Legacy

"Every one of us - every man, woman, and child - leaves behind a legacy."

The words of a friend from a sombre, late-night discussion long ago have stayed with me through the years. I have often thought about them and thought about what legacy I would like to leave. And so, I do all I can (sometimes failing miserably) to act in such a way that my legacy will be one of love - that my daughter know how indescribably precious she is to me, that my husband know how much I admire him and appreciate all he has sacrificed for my sake, that my friends know that they are loved and valued. I've spent so much time thinking about the legacy I will leave, but it is only recently that I've started to think of the legacy that has been left to me.

A necklace of crystal beads lay in a small jewelry box atop my dresser. I'd always known it was a family heirloom from the time I first admired it in my mother's jewelry box when I was a little girl. It seemed the perfect thing to wear on my wedding day to fulfill the requirement of "something old". But it is just recently that I've realized it's significance. 100 years ago higher education - especially for women - was uncommon. The crystal necklace was a gift to my great-grandmother from her parents to mark her college graduation in 1910.

This past fall my family gathered to celebrate my grandmother's 80th birthday. Looking at her, she seems a typical elderly woman - active in her church, loves children and cats, insists on making sure all family dinners are done properly. At 80, she naturally doesn't seem a very strong person - but there is a strength of character that just floors me at times. As a young woman towards the end of World War II, she endured the humiliation of her husband leaving her for another woman. To support herself - and her baby - she took a job painting airplanes for the war until she could no longer hide her pregnancy. Throughout her life she has been steadfast as a rock, doing what must be done for the good of her family. She has experienced love, loss and illness. She has learned to overcome deep-seeded prejudice to show love and compassion to all around her.

On the other side of my family my paternal grandmother has had a much different life but displays the same strength of character. A beautiful, educated woman from an upper-class family, she married a career soldier and began a life of praying and waiting for his return from war, only to begin a life of moving from Army base to Army base. Mother to six children, she has known the heartbreaking grief of watching a daughter die to leukemia, seeing a teenage son paralyzed in a surfing accident, and watching their oldest son (my father) lay in a hospital bed on life support. She is graceful and intelligent so that sitting with her you feel as if you are in the presence of royalty. And yet she still makes it seem as if you are the one honoring her with your presence. She is the type of person who makes you glad to be alive.

My mother, without even trying, knows just the right ways to annoy me. I guess that makes us even since I can be just as annoying to her. Like any mother-daughter relationship, we have our fair share of friction. But there is no love so unconditional as her love. As a child I knew without doubt that she would always love me. She had made it clear that nothing I could do would make her stop loving me. As an adult she has been there for me - willing to walk through fire for me if I asked her, but restraining herself to let me learn how to do so on my own. She has rejoiced with me at my wedding and grieved with me when I lost twins to a miscarriage. When my daughter was born a month early and with breathing problems and had to be transfered to intensive care, Mom was the one making midnight trips to the hospital to bring my husband and I clothes and toiletries. She recently went through the hardest time of her life - battling a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer with a very low survival rate. And yet through the chemotherapy and surgeries she remained strong and happy. At times she would get down, but then quickly realized just how many people she had to love and support her. She is so determined to be strong, get healthy, and enjoy life - I wonder if she realizes just what an inspiration she is to everyone around her?

There comes times when the stresses of life pile up and there seems to be no end in sight that I get tired of living. Oh, I wouldn't do anything stupid - I don't want to die and I don't get depressed - I just get weary. I get self-focused and pity myself for life not being fair to me. And then I think of the women who have paved the way for me - of all they have endured and experienced - and the joy they still have at being alive and surrounded by those they love. Their legacies set the pace and shine a light towards the goal: to enjoy the life I have today.

Rollercoaster

ok - I know it's been a week since my last update - and what a week it's been.

Remember that pregnancy test I last wrote about? Well, it was wrong. I took another on Tuesday and though the results were very faint, it was positive. Subsequent tests since then have also been faint but positive. But I was also getting cramps like I don't remember from my other pregnancies. There were indications that I may start bleeding. Because the test results remained faint, I started to worry that something was wrong and the baby isn't developing properly.

I worry very well - it's a family trait.

Through all of this I've tried to tell myself to just not think about it - that I can't stop whatever will happen and all I can do is take care of myself. Sometimes it works, too. But what works even better is speding time doing things with the little munchkin I already have. We've made pinecone birdfeeders. We've played games. We've cuddled while watching Beauty and the Beast. We've read stories - it's so wonderful when she tries to read to me! But perhaps the best is when I do start to get worried and sad. That's when she comes up, gives me a big hug, and says "It'll be ok, Mommy".

And I know that no matter what happens - if the pregnancy goes well or if there are problems - in the end, it will be ok.

Making Lemonade

"When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."

6:15 this morning I woke up. Let me clarify this... 6:15 on a SATURDAY morning when the rugrat was still asleep and neither my husband nor I had obligations to get us out of bed, I woke up. I lay in bed fidgeting for a while before I finally gave in and went to do the pregnancy test.

It was negative.

Returning to bed, I was pretty surprised with myself. While I so desperately want to have another child, this result didn't bring tears to my eyes the way pasts negatives have. Oh, I've told myself countless times before not to get my hopes up (doesn't work). I've reminded myself that even couples without fertility problems can take 6 months of trying before they get pregnant (also doesn't help much). So what makes this time different?

Hope.

I still have hope that I will eventually get pregnant. I have hope that Rhianwen will have a little brother or sister (or more!)

So instead of looking at this as a failed attempt, I'm viewing it as an opportunity. I'm viewing it as a chance to get myself, my house, and my daughter better prepared for the changes that will come with pregnancy and a new baby.

For the first time since we started BabyQuest 2005, I'm looking at it all with joy and hope instead of worry about if it will ever happen.


I like my lemonade warm and spiced with cinamon and clove

The Waiting Place

One of my daughter's favorite books is Oh the Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss. In it, he warns about coming to a most useless place: the Waiting Place. It is a dreary place where everyone just sits around waiting for *something*.

I am in the Waiting Place.

Today has been one of the longest days of my life because it is the day before I find out if I'm pregnant again. While I so desperately want it, I'm trying not to get my hopes up.

Ha! Fat chance of that!

I picked up one of those home pregnancy tests. Wouldn't you know it - it says that I can be used up to 4 days earlier than standard home tests. But then looking at the instructions, I see that the accuracy if I did the test today would be 87%. Waiting 12 hours would put me at 99.9% accuracy.

And so I wait

...and wait

...and wait.


This really is a most useless place.

The Passage of Time

Just a moment...
A fraction of a second...
A blink of the eye...

And it is gone

But life has a way of going on
Dragging us into the future whether we want to go or not
More moments pass and the weeks turn to months
And eventually we sit back and wonder where the time has gone

All that remains are memories and scars
Laughter and tears
Soft, sad smiles of the good and the bad
Of the glory that was and the glory that never will be

And so I sit back and I think of the glory that once was
I wonder what may have happened if I had chosen another path
I wonder if the time spent on the past glories was worth it
Or if their purpose was a fleeting one - one gone in the blink of an eye

I smile at the memories
I wince at the scars
I cannot go back and choose another path
Nor would I if I could

The laughter and scars
The smiles and tears
The passage of time
Has made me who I am today

Imperfect
Flawed
Loved
Hated

Human

I Set Myself Up for It

I was on the computer chatting with a friend when I excused myself to go AFK to put my daughter to bed. I could hear her and my husband playing in our bedroom. When I went in, I saw my husband laying on the bed and a big lump under the covers - one that giggled and kept saying "meow". (Our cat burrows under the covers during the day, so Rhi was playing kittycat.) So my husband meowed - which prompted Rhi to throw the covers off and say "Hey, Mommy! Daddy's a kitty cat!"

My husband then barked.

"Hey, Mommy! Daddy's a doggie?"

I said "No - daddy's not a doggie. If daddy were a doggie then that means you are a puppy and I'm a.... nevermind."

At that, my husband - the man who swore before God and our families to love, honor, and cherish me - looked at Rhi and said "I guess that means you're a puppy!"

To rub salt in the wound, Rhi started crawling around on her hands and knees going "woof!"

Random Babblings

Don't really have a topic to write about this time - just some little snippets to share.

- My daughter thinks she is a Teletubby. When she watches the show and the teletubbies jump up from behind a hil and say their names, she bounces around the room yelling her own name. She comes running up to me and throws her arms around me whenever the teletubbies do "big hugs". It's so sweet - it almost makes me feel bad for all the things I said about the show before I became a mommy.

- I know people read this blog - at least a few of you do since I've had some of my guy friends comment about how they agree with my husband's perspective on BabyQuest 2005. If you drop in to read my ramblings, leave a note to say hi in the comments below!

- Any hope of my convincing my husband that I am not a wereturkey flew out the window (no pun intended) on Thanksgiving. I was moody and he noted that it was a full moon. (note: ok - technically the full moon was the following night, but appearance-wise it was a full moon and EVERYONE knows that wereturkeys are all about appearance!) Wonder what the heck wereturkeys are? Leave a message in comments and I'll write another post soon with the whole story.

Past Wisdom

With BabyQuest well underway and my hormones as screwy as a bunch of squirrels trying to Tango, it's safe to say that I have been ONE MOODY WENCH. Unfortunately, my husband has to take the brunt of my moods and is a frequent target for my irrational ire. Looking through old files on my computer, I found this. It helped me to realize just what I've got and figured I'd go ahead and share it with whomever happens to read this stuff.

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True Love

He didn’t say anything as I clomped up the stairs and limped passed him to the bathroom. He didn’t say anything as I fumbled in the medicine cabinet for the Tylenol. With as much dignity as I could muster, I hobbled back out to the kitchen to get a glass of water. He didn’t look up from his laptop on the table as he quietly asked, “did you break anything?”

Trying to stand straight and tall on one foot, head held high, I calmly replied “I think perhaps my toe.”

“What did you kick?” he queried.

“The door.” I limped to the pantry and got a plastic baggie and filled it with ice.

“Is the door broken?” I assured him it was fine. “Sounded awfully loud up here,” he commented, continuing his work.

“That was probably the book I threw at the wall.” I assured him that the Shadowbane manual did not put a hole in the computer room wall. Taking my baggie of ice, I hobbled into the bedroom to lay down and prop my throbbing foot up on some pillows. Deciding it was nearly impossible to maintain any semblance of dignity with a towel-wrapped baggie of ice on my foot, I gave in to the frustration and pain and started to cry.

He came into the room then. He could have stood there and lectured me about controlling my temper. He could have chided me for my childish outburst. He could have teased me and told me that I got what I deserved.

What he did was curl up in bed next to me and hug me.

Best Laid Plans of Purple Dinosaurs

So my daughter likes to watch Barney. Yes, Barney - the big, purple dinosaur with a syrupy voice. Makes sense that while he drives me insane, he would appeal to a toddler, and the show seems to be decent children's programming. But the show she watched yesterday has had what I can only describe as "unintended consequences".

In the show, the kids were having a tea party. Everyone was being very proper except Baby Bop, who had never been to a tea party before. As the kids were politely complimenting the hostess on the treats, Baby Bop says, "Give me a cookie!" Well, all the proper boys and girls were aghast at her rude request and one of the kids suggested that she try asking in another way. At that point, Baby Bop repeats "give me a cookie" over and over, stressing different words and syllables. That was when the kids explained that when you want something, the polite way to ask for it is to say "please".

But the result of the show on my daughter was while the kids were dancing and singing about being polite and saying "please", Rhi was running around the play room shouting "GIVE ME A COOKIE!"