Leo’s Sub-Oaklandish Adventure

I know it is strange to post a story about my cat here on babycakes… but in a way I find it really appropriate – after all, Leo is my firstborn little lovebug son. Furry and meowing and pooping into clay, but nonetheless – I love him like a child and so I chose to give him a little bit of space here on the “queer parenthood blog o’mine” as well :)

This is the story of a cat missing. For three days. Three fucking days! Scary, sad, depressing days! But read for yourself.

One Wednesday evening at dusk I went – my general procedure – with the treats in my hand outside into the yard and called the famous names: “Leeeeeeeeeeo. Meeeeeeeeeheeeeeeeep. Juuuuuuuuuuni.”

It usually doesn’t take long and they are all inside: Our three feline friends love the outside but they usually are hanging so close around us that they are nudging around our legs before we can rattle the treat bottle.

That wednesday evening Meep came running – anxious to get some treats. Juni came running – anxious to get inside.

Leo did not come running… strangely enough. However – I wasn’t too anxious about it myself: Leo is an adventurer who might just be at the neighbors having a ball with the other cats or nudging around somebody else’s legs for a bit before he makes his way back to his family. I went back in, back out, called, back in, back out, called for a few more hours but no Leo came running. By the time it was time to go to bed we were all pretty worried and sad but still not toooooo worried.

The next day I got up at 7am and sat outside working and waiting for my Leo the whole frigging day – until my dad had to be brought to the airport. It was quite upsetting by then with everybody telling me “He’ll be back” or “He’s just wandering around, he’ll show up in a few days”…. I just couldn’t believe that Leo is just hanging out somewhere else. After all – last time he had been outside and we had had to close the door he sat in front of the house for about 4 hours waiting for us to come home – meowing demandingly.

Something must have happened… The second night I got really really sad and had my first serious moment of hopelessness, running out the house at 5am to call and search and cry and go back to bed.

On Friday morning both Genevieve and I started to believe that Leo might be really gone for real and we both got really sad and depressed. That afternoon I spent my lunch break designing flyers and Genevieve went to the copy shop to get them printed.

Friday afternoon/night was Trans March in San Francisco and although we really wanted to be there and celebrate with all our friends and family we were much too sad and petrified with grief to get out of the house in time. At 5:30pm we finally made it out of the house – flyers, tape and scissors in hand and the “perfect idea on where to put up the flyers” in mind.

But we were soooo late and finally decided to go directly to the city and just put up one flyer on our way to the freeway. We could still put up the other flyers tomorrow on a walk through the neighborhood, right?

You must know that our original idea had been that Leo must have left through the yard and must be in the neighborhood behind our house. But for some strange reason we decided to put the flyer on the corner of Wesley and Wayne Avenues which is in front of our house – an area where we never ever expected Leo to be. We basically just put it there because it’s a busy corner and because it was on our way to the Transmarch ;)

(Not that you think we weren’t super eager to get our kitty back – we just were being realistic and the chances that those flyers really do something and that people will call within the first 24 hours was soooooo low – we just kind of decided that seeing and being comforted by friends on a Friday afternoon was more important than depressing ourselves – after all that’s not how you get a cat back, right?)

So anyway – although I did feel really comforted by our friends, I was probably not the most fun person to be around on that day/night. I was sooooo out of it, couldn’t think of anything but Leo, how he was my “first born”, how exactly two years ago I had “met him” for the first time in Dean’s yard after Trans March, how I did not want to think about him suffering or even dead and so on…….. I spent half the night wandering through the neighborhood, imagining creepy stories about what might have happened and – of course – balling.

That night – the third night he was gone – I had two dreams about getting him back. The first dream was interesting: He stood there at the fence, sopping wet and looking so scruffled (is this a word? it’s gotta be. it sounds good and matching) and coming towards me with his head so low and those leo-puppy eyes as if he’d done something wrong. The second dream was even more interesting: I dreamed that I see Leo, I dreamed that it was just a dream, I dreamed that I opened my eyes to check if it was just a dream, and then I dreamed that he was still there in front of my eyes… The second dream was somewhat of an altered reality…. I am not sure in which one I was.

… and then I really woke up:

The phone rang.

An unknown 510 number.

Maybe a caller? Whoa!

“Hey, this is Robert, I am calling about your cat… there is this cat stuck here but I think it has a white tail.”

Leo does not have a white tail, but I ran nonetheless. He called from the exact point where I had put up the flyer the day before – just 1.5 blocks away. I got dressed and ran.

When I got to the place there was already a small group of people gathered around a street drain…. On the phone I had understood that the cat he had seen had been stuck in a thorn bush (don’t ask me how I could have made that one up) and now they are standing and looking down into the gutter?

Robert claimed the cat was in this gutter. I didn’t see anything, but he swore that he hears it every now and then and that it’s there. In fact he had seen the cat a couple days earlier and hadn’t known what to do with it and then yesterday he found the flyer and called this morning.

I was just about to go back to the house to get the treats (which – in my excitement and nervousness I had forgotten) when I heard the absolute unique loud long moaning voice of Leo. maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaooooooooooooooooow. It was him. White tail my a$$, that was my boy!

The gully had such a tight grid that no cat could have fallen into the water ways right there. The gully must have been one that the cat had “chosen” to meow for help out of.

And now comes the point where the absolute magic kicks in:

1) The ONLY flyer that I had put onto ONLY pole on the street corner where I had NOT expected Leo to be – stood exactly 2 feet above this gully in the street. Which means that any other flyer that we originally had planned to put up would have done nada! The guy that called had had a garage sail right about this gully.

2) The grid under which Leo was found (or which Leo chose) said in big cast iron letters: PHOENIX IRON WORKS (And I looked – all other gullys in the neighborhoos say UNITED IRON WORKS so it’s magic ;))

3) Leo must have not only survived three days and nights (without food?) in the waterways of Cleveland Heights, Oakland (and had strange encounters with Raccoons, Possums, Rats….) he also must have found the one drain where there’s people, where people would find him, where people stick around (having garage sales) and where my one and only flyer was posted.

The people standing around the gully helped me slide the grid to the side and I half-way got into the hole. I sweet-talked to Leo and it took only about 30 seconds and I could see the cautious whiskers coming out of the tunnel… he slowly came out to the sound of my voice and I grabbed his wet, scared filthy body and brought him home. He was sooo gentle…. a bit scared but not at all freaking out. The first moment he really freaked was when I had to give him a bath after we got home. He probably thought to himself: “What the hell did I come home for?” Haha. Anyway when he was back home safely and washed thoroughly, Genevieve, Phineas and I went down to the guy who found him and brought him a big bag of German chocolate and other sweets. Thank you, Robert!!!!

Here he is freshly bathed drying himself off on his deck:

I am sooooo in awe for the magical outcome of this story… and by Leo’s clever resolution of his own dorkiness.

That was at least Life Number Two – after the broken leg story from last year…. Only good that he has 9 of them.

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Lifestyle choice?

Dear S.,

you just asked me about my child. How he is. And how his condition is going to affect him. I can see you really care. And I do want to share with you. I guess I am telling the story of his pace maker as if it was a new car we bought. This is not because I don’t care. This is because I have told the story about 100 times already (and know that I will tell it more than 10,000 times throughout Phineas’ life). This is also because I am very well able to see the solution for his condition (the pace maker) as separated from my care, concern and love to my little guy. … and there is not too much concern to be had. Everything is looking so great. So when I told you about him, his surgery and how he is (and we are) coping, it wasn’t the dramatic story I could see you expected. I could see this look in your eyes… concerned … a bit sensational maybe … definitely admiring… and not believing that everything’s a-okay…

And then your reply. You said: “Wow, I can’t believe that you guys chose this life style.”

…. wait a minute. Rewind. whoooooooooooooooooop. DId I just get this right? Chose this life style?

What did we choose? Did you just mean that we chose to have a kid with a heart condition? I think not. Did we chose to have a kid? Yes! Hell yes! Are we willing to take on whatever comes and face our child’s heart condition? Hell yes. But can you really say that we chose this?

When I objected that we certainly did not choose for Phineas to go through heart surgery at age 2 months, you said “But you created the life style you have right now”…. And I honestly don’t know how to go on from here. I think I stopped the conversation but you didn’t. In order to “amend” what you had just said you started talking about creating your destiny and deserving and life style and choice and ……

I know you mean well. I actually know you mean that you are proud of G and me for handling our situation so well. That’s why I am not so affected by what you said. But I sure am affected enough to write about it. And to write it from my heart…. to say that I do not agree with people when they tell us that everything that happens has been created by ourselves. That what we get is what we deserve. It is painful to hear this and I do not agree.

Believe me I am a spiritual person and I strongly believe that we only “get what we can handle” in life. That every life lesson wants to truly teach us something we should learn. But do we create a heart failure? Do we create a miscarriage? Do we create a still birth? Do we create an abuse or a rape? Do we really?

I think not. And I find it inappropriate to say so.

Life is what happens and we all have it in our hands to make the right decisions in this life. Which happens. With us. Through us. But also around us.

Although I do not feel personally attacked by this “deserving or destiny” notion, I have to speak up against it. For justice’s sake. Because I believe it’s dangerous and disrespectful to get caught in this belief.

I find it a privileged condescending and disrespectful stand point that keeps the victim of ____________ (fill in the blanks) in the identity of being a victim and takes away their choice and power to come out strong. It focuses on the condition/incident/disease itself and creates an identity aournd it instead of focusing on their power, healing path and strength around their reaction to what happened. (Gosh – I am not a great English-speaker (or writer) so I am not sure if the sentence above made sense, but I hope I brought my point across.)

I think this is it for now. I hope you understand some day.

Thank you,
Phoenix

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Sneetches and Privilege

Being on facebook with many like-minded people has a lot of benefitc. Not only can I stay in touch, laugh about funny pictures, make dates with friends, have a calendar that keeps track of all birthdays and social events or get the latest tsunami warning via facebook, I am also being fed with great articles that other parents find about their experience and about child rearing as a queer anti-racist pagan/non-christian/non-traditional set of parents. (How would you call us? I am sometimes so confused where we are in the grand scheme of identities…. I find us super-traditional at times and super-outside-the-box at others….) So here it is: Another great blog post from a queer mom from Chicago about white privilege, immigration, sneetches and human rights.

http://connotationdenotation.blogspot.com/2010/05/letter-to-effram-on-arizona-sneetches.html

It is really sweet how she explains to her white blue-eyed boy all this really important and really confusing stuff…. which unfortunately some of us adults don’t even understand ;)

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Amazing Article

– this is an old post I never published. It’s funny that I find it now, as it is sooooo “right on time” right now. It’s not about us anymore, it’s about our child. Aaaaand, since Phineas is (so far) a boy, this article is really going to be something we will refer to a lot I guess. But read on… –

The original post is from November 10th 2009:

So, as we are moving ahead with the preparations on becoming (queer, pagan, not-so-young-anymore, nanny-experienced, bilingual, conscious, loving, excited and sometimes scared-of-the-new-responsibility-but-very-eager-to-take-it-on) parents, we are wondering about sooo many things.

As you know, this blog is partly about my journey in trying to find out what kind of parent/mommy/daddy/fairy/pop I feel most comfortable with. Now, while in the midst of my own gender journey, I suddenly realize that very very soon, things will not so much be about me so much anymore.

It’s all going to be about my child.

And while my last post was all about how it does not matter what sex our child will be assigned to at birth, we both found ourselves thinking more and more how to raise girls in this world and how to raise boys in this world.

This – of course – does not discount the fact that girls can be boys and boys can be girls or everybody can be something else altogether, but this post is not about gender-ambiguity, diversity or freedom to choose.

This post is an homage (and a highly recommended link) to an article my wife came across this morning.

As she is pagan, she is trying to figure out how to incorporate the old ways of the goddess more into our lives and into the life of our little witch-let to come. She found a beautiful article on a modern robin hood blog, which talks about how she raises her son in the eyes of modern age, masculinity, feminism, respect and the old religion. She talks about chivalry and feminism and is trying to give her son the sacred masculinity, which is beyond patriarchy (denying male emotion) and new-age-sensitivity (denying male power).

Relating this article not only to my potential son (or masculine daughter), but also to my own masculinity I have shed tears this morning when I read it and I want to share it with y’all:

http://blog-in-the-box.blogspot.com/2005/09/raising-pagan-sons.html

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So much for “tiny”

How big do you think a pace maker is? Everybody tells you it’s a “tiny device”, right?

Define “tiny”… so I define tiny (in the context of devices that get set into your body) as about thumbnail size… I talked to many people since this happened to us and they all (really, I am not kidding: ALL!!!) agreed with me that “tiny” is about thumbnail size.

When the doctor told us that the pacemaker surgery needed to happen he brought one in to show us. And again: He really said, “I brought you one to see how tiny they are….”. But look for yourself:

Well, so I don’t think that’s tiny. I was slightly shocked…. No, actually I was completely out of my mind and started feeling a strange pull in my stomach, shiver in my knees and elbows and a seriously uncomfortable dizziness at the thought that our tiny (in the context of human anatomy) son gets this (compared to a thumbnail) thing set into his belly.

Dr. A told us that the first pace maker was as big as a fridge and was stationed in a garage. The person had to sit next to it and push it whenever they wanted to go… and that was only in the fifties. Let us be happy that Phineas was born 60 years later and that the device is “tiny” enough to fit between his belly muscles.

I guess in a couple of months it’s all going to look really different, but right now you can still see the contours of pacey bulging out of Phineas’ left side… it’s creepy.

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Heart Times

I do not want to write this all over again, but quote parts of an email which we sent to our friends and family-members about a week after Phineas’ birth.

Beloved Friends and Family,

let us begin this email with the most wondrous, beautiful news we have: On March 19th 2010 at 6:58 pm in Berkeley, CA, G gave birth to our precious son Phineas Forrest Littleton-von Lieven.

We have been blessed with the most gorgeous spirited little beauty-boy. He is not only hilariously funny, he also is a wise old soul who really seems to understand when we talk to him. We feel honored to be given the opportunity to spend our lives with Phineas.

As some of you already know our birth announcement comes later than planned because our budding family has been given some serious challenges in the past 2 weeks:

In Phineas’ first 24 hours of life we learned (=fortunately found out) that little Phineas has a heart condition. The diagnosis is congenital heart block 1st and 2nd degree (look it up here: http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4611).

After 5 days in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit (due to the Heart Block Condition) we finally got discharged home last Wednesday. [...]

Since that day much has happened and much has changed.

Today is June 3rd and – we’re getting closer to the reason why we never published anything on this blog since then – our lives (or probably more Phineas’ life) has changed. We don’t know how dramatically it is, but we dare say that we are (and he will be) dealing with quite something:

On May 5th (my mom’s birthday) we went in to the Pediatric Cardiology Clinic to get his second Holter Monitor (which is a 24hour EKG and looks like a Tape Recorder connected to his chest via many funny sticky chords). We weren’t very concerned since Dr. A had always celebrated Phineas’ great heart, his ability to escape the heart block and to compensate his rates. The 24hr EKG was “just a routine” we had to go through.

I think we expected something like: “Congratulations, his heart rate is so perfectly even, we consider him grown out of the condition”. I guess we were wrong: Two days after the monitoring, we received a call from Dr. A where he told us that things have changes pretty clearly and that Phineas needs a pace maker sooner than later.

In the monitor he had seen rates and conductions (sp?) that concerned him enough to consult with 3 other experts from the Stanford Research facility. He told us that our little guy was compensating his own heart block so well that his heart rate jumped into JET (Junctional Ectopic Tachycardia) occasionally… whatever that means….

(Well, I must admit given all the back and forth in the past week I haven’t had the chance to really understand every single aspect of our son’s situation, but I will learn and read and eventually become an expert – eventually)

… we did however understand that he was seriously concerned and heard the words “in some cases this lead to sudden cardiac arrest”. Which made both of us jump.

Hadn’t we just learned that he was doing so great, that Dr. A was so happy to announce Heart Block 1st degree and that Phineas just has an exceptional strong heart which is able to grow out of the condition…?

Oh well, I guess this had been the hope. It also is the first thing everybody tells you or asks you. “oh really? …but he won’t have to have that forever, right?” or “…but he will grow out of this, right?” and “… when can he beat on his own?”

Well, we had to accept and learn that he will not grow out of this and that he will have to live with a pace maker all his life.

The fortunate part of the whole story was that we were able to make the decision relatively quickly (who wants to live with the fear of sudden cardiac arrest in your infant?) and that we did get a surgery appointment within 1 day (which is fucking amazing) instead of 2-3 weeks. We would have been nervous wrecks if we had had to wait that long…

So on May 13th 2010 we went into the hospital and prepared Phineas for surgery. The morning was horrible, we were both so scared, so shaken… but had a lot of trust in the beautiful team of doctors, surgeons, technicians and care givers. They were all so sweet to our little boy. Phineas himself slept through the whole procedure of getting up, driving to the hospital, registering, getting ready for his bath, talking to the team of doctors and getting him ready. Just slept through in our arms.

I want to spare you the story of the seemingly endless wait and all and just skip over to: Everything went a-okay!

The rest of the hospital stay was really emotional and challenging. It was less because of his/our situation (everything went so fine, he recovered so well and everybody took amazing care of him) but about all the other kids around us… it is simply heart breaking to see kids with such serious illnesses and conditions. It broke our hearts.

Phineas got released only 2 days later and everything went really well. Yesterday the sutures (sp?) came out and now that all the stress is over, 3 weeks later, the events of the past 3 months are slowly but surely catching up with us.

Phew. Thus the blog :)

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Birth Story

This post is a story which both of us want to tell and my wonderful wife (and mama of our boy) is not here at the moment, but I do want to get her to sit down very soon to start writing Phineas’ birth story down. It’s been only 10 weeks, but it does feel like ages – sooo much has happened between March 19th and today.

We will add to this post soon – our birth story will be told! Promised.

A few keywords to give you an idea: 38 hours, induction, hospital-birth, a few dramatic moments, but all in all a profound and really really deep amazing experience. I still can’t believe that I (sissy) sat down and studied the placenta right afterwards – man, was I high ;)

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Just a short reference-post to keep myself accountable ;)

I definitely want to write about the “What we feel”, the “How it is” and the “Why we are so behind posting”, and I do not want to forget my main original goal for starting to write which is the following list of questions:

1. How do we define our families?
2. Will I be – just because I am not necessarily all the way female – the breadwinning dad?
3. Will the fact that my partner is femme and I am boi define our roles in parenting?
4. Why didn’t I get pregnant?
5. Will I miss out on my life-experience if my partner is the mama?
6. What role other than the supporter do I play in all this?
7. Is this something that all fathers go through or does the fact that my body could carry a child make it harder?

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Phineas Forrest is here and we are 2.2 months behind on this blog.

Oh-boy. Well well well. I stopped blogging in January when things got rough. I did not feel like sharing anymore and pretty much everything went haywire anyway: Our relationship hardly made it through the second trimester, only to become really strong and powerful in the third and throughout the birthing experience, almost explode in the first weeks of Phineas’ life and now bloom in new compassion and joy for the new life in our lives that we have been honored with.

Let me begin with posting a birth announcement and a first photo of his on the day after he was born.

Phineas Forrest Littleton-von Lieven was born on March 19th 2010 at 6:58pm.
He weighed 7pounds and 8 ounces and was 19 inches long.

And now…. what do we feel? How is it? Why are we so behind posting? Keep reading!

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Getting used to not sleeping

… working until 2am on design projects just because we have too much on our plate to get work done during the day hours. bleh! is that my getting used to it?

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