Happy Birthday from Weston

This post has a happy ending.

The numbers: today I turn 35 years old: the age I was supposed to have Weston. Instead, his life began and ended before I reached this reproductive milestone. It is also eight weeks since Weston was born and five weeks since he died. Today is exactly one month after his funeral. Yesterday I would have been 32 weeks pregnant. Had my body been able to sustain Weston until yesterday, he still would have been significantly premature but almost certainly would have lived a normal, healthy life.

Today is also the first day of September, two calendar months removed from Weston's life and death. I hate that time moves on.

We have always done up birthdays in my family; even now, with all of us living in different places, I still get a phone call from all my siblings, both my parents, my grandparents, etc. So, the recent events of my life being what they are, I am not exactly in a celebratory mood today. I left it up to others to decide what to do for dinner tonight. I just don't care. Dinner ended up being delicious and delightful.

Our family is far, far from home right now: we are at the beach in Connecticut with my mom, her husband, and one of my brothers. We come here every year. We'll be here for two weeks, and I'll get to see my sister and her family at some point as well. We had big plans to come in July, during my second trimester of pregnancy, when I would be past the nausea and fatigue of the first trimester, but before the fatigue and discomfort of the third trimester. July clearly did not go as planned.

This place is a perfect slice of Americana: the beach, ice cream, New England architecture, bicycles, American flags on every house, seafood, folks hanging out on their back porches, butterflies, and kids everywhere. The roots of American history run deep here.

Most of the people who live here are only here in the summers. We usually come in August, after a lot of families have left to go back to school, so it's never that crowded. However, it is Labor Day weekend now, so the town is the busiest I have ever seen it by far. There are kids everywhere, which normally would be fine, but is pretty hard to see right now.

When Shannon and I decided we wanted kids, we only wanted two of them. We both have three siblings each but wanted a smaller family for ourselves. But when I see families with gaggles of kids here, I am filled with regret for some reason. There is no doubt that going from zero to one child is the biggest life changer as far as lifestyle is concerned, but going from a family with a singular child to plural children is significant too. My all-too-brief experience with two living children had me in real crisis mode the whole time, so maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about. Now that I have gone from two living children to one, my family will always feel too small.

The good news is that I am almost completely anonymous here. Almost all of the neighbors who know about Weston have gone home for the school year. No one is going to ask me how my summer was. If I keep to myself enough, I won't even be asked how many kids I have.

Weston is everywhere. Weston Road is about half a mile away. I write his name in the sand every day, only to have the tide wash it away, of course. With all the kids, I worry about his name getting trampled. Crazy, I know.

Yesterday, my mom drew a big heart next to Weston's name in the sand. Later, an older teenage girl was walking the beach by herself. She almost stepped on the heart but jumped away when she saw it. Then Weston's name caught her eye, and she stood there, looked at it for a minute, and then carefully walked around it so as not to disturb what we drew. I love that his name made an impact, however small and brief.

I have been feeling very blah today, until this afternoon, when Weston gave me the best possible birthday present (under the circumstances). When I went to the support group a couple of weeks ago (that I blogged about here), I received some cards from The Kindness Project (read about it here). The card is about the size of a business card, and it says, "This Random Act of Kindness is done in memory of our beautiful child" with a blank for the child's name. So you do something nice anonymously and leave the card as a beautiful way to honor your child and spread his name around.

I wanted to pay for someone's drink in the Starbucks drive-thru yesterday and use the card then, so I filled a card out with Weston's name and had it all ready to go. But when I got there, there were multiple cars in front of me but none behind me. It seems like a little thing, but it was frustrating and disappointing. Here I was trying to do something very simple and nice in honor of my son, and I couldn't even do that.

But today things were different. I drove through Starbucks and was last in line again. But then another car, a couple in a Range Rover, drove up behind me. I actually got butterflies in my stomach when I realized I would be able to do my random act of kindness. I paid for my and their drinks, asked the barista to hand them the card along with their drinks, and went on my way.

The drive home was about five miles, I called my sister, and that was that. I pulled into the driveway, went to get the groceries out of the trunk, and saw a Range Rover pull up beside me. So much for anonymity! They said they had been staring at my car anyway (my mom's) with its Arizona plates, and then I "left them this beautiful gift," so they just had to follow me. It turns out that they have a house about 30 miles north of Phoenix, hence their interest in the Arizona plates. We spent most of the conversation chit-chatting about Arizona and some local neighborhood issues (so I didn't have to cry). They introduced themselves, apologized for my loss, and thanked me profusely.

Although I wasn't exactly feeding the homeless or bringing about world peace, Weston helped make two people's day a little brighter. It literally made my day and made my birthday. This is one of the few things that will carry me through until I am someday with Weston again.