Confluence

Posted on May 25, 2012 by

I love that moment when the right person says the right thing at exactly the right time to provide maximum impact.  The kind of thing that makes you take a step back and not just think.  But change up the paradigm.

Today, I thank http://thatprecariousgait.com/ for providing just that.

I was ripe, listening, hopeful, poised and waiting to feel better, but not quite able to make it happen on my own.  And I couldn’t quite put my finger on the right questions to ask.  She did.

What am I afraid of?

Of course, I’m a little sensitive to her surprise that I hadn’t moved further along the Edward spectrum (he’ll love that phrase) in the past year.  But the truth of the past year is that so many other things swirled and changed in my life, that I needed and wanted him as a constant.  And as hard, as impossibly hard, as April was (when will I be able to stop using “April” as a euphemism for the other “A” word?), it had to happen the way it did.  Love does strange things to you.  And I let it.  It took a life altering experience to make us both rethink the whole affair in earnest.  And try to navigate to a new normal.

But I had never thought of it as me being afraid.  As Edward and I have spent the past few weeks getting along and arguing, both playfully teasing and heart wrenchingly tormenting one another, I hadn’t really considered that it is out of fear.  Some of it is anger, some is resentment that I don’t have what I want and that what I want isn’t even possible because having it right now would mean destroying what he is.  Some is frustration that I had to do something that I don’t believe in, to sacrifice my own instincts, to save this friend.  But a good hard look yesterday afternoon made me realize…I am scared.

I am afraid. Afraid what we had was the best it can be.  Afraid no one will love me the way he loves me.  Afraid of really becoming the cat lady on the hill I joke about becoming. Because I know how fulfilling, how intense, how satisfying it can be to share love, and passion with someone with whom you have a deep and powerful friendship.  And where does one even begin to find something that will surpass or even equal that?  I’ve been clinging to the entirety of what we had, with a dogged devotion, in part because I am afraid all else will pale by comparison.

Owning that is liberating.  I realized through a confluence of events yesterday afternoon; a conversation with Edward, a connection with a new friend, a little retail therapy courtesy of my very dearest friend and kate spade, that my fear of losing what I had was preventing me from establishing something that could be even better.  An eventual friendship with Edward, and the freedom to just take care of myself.  Not because I’m trying to prove anything, but because I’m worth the effort both in my own right, and as part of the greater fabric of the friends and family and community I am an integral part of.

It won’t be easy – it shouldn’t be.  It may be fun.  It may be a struggle, but I know, in my heart, I don’t need Edward.  I love him, and that’s okay.   But I’m too stubborn, too brazen, too determined to let fear stand in the way of the rest of what has been a pretty amazing journey.

Thank you, PG.

c.

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Listen

Posted on May 24, 2012 by

I talk to myself.

Regularly.

I make lists aloud, I test drive conversations I need to have, I admonish and appreciate who I am.

I don’t always listen to what I am saying.

I took two minutes just now to read where I was a year ago.  I wasn’t all that surprised to find that I am in the same space that I was then.  http://growingupcate.com/2011/05/25/countdown/ only so much has changed.  Edward and I have been to New York, to DC, to a clinic on a rainy day on a quiet road in the city…  We’ve had a thousand conversations.  We’ve laughed and cried together.  And yet, in so many ways, I am exactly where I was a year ago.  Wiser, maybe.  Maybe not.

Today I’m trying to listen to myself, to Cate, May 2011.   And think not about how so much is the same, and now about how have I grown or not, but just listen to the woman who had just started to accept where she is.  I’m not ready to think about what she’s saying, yet.  I’m just listening.

c.

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Grow Up, Cate.

Posted on May 21, 2012 by

I am SO weary of me!  I started writing over a year ago.  I wanted to work through love and lust and marriage and divorce and change and all the things that were happening around me, to me, and the things that I was setting in motion.  Everything felt possible, achievable.  Fairy tales, even.

And I did work through it.  I wrote.  I wrote and published.  I wrote and deleted.  I wrote and saved to draft about a hundred other posts.

It has been a tumultuous couple of years for me.  I woke up at 37 at the brink of a new career, debating and enjoying the spark of rekindled love, realizing my marriage was not what I wanted and for the first time, for a number of reasons (mid-life crisis perhaps?) felt like I could take it all on.  Anything.  I could take a hard look at who I was and who I wanted to be and go for it.  Once and for all.

And I did.  I leapt.  Perhaps not gracefully, but I leapt.  And I’m better for it.  But it hasn’t been without consequence.

I’m 39.  I’ve had spectacular adventure, loved with abandon, loved with all my heart and soul.  I’ve gambled.  I’ve lost.  And won.  But mostly, I’ve grown up.

I’ve been writing this post in my head since April.  Since ending a pregnancy I didn’t want to end, even if it was the right choice.  Because in that moment,  the one where the doctor whose name I will never remember said she found the “pregnancy” and before I was put under anaesthesia to lose it, I grew up.  And every day since then has new weight to it.

There is something in the air this year.  Everyone around me is enduring difficult times in one way or another.  Sickness, marital problems, cancer, death, depression.  It is all around me.  And I’ve grown up as I’ve tried to be a friend to those I care about as they meet their own challenges.

The woman who blithely got on a plane for the first time in 10 years and went to London with her lover simply isn’t here anymore.  She’s grown up.  And when I first started to write this post in my head, it was about “growing up” being the end of hope.  Growing up being acceptance that life simply is.  That there are no guarantees of happily ever after, no assurances that it will all work out.  There is just each day, and trying to make the best of each day.  I accepted that maybe I don’t get what I want and there are no entitlements.

But the more I think about it, I don’t think that growing up is so much about the end of hope, but about just remaining hopeful when faced with a million reasons to lose that faith.  And I’ve grown up because I’ve realized, and even accepted, that “hope” isn’t about wishful thinking for something you want, something you covet, some outcome you desire, it is simply about having some faith that it will all work out, that this too shall pass, that it is what it is, and life is exactly as it is supposed to be.

So in that way, I’ve grown up.  I may not wish on a star or as I blow out the (very scary) birthday candles at that next big milestone this year, but I remain hopeful that there will be amazing times again.  Along with the unendurable ones.  And thankful that I have had the experiences I have, good and bad, and that I have another day to add to them, one way or the other.

c.

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Loss

Posted on May 8, 2012 by

Driving in to work this morning I was thinking about a text I received last night from a friend.  She advised me to take time to mourn.

Mourning feels so enormous.  Reminiscent of months spent in black or lingering at cemeteries.  The kind of thing you do for a lost parent or spouse…or child.

When I was about eight years old I found out that my grandmother’s first two children (twins) died shortly after they were born.  I remember thinking that she was lucky it had happened then, and not years later after she “knew” them.  When they had personality and connections, friendships and histories.

And when I was pregnant with my first child, and went through that period of time when insensitive people like to tell you all the horror stories of childbirth and miscarriage, stillbirths and birth defects (what is it in human nature that makes people do that???), I thought about my grandmother with new sympathy and realized that while losing a child, unborn or newly arrived, in and of itself is tragically sad, the loss is compounded by a certain loss of hope.  A loss of dreams and plans and a loss of the future.

That’s what I mourn.  I know the biology of pregnancy, and even controversially, I know that it was so early for me, that cells were still differentiating, that there weren’t feet and arms and legs and functioning brain yet.   There isn’t any way I would have been able to go through with ending it even ten days later.  I know that so early on there are no guarantees, anything could have happened naturally.  Anything could have gone wrong in the process and the same end result could have occurred in a week or two.

But in that week of debate and discussion, of mild panic and worry and planning and thinking through any and all options and outcomes, the part of me that always looks for the silver lining also began to hope.  To hope it would all work out, to think through a future, to think through how excited my kids would be to have a sibling, what he might look like, how confusing a situation he’d be born into but how I’d script the best possible story about two people who cared deeply for each other in an impossible set of circumstances.  And in this day and age of mixed and blended families, where children are lovingly raised by single parents, parents of the same gender, step parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, I believed in a future.

And I mourn the loss of that right along with the person I would have provided it for. And while my own situation is arguably not as tragic as that of my grandmother, on the hope front, I think I finally empathize with her, too.

c.

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What is this?

Posted on May 6, 2012 by

Edward always used to thank me for being so patient with him.  For not rushing him, for not demanding anything of him.

But I’m not patient.  I’m a planner.  As long as there is a plan in place, a next thing, a direction, I’m comfortable, confident.

And right now I’m wandering a bit.  And I find it unsettling.  Since April, I’ve been operating in triage mode.  One thing to the next.  Termination (still no “a” word), physical recovery, emotional recovery (still working on that one), helping a friend through cancer surgery, grieving the death of another friend, managing my office, managing my kids…and I’m tired.  I don’t usually get tired.  I usually run, I caffeinate, I connect with friends and recharge.  Only right now many of those networks are down.  We’re all going through something.  And Edward is out of the picture.  I can imagine too scared to connect with me, not sure how to do the right thing, and what the right thing is.  And it’s perhaps a good thing that he is because I’m sure to feel angry about everything soon enough.

But today is just hard.  I’m not angry yet, I’m feeling a little lost.  And that’s foreign to me.  I’m the one who figures out what to do next, how to get from A to B.  And what B is.  But I don’t know right now.  I don’t know where to go or what to do or what I even want the plan to look like.  Do I want to look for work?  Move?  Start a new project at work or home?  Or am I just trying to physically unsettle so I will have an excuse for feeling emotionally unsettled?

If I were my friend, I would tell me that it is okay to just feel unsettled for a while.  But it isn’t.  I don’t feel okay.  If this is what it feels like to suffer depression, I’m done with it.  I need it to stop.

I need me back.

c.

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Jenny, Part 3 (the conclusion)

Posted on May 4, 2012 by

I struggled with “conclusion”.   It sounds too much like “termination” – a word I can’t stand anymore, though it is easier to say than the “a” word.  And while this is the story of the end of a pregnancy, and the hopes and dreams that go along with that, it is hardly the conclusion of all the heartache and swirling emotion.

In this instance, the hardest thing for me has been losing a baby I had formed an instant attachment to, a bond with, and feeling Edward slip from me, with finality, at the same time.  But that’s a story for another day.

Today is the story of the hardest day of my life.

Edward picked me up early that morning.  Somehow, I made it through morning routine at my house. Kids off to school, bags packed, homework checked, and I showered and dressed just as if I were going to work.  I worried that the drive would be long and awkward, but for better or worse, Edward and I fell into casual and friendly conversation.

We arrived at the clinic on time.  It took me a few minutes before I could leave the car.  I cried, he held me.  There wasn’t anything else to say, so we went in.  Though I thought the protesters outside would be difficult, they weren’t.  At that moment, I was numb enough and decisive enough that it wouldn’t have mattered.  There isn’t anything they could say that would make me feel any worse, any more guilty than I already did.

In writing this, I was referred to another blogger’s post about choice.  http://thatprecariousgait.com/2012/04/19/elevator-wisdom/ The Cliff Notes’ version is that once a decision is made there isn’t much point in going back and second guessing.  Because you can’t go back and make a different choice.  So you may as well press on and make the best of it.  (she wrote far more eloquently).

I include that now because in this moment, checking in to a clinic, having my bag searched, watching Edward sign himself in and promise not to leave until I did, the full weight of still having a choice sat with me.  And as I filled out the paperwork and “no’d” my way through the list of health issues I might have, I came to the final question.

Did you feel coerced into making this decision?

…

Did I?  Well…yes.  Yes and no.  I’m bright, articulate, I multitask with the best of them.  I am fiercely independent.  But did I feel coerced?  My inner sixteen year old wanted to say “kinda?”  in just that indecisive way we all answer questions when we are not sure we have the right answer.  I paused.  What would happen if I circled “yes”?  Is there some side door they would sneak me out and straight to the nearest counselor?  Would they try to keep me anyway?  Does anyone ever circle yes?  A dozen questions raced through my mind.  But in the end, I circled “no”.  Because I was there, because we had discussed it over and over, because I loved him, because I am too much a rule follower to change my mind at the last-minute, and because I wasn’t strong enough to say “yes”.

And so I turned in the forms.  Edward paid the bill (I wanted no part of the transactional part of this and Edward managed it well).  And then we waited.  For hours.  Like two well dressed pharmaceutical reps in a doctor’s office discussing our work amongst the patients.  He in his tailored shirt, me in my cardigan and scarf, chatting about everything from our kids to work to toxoplasmosis in cats.  Somehow the fact that everyone in that room was there for the same reason diminished the enormity of our personal situation and allowed us to relax a little.

He came with me to see the counselor.  She asked me again if I was there by choice.  I cried.  I said yes.  She asked why, I rambled through something about already having kids and not being in a position to start over.  I glossed over the fact that the man holding my hand also had kids and is very much married to someone who isn’t me.

She went through all the possible complications, everything from dizziness to death.  I wanted to know when I could work, when I could carry my daughter to bed, when I could run again.  She told me she was worried most about my being too industrious.  That I should rest.  And not play tennis.  Which in the moment was painfully ironic since I hate tennis and it is Edward’s wife’s sport of choice. So no, no Peggy, I won’t be playing tennis any time soon.

Then more waiting, more hand holding and quiet words, reassurances and my last and final “are you sure?”.  Yes, yes he was.  Okay then.

Four hours after arriving, my name was finally called.  The wait had been good for me in some ways.  I was tired, Edward and I felt warmly toward one another, close.  And I just wanted to be done, go home, go to bed and hopefully sleep for a week.

I can’t even describe the next hour.  I was led down a long hallway that smelled so antiseptic I think if I ever smell that again I will vomit right then and there for all the memories it will evoke.

In rapid succession I met a nurse, an anesthesiologist and my doctor.  The doctor introduced herself and did an ultrasound to find “the pregnancy”.  I wanted to tell her to stop.  That I’d figure it out.  That I’d make it work somehow, but I didn’t.  I wasn’t brave enough to do so.  Again.  Rule follower.  Not one to disappoint.  She found it (more tears).  And then the very kind anesthesiologist let me count to ten and I was out.

I woke up half an hour later.  With a nurse nearby.  Everyone was kind.  Everyone was professional, supportive.  It didn’t change the fact that I felt tired, empty, miserable about everything that had happened and like I betrayed the little ball of cells simply known as “the pregnancy”.  I rested a while, they went through post-op instructions that I didn’t hear a word of, but thankfully they gave me the written version.

And they called for Edward, remarked that he was sweet and looked so worried in the waiting room.  He’d brought the car around, the heated seat was warm and felt amazing on a rainy and cold afternoon.

We had lunch that I didn’t taste, and he drove me to my dearest friend’s house so she could take me home.  We kissed, we said goodbye.

And Hope drove me home.

I needed to be with someone that night who not only loved me, but could take care of me.

c.

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Jenny, Part 1 or POAS

Posted on May 3, 2012 by

POAS = pee on a stick.

Did you know that?  I didn’t.  I had to Google it.

I was late.  Three days late.  I’m never late.  The day I was due to get my period and it didn’t come, I didn’t worry.  I was stressed.  I was busy.  I had been running.  A lot.  There were a dozen reasons I’d be off.  The next day, I became more concerned.   And I spent that night, after the kids were in bed, online.  Searching everything.  Early pregnancy symptoms, ovulation calculators, ovulation calendars, predicting charts, women’s stories of hopes, dreams, fears…all posted in blogs and bulletin boards and message boards.  Websites with names like “two-week wait” and “baby and bump” and many, many others.   And it was overwhelming.  I spent two hours all over the place online.  Reading, obsessing over symptoms, counting my dpo (days past ovulation) and figuring out terms like BFP and BFN (big fat positive and big fat negative), DH (darling husband) and BD (baby dance = sex).

I woke up on Wednesday, stopped at the pharmacy to pick up my daughter’s prescription and picked up a pregnancy test, too.  That morning I ate pineapple for breakfast.  I didn’t want my usual cereal and milk and banana.  Nope.  I needed pineapple.  Uh-oh.

And in the privacy of my office restroom, I took the test.  I put the cap on, I walked away, filed a folder, and came back to two bright blue lines, where one should have been.  I think I knew it the night before.  I wasn’t shocked, but I was scared.  I was shaking.   I took a deep breath, went back to my office, and sat at my laptop to write Edward.  A short note, an apology, an informative “this is what happened and I’m so so sorry” kind of note.  I paused. I hit “send”.   And then I did something I now wish I hadn’t.  I looked down, hand absent-mindedly over my abdomen, and I promised the little guy I’d take care of him.  That it would be okay.  I don’t know where it came from – I just did it.

Edward wrote back.

He was scared, too.  What are we going to do?  We’re in this together.  I’m here for you.

Sigh.

Now what?

And so began a week of debate, conversation, argument, hurt, anger, love, laughter, and frustration that there was no right answer.  No good choice.  Frustration for me that there was even a choice.  (that annoying pro-life “it’s a child, not a choice” slogan ringing in my ears).

Some of all of this feels too personal to put here.  I can say on the balance, we were kind to one another.  And as respectful as we could be given the circumstance.  And though I am not by any means a martyr, or a victim, a couple of things guided me in the process.

The first is that I believe in this circumstance, a pregnancy that happened when two consenting adults had sex, that both of those adults get a say in what happens next.  Yes, I’m as feminist as they come, yes it is my body, but a child is bigger than the next ten months.  It’s a lifetime commitment.  And I, even as the woman who would carry this child, didn’t feel comfortable making that commitment for someone else.

The second thing that guided me is compassion for all of us.  My kids, his kids, Edward, the baby in question.   And in the end, after a week I never want to relive, after a week of pain and drama and questioning everything I believe in and trying to figure out any way at all  – and I mean any way at all – from adoption to writing in “unknown” on the birth certificate – that this could work out, I decided it couldn’t. Or rather, I decided that the damage this would do to someone I loved and cared for, was too high a price for him to pay for me.  Even if it ended up being a decision I may regret every day.  One I feel guilt and pain over every day.

c.

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Jenny. Part 2 (parts 1 and 3 to follow)

Posted on May 2, 2012 by

What follows is the middle of a story.  My story.  There is so much more to write, to explain, to explore.  In coming days, I’ll post the beginning and the end – or the now, rather - I suppose that is a more appropriate way to describe my writing as I try to figure out how to heal.  I’m so much more deeply changed than I was prepared for. 

“If we call you, we’ll say it’s Jenny.  If you call us, say you’re Jenny, then we’ll know it is safe to discuss your situation.”

Standing, pacing really, my office on a sunny Wednesday morning, this conversation felt very surreal.  It’s spring. My favorite season.  Rebirth.  It’s gorgeous outside.  A red bellied woodpecker is hopping around on the maple outside my window.  And I’m trying to schedule the termination of a pregnancy that I am pretty certain I don’t want to terminate.  And I have to be “Jenny” to do it.

I asked Edward to make this call.  I couldn’t do it.  Didn’t want to, didn’t think I could and to his credit, he did call.  Only they wouldn’t talk to him.  They needed to talk to me.

“Ok, I got it… Jenny”.   The woman on the other end of the line was kind.  She spoke with just the right mix of compassion and efficiency.  This is her job.  Helping women like me do something they have a million mixed feelings over.  Finding a way to sound concerned and personable.  As if she doesn’t handle this call a dozen times each day.  A hundred times a month.

A friend of mine who wrestled this decision years and years ago said to me that the most unfair part of it is that you wake up and you find yourself in this situation and you desperately want the world to stop for a week, a day even, so you can just think.  Only the world doesn’t work that way.  The fetus, the child, the undifferentiated ball of cells, the baby, keeps doing its thing.  Growing, changing, burrowing in, causing all sorts of hormones to surge and making any sort of logical and unbiased decision next to impossible.  Maybe that’s its defense mechanism.

So the woman on the other end of the line says I can come in on Friday and I literally panic.  My heart rate soars.  Wait – not tomorrow?  You told Edward you had appointments tomorrow.  I can’t come on Friday.  Edward can’t be there on Friday.  He’s away.  Ten days.  And I know without a doubt that if I wait ten days I will not go.  I’m not certain I’ll make it tomorrow, but I definitely won’t go in ten days.  I cry.  I sob.  I can’t pull it together.  She puts me on hold and I try to remember the rational and sane and together woman I really am.  The one that made lunches for my kids this morning.  The one that has cookies in the freezer in case of a baked good emergency.  She’s rational.  Sane.  Together.  She definitely doesn’t cry to get her way.  But yet, here I am on hold, tears streaming, waiting for the other Jenny to come back and tell me my fate.

They can fit me in tomorrow.  She’s now a little frustrated with me.  She’s trying to be nice, but I can tell that I’m putting them out.  Throwing off their schedule.  And at the moment, I don’t care.  Edward gets on a plane for vacation on Friday and I am not going to do this without him.  For two reasons.  One, I will never forgive him if I have to do this alone and I love him too much to want to resent him and two, I’m not sure I’m making the right choice.  Not sure at all.  And if I am going to have to live with that for the rest of my life, he is going to be there with me to see it.  Neither of these come from a very kind or selfless place, but it is what it is.

So I make the appointment.  I’m not convinced I’m going to keep it, but I make it.  Step one.

c.

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A gene for optimism?

Posted on April 28, 2012 by

I’ve got a pretty solid science background, so I suppose I could do a little research and find out if medical science, or social science, has spent some time and research dollars trying to discern if there is a gene for optimism.

But without even bothering to do so, I am pretty sure I can inform any ongoing research.  I say yes.  Yes there is.  And thank whatever higher powers (or good genetics) that be that I have it!

I have had an unbelievable six weeks.  The kind of six-week period where when yet another thing happens - this week a car accident and the hospitalization of a family member - I almost have to laugh (not to the person who hit my car or the family member in question, certainly – that would just be cruel).

There is a certain amount of background drama that we all have, that serves as background noise for us – work stress, low-level family drama, arguing over homework or bedtimes, or worrying about the mortgage or a disagreement with a friend.  And every so often, the real life dramas show up on top of the background noise, in my case, some significant health issues with my daughter, and even more significant issues with my best friend, add to that the death of a close friend, the aforementioned car accident and hospitalizaton and perhaps most significantly for me, making a decision between what was right for me and what is right for someone I care a whole lot about when those two outcomes aren’t aligned.

And in these moments, when all of this is negativity is swirling about, background drama, foreground drama, the hectic pace of the usual day-to-day routine, I have to take a moment and be so incredibly thankful that despite it all, I wake up every day and manage to find a little something to look forward to – anything from a friend visiting this weekend, to simply the prospect that it just has to get better in May.  I won’t say it can’t get worse (I’ve learned!) but I will say that I have a deeply rooted belief that everything always does work out.  Perhaps not quite the way I would have scripted if I wrote the screenplay, but there is always good to be found.  And I am thankful to have that desire to find the good in any circumstance, even when it is really well hidden.

c.

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Hello. Hello Again.

Posted on April 18, 2012 by

On my 39th birthday I went to see a psychic.  I know, I know.  Commence eye rolling now.  I am not the kind of woman who goes to a psychic.  I’m all science.  Yes, I admit, while getting my hair cut, or in the waiting room at the doctor, I’ve been known to flip through a magazine to find the monthly write up for “Scorpio”.  But honestly, I’d have to google to even find out what “sign” my daughter is.  So this is not my thing.

Nonetheless, this chilly November night, I found myself on the 6th floor office of a well known psychic and card reader.  And he had a lot to say.

I’m a skeptic.  So when he told me that a close family member would get very sick early this year, and that I’d see a friend from California soon, I mostly brushed these aside as astute guesses from a skilled people person (though he would turn out to be right).   And some of what he said was dead on.  How many kids I have, the state of my marriage, my love for my work.

The one thing that I didn’t give a great deal of thought to, but on the advice of a friend wrote down that night, was that he spent a lot of time talking about my need to learn to make choices.  He pointed out (to my dismay) that making choices was hard for me.  That I can do so at work, and for other people – my children, my friends - but when it comes to me, I have a really hard time with making difficult choices.  And he warned that soon enough, I’d be faced with some.  And I’d need to be ready to make them.  Because by not making a choice, it would be made for me.

For the handful of you kind enough to follow my ramblings, you’ll note I haven’t written in a very long time.  Maybe I’ve been too wrapped up in my own day to day to say much, maybe I’ve felt more private lately, or maybe I haven’t needed the public therapy until the past month.  But given an incredibly challenging last six weeks or so, I’ve come back here, to sort it all out, to write, to learn to live with the choices I’ve made.  To find out if on the other side of a particularly difficult one, I can be the same.

I’ve always believed that there aren’t any right or wrong choices.  That there is only choice, and then making the best of the consequences.  Because what is the alternative?  Worrying at best?  Wallowing or obsessing at worst?   Perhaps this is what makes them so difficult for me.  I don’t believe in a clear right or wrong.  I believe in making the best of what I choose.  And that everything, ultimately, will work out.

And I suppose I’m back here, writing again, until I feel like it has.  Because somewhere between choice and working out is this murky area I’ve spent the past two weeks in, and I’m ready to come up for air.

c.

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