Molasses time...

"You're still young, you can have more children."

This is what our neighborhood handyman said to me after I ran into him while walking Denver dog, and he asked about the baby. I took the words as he meant them, kindly, awkward reassurance after being caught off guard by unexpectedly tragic news. I hope so, I told him.

But inside my soul was screaming, I'm not that young! And every single day is passing so very slowly. Every day becomes "If I got pregnant today, the CVS would be X and test results would come back on Y and the baby would be born on Z." I try not to think about the day the termination date might be scheduled. Shortly after the test results come back, I suppose. I prefer to think about due dates. About happy endings. About swelling bellies and rainbows.

And I am wracked with impatience. I miss having a baby to hold.

Yet as slowly as time is passing some days, I look at Shea and feel panicked he is growing older too fast. That soon I will have no children to cuddle and hold. A normal parenting sensation, I'm sure, but made more acute by missing Harper and wanting another baby so badly I ache.

Shea has been asking lots of questions about Harper lately. Mostly to Lou, before bedtime. "Where did she go?" he wants to know. "Is she coming back?" Lou explains again that she died and won't be coming back. That she was very sick, but it was a kind of sick you were born with, not the kind you catch.

He confesses to me that he doesn't know what to say about where she went.

Deep down, I think I still don't believe in Heaven. Too hard, too fictional for my scientific brain to wrap around. But I like to think about it. To embrace the concept. Find comfort in the idea of Harper having a playdate in Heaven with the other lost babies and children. Being happy after death in a way she never got to experience in life. It's a beautiful idea, and it makes me smile to think it.

"Do you want two babies, Mommy?" Shea caught me off guard as we drove home from school a couple of days ago.

"Two babies? Why?" I tried to ask calmly, as tears welled up.

Daddy had told him we wanted a new baby, Shea told me. That a new baby would make Mommy happy after Harper died. "Two babies would make you more happy," Shea explained.

You make me happy, I told him.

"Yeah!" he exclaimed cheerfully.