouth in there, maybe, but what a trip to get a glimpse of my little man’s face already. He’s beautiful. I’m clearly biased, but that is a good-lookin’ kid.

He stayed pretty balled up during the entire visit, his knees tucked close to his chest in a display of flexibility that he certainly did not inherit from me. He is now the size of a spaghetti squash and he weighs one pound. One pound! He’s still sitting breech, tap dancing on my cervix when he feels fancy, and his face is tucked up behind the placenta, which made getting good straight-on 3D shots kind of tough. He better get over his camera-shyness in a hurry.

There was one point when the tech was jiggling my belly around to get him to stretch out so she could measure his spine, and he punched her! I mean walloped the exact spot where the wand was. I felt it and so did the tech. My baby don’t take no shit.

Yesterday I was lying on the couch with my hand on the left side of my belly, and I felt a kick that made my hand jump. That was the first time I’ve been able to feel movement from the outside. I called Ray over and he stood there for a while, trying to will baby boy to kick hard again, but he never did. He will, I know. I shouldn’t rush the organ-crushing part of this process.

We’ve gotten so much wonderful support throughout these past few tense weeks. We’re ever so grateful, and getting more and more excited about what’s to come.

Last night my dad told me my grandmother’s dog Jake had been hit and killed by a car. This isn’t an uncommon thing where I’m from; the dogs are free to roam all over the farm and they chase cars speeding by on the highway when they get bored. It’s frustrating but that’s how it’s been my whole life. I called Grandmaw to check on her and see how she was doing. Jake was her inside/outside dog, her good buddy who kept her company in her big, empty house. She was obviously feeling down about it. She said she’d never find another dog that good. I tried to reassure her that it feels that way now, and that he was a good dog, but that she’d have plenty of dogs to love in the coming days. People are always dropping strays on the farm, so the pack grows on its own.

She asked me how things were going with the baby. I told her we were taking it a day at a time, and anticipating the visit with the specialist Thursday because we would hopefully get some answers about the things worrying us.

She told me that when she was seven months pregnant with who would have been my first of two aunts, when the baby stopped moving, the doctors refused to tell her she had died. Grandmaw had gotten stung by a wasp and thinks either the sting itself — she was allergic — or the treatment she received afterward led to the baby’s death. She knew a complete halt in movement was not normal, and deep down inside she knew the baby had passed. But this was in an age before ultrasounds, so she could never get visual confirmation. And she can’t remember if they ever listened for the heartbeat. They just refused to tell her that the baby was dead, assuring her that everything was fine and there was nothing to worry about. They gave her pills — she realizes now they were antibiotics — and let her carry the baby to term. She delivered a stillborn baby girl, who is buried in the family plot at Shady Grove Cemetery in Saltillo.

That story fascinates me. I want to be angry, assuming that the doctors knew the baby was dead, hence the antibiotics, but that they just wouldn’t deign to tell my grandmother or do anything about it. This was in the ’50s so I’m not sure how they handled removal of a dead fetus in the last trimester. But how cruel to ignore a woman when she says something is wrong, and then to make her carry that baby to term, knowing it’s already dead.

For all my gripes with the modern medical industrial complex, I am grateful we have made some significant progress, so that at least we generally try to err on the side of caution in prenatal matters.

Mere minutes from noon. I’ve finished my breakfast — scrambled eggs (with gouda!) and biscuits and coffee. I only get a few cups a week so I’ve decided to have them at home, where we use a grinder and a French press. I don’t care if it’s pretentious; it tastes infinitely better than the reheated Maxwell House sludge I end up with at work.

Been feeling pretty crummy lately in the head region. Of course the ultrasound business has me skating on a quiet baseline of dread, but other things seem to be nipping at my heels a little more than usual, and I’ve found myself sinking to the floor here and again, having little gulping breakdowns no one ever notices. My family is drama-laden lately: My sister is barely speaking to my parents and there seems to be inexplicable animosity growing for reasons I can only guess at. Seems like this happens every few years and I don’t know why, but it breaks my heart all the same. It made for a tense visit a couple of weeks ago when I had to beg my sister and nephews to come participate in the big news about the baby boy. It was still kind of awkward but we made it. Mom has plenty of bad days and Dad is working all the time, in 12-hour shifts on the night side. Their house is overrun with pissing dogs. Age is taking its toll on everyone and I find myself wishing I’d had a baby years ago before everyone got so worn out.

At home, I’m living on what feels like an emotional island.

So many things just seem broken lately.