The Thing About Kids

I was the tender age of 23 when I found out I was pregnant with my first baby. I was beyond excited then I was nervous, then I was scared to death. How could I possibly be responsible for another human? I could barely take care of myself.  But as my belly grew so did my confidence that we were going to be alright, my little family. There were hurdles, some small some big.

Labor was a blur and I was cuddling this tiny, squirming infant that I was head over heels in love with. I could do this! Beware of the terrible two's people warned me. They weren't so bad. I won't say we sailed into childhood but we slid in with few bumps and bruises and a few broken bones.

At 29, when Chris was 6, Nick was born I figured this parenthood thing wasn't so hard. What I have learned is that babies are easy!

You know what's hard?

Watching your 17 year old son's heart break because  his girlfriend's parents won't allow her to see him.

Or wanting to shout from the roof tops the news your 23 year old just shared with you but knowing you can't because maybe not everyone will be as excited.

Wanting so much to keep them from hurting but knowing you can't, that's the hardest part of being a parent.

Bumps, bruises and broken bones of childhood, those are the easy parts. You just don't realize it at the time.

Let's Not Do That Again

I spent the last four or so months of last year wondering if I was dying of some awful disease. Not the hypochondriac kind, like some terrible Google disease that nobody has ever heard of but a REAL maybe begins with a "C" disease. I had convinced myself that some organ inside me was plotting my untimely demise.

I had mammograms. Ultrasounds. Girly exams. Even my gallbladder removed, which I don't recommend. It's not nearly as anti-traumatic as Grey's Anatomy portrays. The ultrasound showed a gallstone in there that magically disappeared between the ultrasound and the pathologists petri dish. I'm convincing myself that it fell out of the dish and got kicked  under the table in the pathologists office rather than believe that its still rolling around my tummy like a pinball.

I am apparently the worse surgery patient on the planet. What should have been a simple laproscopic surgery with a 3 day recovery turned into a 2 week, use ALL.YOUR.VACATION.DAYS. five month later still not 100% ordeal.  In addition, lets throw in a scope down my throat to see if said gallstone might be hanging out with some friends somewhere in there. The only good thing during all of this was a couple of REALLY nice naps complements of Propofol and a really nice anesthesiologist. I recommend using one of those so things don't go really bad like with Michael Jackson.

Now minus one gallbladder and about 30 pounds I'm feeling almost normal so I'm fairly sure I don't have any life threatening diseases.

My New Years resolution is to see a lot less doctors and unlike most people I'm hoping to put on about 10 pounds.

Roadside Assistance

More than a few years ago when we drove Megan across the state to drop her off at her tiny dorm to start her college life I cried until we got halfway home. What if she got sick? Who would make her feel better if I was ALL.THE.WAY.ACROSS.THE.STATE?

Megan and Kathleen have a mother but in my heart I'm their mom. I love those girls like they came from my body.

I'm sure she's been sick more than a few times but she's obviously survived. Calling her independent would be an understatement by any standard.

I missed her in those early college years much more than she missed me (or her dad, for that matter).  She's always been very resourceful. She is more than capable of taking care of herself but it doesn't mean I worry any less about her now than I did when we dropped her in her new college environment all those years ago.

I love when she comes home to visit, which she does often and with little notice. But I also can't wait for that phone call or text message that tells us she's home safe.

When the phone rang early this afternoon after she left to go back home at noon today I knew something was wrong. She hadn't been on the road long enough. She couldn't even be halfway. And she wasn't. Her car has FAR out lived it's life expectancy and had died on the side of the road about 100 miles from our house.

I was back to worrying about MY young daughter, regardless of how self sufficient, far away from her parents in one breath. She'll always be our little girl and I'm glad we are the one's she calls first.

She's safe back home with us for now. I think shopping for a new car is on the agenda.

A Secret

I was never one of those little girls that secretly wished her divorced parents would get back together. I didn't ping pong between their homes each weekend like most kids of estranged parents. I lived with my mom and spent very little time with my dad.

I'm sure some custody agreement buried deep in a divorce decree somewhere says I should have but I just never did. Sadly, I missed out on some very important bonding time with my dad. While I can't get that back, now we have managed to forge a loving relationship.

Over the last year or so I let hurt feelings and angry emotions surface a little more often than I'd like where my dad is concerned. I blamed him for missing important events like births and weddings, which isn't entirely fair given the distance we live apart. A couple months ago he agreed to spend 4 days with my sister and I.

We picked him up at the airport late Thursday evening. I wasn't sure what to expect. I love my dad but we are two very different people and having not spent a lot of time together I wasn't sure we were even going to be comfortable together. It's not as if you can add water, stir and have an instant father/daughter relationship where only a strained relationship existed before. Turns out, you kinda can! We must share enough of something because we are comfortable together. We talked and learned things about each other. Things he regrets and things I needed him to know.

We had family time. REAL FAMILY TIME! I watched my mom and him talk and laugh easily. They shared smiles over the blond curls of their first great grand daughter. All of their grandchildren in one place at one time. We took pictures. Many, many pictures.

Tracey got a tattoo and mine will follow shortly incorporating dads handwriting because we determined that we didn't have anything that said "Love, dad" and now we do....permanently.

It was nearly a perfect weekend.

For a few minutes right before he got on that plane to go home, I was that little girl secretly wishing her parents weren't divorced.
 

Just Add Water and Stir?

His and hers.

Blending.

Combining.

Everything I had became his and everything his, became mine. I had so hoped my children would love him and that his would love me. Our littles were young, surely we could blend these two small families How hard could this be?

My baby, only 5 months old, virtually started his life with 3 sisters and 1 brother. He knew no other life. Nick called Pat Daddy from the time he could form word with his tiny rosebud lips. He is his dad in every sense of the word. Nick doesn't have step sisters. He just has sisters. And now, nieces and nephews. There are no steps in his life. As it should be.

My oldest at 6 years old had an established relationship with his father and I knew I was in for a struggle to acclimate him from an only child into a family of 5 children. I know now I was grossly unprepared. What I could have done differently I don't know but he still has a shaky relationship with his stepfather and a only a slightly more stable relationship with 2 of his step sisters. As an adult now, it's his job to foster these relationships and make them stronger. Pat's oldest daughter and Chris have no relationship and barely know each other.

In my opinion, I was lucky that Pat's girls didn't have a close relationship with their mother. It allowed me to nurture a mother-like relationship with them that provided my heart an opportunity to create love for them much like the love for my own boys. I tried to equally love his girls. Each of them and I have had our ups and downs. Tears and smiles. But only 2 of them will allow me to continue to love them and return that love unconditionally. With each of them at almost the age I was when I met their father we are extremely close and share many mother/daughter moments. They understand that  I never intended to come into their life and take any one's place. I wasn't an equal to any of them in Pat's heart. I didn't try to force my love for them, it happened naturally. I had hoped the mutual feeling would happen naturally as well. I've, in no uncertain terms, been informed that it hasn't with his oldest. I won't lie to myself or anyone else and say it hasn't hurt.  But what hurts the most? Pat gets hurt in the crossfire.

A few days ago, Pat received an invitation to his oldest daughters out of state wedding planned for September. At first, he wouldn't open it. I opened it for him and suggest that he go even though I clearly wasn't invited. I appealed to the parent in him but he's hurt or angry or, I don't even know but he didn't want to talk about it.

I think we A) Over estimated our ability to create a blended family. or B) Need to take Nicks approach and accept what is.

Little One

There are days when something happens and I immediately think...THAT'S GONNA LEAVE A MARK!  Maybe a tiny bruise for a couple of days or just an invisible mark on my heart for an indeterminate amount of time.

My heart was the target today.

I met a boy. He had blond lashes and sleepy eyes. I was hesitant to touch him at first but after hearing his story my arms instinctively reached for him. I knew as my eyes welled with tears that they were going to spill down my cheeks and splash onto his downy soft hair. Still, I cradled  him as close to my heart as I could. I wanted his heartbeat to sync with mine, just for a few minutes. He of course will never remember those few minutes but I whispered to him that some very lucky mommy who had probably waited for him her whole life was just waiting to hear "we've found a son for you".

Four weeks old I was told. This tiny infant was only one month old. I didn't ask anything about the person who decided she couldn't care for him and put him in foster care to be adopted by a suitable couple. As I held him he snuggled into my chest and it was almost physically painful to give him back. I'm not sure I would ever be strong enough to entertain the thought of allowing anyone else to raise my child and never see them again. Sure there are certainly circumstances that I can't see and there are people who are grateful for them because that is the only way that they will ever have a child of their own but today I couldn't see past the tiny little boy who at that moment had no mommy.

He'll never remember me but there will be times in the next few years when I will most certainly look at a little boy at a playground and think is that him. Oh, little one, how very lucky your new mommy and daddy will be to hold you and call you theirs.

Two Peas

Since the early days of elementary school when I was writing notes to the new girl with the phrase "Do you want to be my friend?" circle yes or no at the bottom in shaky print, I think I've been searching for that friend who just gets me.

Every grade, every new school brought new friends. Most drifted away over time, in fact I can't really think of any that I made the effort to stay close to. Facebook has made it possible to find and reconnect with those that I care to but still, those relationship are often long distance and on some level artificial. The small details of life shared online are hardly what friendships are built on. At least the ones that I am looking for.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that being friends with me is A LOT of work....stop laughing....the first step is admitting you have a problem, right?  From minute to minute mood swings and nearly unprovoked tears to fits of uncontrollable giggles.

My husband is legally obligated to be my best friend. A detail of our marriage vows that I'm sure he overlooked when he agreed to marry me. Too late now!! He'll always be the one who holds me together when I think I'm falling apart. The one who sometimes just stands there not knowing what to do when the tears fall but who's very presence keeps me from crumbling. But that Y chromosome keeps his brain from understanding the female in me.

In May of last year (or actually long before that but for the sake of this post lets go with May) my job out grew me. To keep me from losing my mind and my job the powers that be at my company hired someone to fill the open position. Let me just say the my life hasn't been the same since!

I knew she was applying. I had met her once, liked her. She was nice. I, for the most part had worked by myself. What if I didn't know how to work with someone else? What if we didn't have anything in common? What if we didn't have anything to talk about? Or worse, what if she didn't like me?!

What I never thought was "What if she became everything I didn't know I was missing?" There was no uncomfortable-ness. All there has been is this awareness that we should have been sisters. How had we not known each other forever?

We are two peas in a pod BUT so very different. Where I have extreme weaknesses she has intense strengths. I talk over her (which drives her crazy). She is beautiful just the way she is but refuses to see it. I cry All.The.Time.  She survived a loss that would have destroyed me.

Then again, we're not so different...we can dissolve in fits of giggles for almost no reason. We both love fiercely and often have to remind each other that anger is not nearly as important as love. We finish each others' thoughts with a look. We've been known to sit on the floor and pout then not be able to get up because we're laughing too hard.

I am exactly where I am supposed to be because she is exactly where she is.

I  love you Peapod!!