Grateful

I've been feeling very blessed lately.  The other morning in the shower I was thinking about the past year.  I was recalling my decision to leave with Ava and separate from my husband.  As I remembered those sad months I felt overwhelmingly ill.  So much so that I had to tell myself I wasn't back there, I was here in this moment with my little family.  I'm so grateful we are together. 

I can't really put into words the sorrow and anguish of those months.  I didn't blog much and it was because I believe every post would have made you want to run out and buy a pint of ice cream and hole up in your house for days watching Seinfeld re-runs as the stains of Moose Tracks congealed on your jammie top.  It was that depressing. 

There are many things I've taken from that terribly hard experience.  It's true I don't like to think very much about the particulars of those months.  But one thing I think both my husband and I can agree upon is how much it has made us realize that you have to make every single moment count with the ones you love.  It's ironic because on the day we were sealed in the Logan Temple, many great pieces of advice were given to us.  Many of them are a blur to me, but I do remember that we were told not to ever take one another for granted.  We obviously ignored a lot of the council given that day and the blame is two-fold. 

Losing loved ones in my life should have already taught me this.  But there is something different about making the decision to distance yourself from someone you have been so intimately connected to.  For those relatives that passed away I had no control over them leaving.  But when it came to contemplating divorce it was very much in my hands. 

I still sometimes wonder at how in those months we came from being on the cliff's edge to being pulled back at the last moment.  When we lived apart my daughter took to singing, "Families Can be Together Forever."  I can't tell you how heart breaking it was to hear that, given our circumstances.  The times we spent together as a broken little family Ava would whisper in her Daddy's ear, "Tell Mama you love her."  I really truly believe that Angels whispered in her own ear during that time. 

The biggest miracle of all is the forgiveness that has flowed like a stream through our family's parched landscape.  It has made everything new and green again.  Finding the desire to forgive my husband was the first step for us.  I had little to no faith that our relationship could be healed.  It felt so broken.  I know that Our Savior was there for us in that dark hour.  I know that He softened my heart as well as my husband's. 

But still we are imperfect people and are destined to be so for the remainder of our mortal lives.  When I realized and accepted that My Savior wanted me, just as I am, that He was willing to carry me through anything with all my sins and mistakes it opened my heart.  I could no longer with hold my love and my forgiveness from someone who I blamed for so long because he had made mistakes just as I had.  And that made all the difference. 

The holidays are approaching and there is a calm peace in our home as we await the birth of our baby girl in December.  She is as much a part of this experience as anything.  If I could give her a symbolic name is would be Hope.  We are not rich.  We do not live in an ideal home.  Some nights we whip out the Ramen Noodles because that is what we have.  But it's all okay because we are together and we love each other.  I'm not sure I could ask for much more than that. 

Pregnancy Ponderings

I know it's not always smart to blog about what is on your mind.  But I am going to subject you to some ramblings here.  But you're probably used to that by now, right?  First of all, how is it fair when I know how little sleep I will be getting when the baby actually arrives that I've began an annual 3 a.m. wake-up call from my bladder?  When I get back in bed it's inevitable that the old brain begins to make mental lists of things I need to get done when I wake up, or all the problems I can't solve...like fixing the economy, child abuse, the middle east, or how to get special interest groups from buying our elected officials.  If it's feeling especially paranoid I obsess over what horrible calamity could befall us all.

Lately it's been the old massive earthquake scenario.  If tornadoes were a problem I'd be happy as a peach living in a basement.  But an earthquake with at least a seventy year old home that's had a third level renovated onto it does not sit well with me.  We'd be goners.  Specifically me and the husband.  Directly above us is a baby grand piano.  Yes folks, I could die a cartoon death after all.  Don't worry about it though.  I'm looking into a Zoloft prescription after the baby is born and then maybe I won't worry about it anymore either.  I used to think I was normal.  HAHAHAHA!

I also didn't know that my stretchmarks could grow stretchmarks.  But since I wasn't planning on wearing a crop top or a bikini for the rest of my life I guess it's not the worst thing in the world.  No, my real concern is the distressing march of my bum southward.  I'd like to think in heading south it's looking to retire to sunnier climes.  Apparently it's conflicted though.  Poor thing.  While the southern half of my bum seeks refuge with my upper thigh, the northern half is stubbornly clinging to it's post.  I knew about love handles, but I never knew that bum handles existed.  There's no other way to describe the phenomena.   It's like the Korean peninsula back there.  A nation divided.  The north is stockpiling goodness-knows-what somewhere below my hips, while the south is slipping into the vast ocean of my thigh region.  And it's a blog first: a whole paragraph dedicated to my derriere.  You're welcome.

What I'm specifically looking forward to is what I termed the G.M. after I delivered Ava.  The Gelatinous Mass.  A.K.A. my stomach.  After you've delivered your baby your stomach has to be the freakiest feeling thing in the world.  After six months of deluding yourself that the tightness of your tummy is not merely due to the growing fetus within, you're suddenly...deflated.  Literally.  And you have one or two nurses coming in at all hours to knead that bread dough tummy of yours into submission afterward.  If that's not rubbing salt in the wound, I don't know what is.  "Honey, better run to the cafeteria and grab a pan and butter it up good because these nurses are fixin' to bake a loaf."  The indignity we suffer to bring life into the world. 

Halloween Slogging

 When I was a child I wanted to be a witch for every Halloween.  And I don't know what it says about me that whenever I thought about playing a part from a Disney Movie it was never Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty, or Cinderella...but instead the evil crone, Maleficent, or the Wicked Stepmother.  You know...a role I could really sink my teeth into. 

 My little girl has no such leanings.  It's princess all the way.  We left the house in a downpour on Saturday at 6 P.M.  Me in a rain poncho, holding an umbrella over our little superstar and my husband with his own umbrella playing the part of bodyguard.  Can I tell you that I was roasting in that plastic poncho?  The sweat was rolling down my face and my hair was like an Andean blanket on the back of my neck.  I swear I was the only warm one out that night.  Now I know how wrestlers feel when they're trying to drop weight before a match.  Ava's mood was not dampened and she set a brutal pace.  Her bucket was half full by the time we had got half way around the block.  People were being extremely generous. 

The bucket dropped twice and broke open because of the heavy load, and I had stashes of candy in my sweatshirt pocket in an effort to lighten the bucket.  We simply weren't home yet and Ava wasn't having any let's just skip a few houses.  Because lot size in the city is so much smaller you can hit what amounts to half of my hometown in three or four blocks.  It's crazy.  But Ava had a very successful night and stayed relatively dry.  As for me...not so much.  I had to remove the hood of the poncho halfway through the night in order for the sweat streams to stop stinging my eyes.  I'm not kidding.  And so I looked like a drowned poodle with Alice Cooper makeup, but that was okay.  At least I got some relief from the plastic sauna. 

Ballerina

 Ava has been taking ballet and loving it.  After class gets over the first thing she asks me is, "How many more days until ballet again?" 

                       "Give a ballerina a break, Mom." 

I Have Some Sad News Mom...

See this face...the one that looks so innocent?  Actually I think she was just squinting into the Yellowstone sun in this one.  Oh well.  I couldn't find a picture of her looking sad, or innocent. 

At about 2 P.M. today a feeling of overwhelming tiredness overcame my prego body and if I didn't lay down right then I might have keeled over with fatigue.  Growing a baby is hard work.  So I say to my little girl, "Let's me and you snuggle together in my bed and we can both have a snooze."  She was game and I was surprised, but I wasn't going to argue with her.  So we lay down and she tosses and turns for a while and then informs me she is going to go and lay down in her own bed.  Smart girl.  At this point I promptly fall asleep.  Ava promptly sneaks into the living room to watch cartoons. 

When I wake up a half hour later I'm in need of an ice cold beverage.  So I look in my meager change purse and wonder at how fast my stash of quarters has seemed to dwindle.  But all that matters is I have a buck.  So Ava and I drive to get my beverage.  On the return trip home Ava suddenly speaks up in a quiet voice:

"Mom...I have some sad news."

"You do?"

"Yeah.  While you were laying down today I took some money out of your purse."

"Ah, then that explains it.  I thought I was missing some quarters.  Did you take my quarters?"

"Mom, I took lots of money."

I giggled.  "Thank you for being honest with me, Ava.  You're such a good girl."

"I thought you'd be mad."

"Next time just ask me if you want some money out of my purse."

"Well, you were sleeping and I didn't want to wake you."

I love that little girl.  She is so much fun.  And really her stealing my quarters or lots of money is really just payback for all the times I took quarters out of my Dad's quarter jar to go and get a Coke out of the pop machine.  Only I never told him.  That's my confession for the day.  Sorry Dad.

Born Enough

I've wanted you for so very long now
Felt you just out of my reach
At times I felt a phantom handprint
Right where a child's might be
And now you're so close, so very close
I can't wait to see your sweet face
To wonder at the innocence in your eyes
A time to feel purified and new
You sweet breath so reassuring on my neck
Your warm weight in my arms
Your overwhelming need for me
And this time I will not doubt
I will not be afraid
I can't offer perfection
But I offer my whole self
Can I confess to you a shameful thing?
I've never felt like enough for anyone
And now I know I was wrong
Have always been wrong about that
I am enough
I was born enough
And so will you be
Just like your sister
No one is born broken
It's a lie that the world whispers over and over again
Until one day you believe it
Never believe it
You will come to us
Exactly how you were meant to
And that will always be enough

- Denise Cooper Smith

The Time is Far Spent

I am home from church early because my daughter was trying to pull off her fancy purple dress in sacrament meeting.  She was whining and in tears about a seam in the side that was itching her.  So we had two choices:  Try to prove a point that we stay in church no matter how uncomfortable we may be (haven't I faced down this same demon in the form of control top nylons?) or I put us all out of our misery and go home and set my daughter free of her itchy dress.  So I did the latter.  Of course the third alternative was to let her become a Mormon Nudist.  Something I'm pretty sure is paradoxical. 

Anyway, I just had to share that, plus something I thought was kind of funny.  Our relief society lesson went too long and we only had time to sing the first verse to the closing hymn.  The hymn: The Time is Far Spent.  Hehehe.  That's all.