“Happy” Birthday

Yesterday was Maliyah’s 3rd Birthday. I both can’t believe it’s only been three short years, and also can’t believe it’s been 3 longgg years.

I have two friends who had (still-living) children the same week, and it’s so strange to watch those kids get older, while mine is still dead. Now with Toddler A, the passage of time is more visible right in my home, and it’s difficult to watch. Would A be talking if he had his older sister to tease him? Would he have the same favorite shows if he was forced to watch hers? Would he like dolls more instead of throwing them at my head? So many questions will always go unanswered.

I took the day off yesterday for her birthday, as I have done every year. I used to take it off because I literally could not work. My brain would not function past the sadness. Now, I definitely could work, which in and of itself feels like an offense to Maliyah. Does she matter less? Do I care less?

But even though I could work, I don’t want to. First of all, I work hundreds of days a year. They can make it one day without me. Second of all, I don’t know what “personal” days were invented for, if not to commemorate a life you carried and sustained inside you for 6+ months and then they died in your body. It doesn’t get much more personal than that.

I didn’t do anything crazy to commemorate the day. Each year I struggle trying to think of things to DO. And each year I come up with nothing. I try to do acts of kindness, like this year getting Girl Scout cookies for our building staff, sending a card in the mail to a friend, and dropping something off to a Buy Nothing Group member with a new baby. But those things could have been done while I was also working.

The main reason I take the day off is to be sad and to honor her. It’s like November 30^th in Gilmore Girls: Luke’s Dark Day.

This may seem dumb, but when I think about how much dedicated time in a day, a week, a month, I spend with Toddler A and the amount of mental space he takes up in my brain constantly, it only seems fair that Maliyah gets one single day a year. I go through her box of things, cards I received, touch her hand and footprints, go through all of the photos I have from the 6 months when she took every step with me. It’s not a lot, but it feels good to dedicate my thoughts solely to her in a way that unfortunately she doesn’t get on a day-to-day basis anymore.

Of course I have guilt about that, but she doesn’t have the needs that Toddler A has. His are more immediate. I know that everything I do “for her” is actually for me.

Toddler A got a star and galaxy light projector from my brother-in-law for Christmas, and he is absolutely obsessed with it. The moment he wakes up, he runs into the living room and points until I turn it on. All day long if we sing Twinkle Twinkle he points up to the stars. He loves to carry the projector around to put the stars on the walls, or on me.

I always used to say that I like to think Maliyah is somewhere in the stars, having a party with all of my loss mom buddies’ littles. Maybe that’s why Toddler A loves his star projector so much. You can be sure it was on all day yesterday, Twinkle Twinkling, with Maliyah shining down from the ceiling of our living room.