Then I got pregnant, and we went as often as I was able to. As I got bigger it was more difficult for me to bend over to do the ritualistic cleaning of the grave marker. Dump the old rotted flowers. Pour some water on the marker. Clean the engraving with a toothbrush. Wipe dry. Spray a granite countertop cleaner. Polish. The marker got more and more worn due to the hard water and the sun.
This past Sunday we didn't go. In fact, we haven't gone in a while, probably three times since the baby was born. Instead, we went to the pumpkin patch in town, a well-organized place where parents have taken children since pumpkins were invented.
We met up with friends -- parents for a longer while than we -- and we've seen them be parents and dote and dress and decorate. At this patch, there were farm animals, the corn maze, the haystack maze, the hayride, the barn where children's songs are sung and children participate and parents take photos and videotape and cheer their children along.
We walked in to the barn after the show had started, everyone already seated on their bales of hay. I refused to look at anyone else as I carried the baby in, a proud mama. I became one of them, a parent, and I was freaked out. So this is what parents do. Now we are in their boat, we are to dote and dress and decorate and record and videotape and cheer. And we did, our 3-month old plopped on pumpkins, bounced to the music, face stuck in a cutout of plywood painted with a farm motif, many many pictures of him taken to show to anyone with eyes.
And we were happy.
This is how one parent of dead babies and a living one thinks of a seemingly innocent pumpkin patch. I never thought my life would ever be so complicated.
