Twist of Fate

I took a drama class in my freshman year of college. I didn't like the professor at all (he was the type that made us shell out big bucks to buy the book he wrote,) which was very disappointing because I had adored drama class and drama club in high school. But this professor did say one thing that has stuck with me - he told us to imagine bad news (I forget the context of this) and he told us that it is not a matter of if, but of when, because there will  be a day that that phone call comes or that hand knocks on the door. That day hasn't happened for me yet. I am extraordinarily lucky to have made it into my 30s relatively unscarred by loss. Truth be told, losing my pets has been harder for me than the loss of any person thus far in my life. My grandparents and great-grandparents were all elderly when they passed away, and we as a family have not suffered the tragedy of a human life cut far too short since my aunt's husband passed away too young from cancer in 1990.

My circle of peers has been remarkably lucky as well. The drunk driving deaths, overdoses and KIAs that shorten the lives of so many in their teens and twenties had spared my nearest and dearest, and nearly all of their nearest and dearest as well.

My lack of experience with these sorts of losses may be why the death of a high school classmate in October has haunted me since I heard the news. It was a complete shock, but then again it wasn't. My dear friend Isis was the one who told me, and she had also mentioned a few years ago that she had seen MJ and he didn't seem to be doing well. He "friended" me on Facebook awhile ago (Four years? Five? Not recently, I know that) and I looked through his pictures and superficially noted that he was still cute. But in more recent years, his behavior on Facebook seemed a bit off - he took down his profile picture, he changed his name to pseudonyms and listed a wildly inaccurate birthdate. Combined with Isis' account of the last time she'd seen him, I thought he might be depressed or something along those lines. This didn't gel with how MJ had presented himself in high school. He was laid back, he was a good musician, he was definitely one of the more normal people in Drama Club. Drama Club attracts a lot of strange types, but MJ wasn't one of them.

MJ will always be a part of my memories of the last days of high school. During one of our senior events, he sang a song that he dedicated to all of the "beautiful senior women." I thought that was awesome. So I was predisposed to have warm feelings towards him graduation night. My friend and drinking buddy JJ and I had taken a temporary hiatus from the all-night party to walk to his car and imbibe from the bottle of gin he had stashed there. The alcohol was gin, but the open secret of teenage drinking underneath the moon on a warm suburban night made it feel more like moonshine.

JJ and I were not the only newly minted high graduates wandering the streets by the lake the night of graduation. MJ had joined us at the trunk of the car at some point and suddenly we were kissing. I don't think we even said any words to each other, just jumped right into it. JJ left when he could see that this was going to take awhile, and the kissing turned into a full-fledged make-out session. It was fun, it was sweet, it was very high school. When it was over, I didn't think much about it. I didn't sleep around in high school but I loved to make out with pretty much any boy I thought was cute, and the night with MJ barely made a blip on my radar, as I had other entanglements with other boys that involved a lot more drama. I ran into MJ a few days later at the dairy bar (yes, my hometown has a dairy bar and it's extremely popular) and we had a slightly awkward conversation. Shortly afterwards, his family moved to upstate New York and I can't recall if I ever saw him again.

Since I learned of his death, which I strongly suspect to be a suicide, that night has replayed in my head a thousand times. It might be the eerie similarity to the very beginning of my relationship with Jack. A kiss outside  in the dark during summer break, once again imbibing strong liquor provided by JJ, with a cute blond hair blue eyed guy from the Class of 1999. It was only three years later, but I was different. I had lost the combination of innocence and swagger that defined those graduation-era times. In 1999, the last thing I was looking for was a boyfriend. By the summer of 2002, I was deeply craving the intimacy and companionship of a relationship. Jack is also a member of my graduating class. Had we hooked up any earlier, I doubt either of us would have pursued a relationship, no matter how great a kisser I am.

So what if the tables had been turned? What if Jack was the one who had appeared at JJ's car on the night of graduation and engaged me in a 45-minute kiss? I definitely would have gone for it, I thought Jack was irresistible in an aloof sort of way. And what if MJ had been the one to crash a party at JJ's house 3 years later? Would we have attempted a relationship after an intoxicated make-out session? Would he still have developed a mental illness I now believe is more along the lines of schizophrenia than depression? Would he have taken his own life? Would I be a widow, or could I have saved him somehow?

It feels wrong that he is gone. Just wrong.

Unmoored

Today is Jack and my sixth wedding anniversary. We romantically celebrated the day apart - he was in Maryland working on a grad school paper and I spent the day at my parents' house with Petal doing not much of anything. Our plans to hit a local children's museum with Bridge and her kids were foiled when we found out that the museum didn't open until noon. Note to children's museums - that is not exactly conducive to attracting the nappers in your target market.

I've been feeling kind of down the past few days and spending this day away from Jack has really added to it. When we booked flights for Petal and I to spend the Thanksgiving holiday here in New England, I wanted to come back to Maryland today for a reunion. But Jack has less than a month to go before he earns his Master's degree and he really needs to spend any time that he is not at work cranking out those last few papers. Petal and I can be a bit of a distraction, so off we were shipped.

Much of my angst o'er the past few days has been the cloudiness obscuring my view of what the next few years, and, after that, the rest of my life hold in store. I have always derived great comfort from picturing the future and imaging my plans, grand or small, floating down from the ether to become the new present. But lately I feel directionless. The question of whether or not to have another child eats at me night and day. I won't go into all the pros and cons here, but suffice to say that there are many and that both Jack and I regularly drift from one side of the fence to the other, sometimes in harmony and sometimes at the poles of the spectrum.

The nagging question of where my professional life is going is there to pick up the slack if my mind lets the family planning issue fade to the background for a few moments. And when I entertain career aspirations that exceed beyond the fifteen hours/week working remotely that I currently put in, I am faced with the cliche question plaguing every woman in my age and income bracket - how to "have it all?" How to have a fulfilling career and also soak up every second of Petal's (and the theoretical second pea's) childhood, all while still having enough personal time for physical fitness, a fulfilling social life, romance, travel to inspirational places, my voracious reading habit, quality time with the extended family,  and what I sometimes think is my one true love, sleep.

Until next time...

Provincial

Growing up, the states of Maine to the North and Pennsylvania to the South defined the known world as far. We regularly journeyed up and down 95 to visit my parents' New York-based friends and family, and we have always been the sort of family who will drive upwards of two hours to go to the best beaches around. But we were far from wordly. I didn't take my first plane ride until I was 14 (we went to Florida and the palm trees blew me away.)

Nowadays, Shakira is an ex-pat living in Madrid and my brother lives in Nevada. I've lived in Arizona, England, Germany. I've gone to Europe just for a holiday weekend. I've become accustomed to calculating varying time zones when I want to speak to my nearest and dearest.

A few years ago, Shakira and I were reminiscing about how provincial our upbringing seems compared with our far our family is scattered these days. We laughed so hard that we almost drove off the road when I told her about the time I went to sleepover camp at Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire and could hardly believe my eyes when I spotted a school bus that, unlike the kind that shuttled us back and forth to school, had a front where the engine area was flush with the windshield. How strange and exotic to ride in a school bus where the engine area did not protrude past the windshield! References to this wondrous bus have become part of our lexicon when we wish to describe something as provincial.

(Background:I have some Mother's Helpers who have begun watching Petal while I get my work done on the computer. They are in fifth grade, so they can't be left alone with her or transport themselves to my house independently. We meet at the library and they read to Petal in the children's section while I work on my laptop.)

On Thursday, Petal's Mother's Helpers were trying to come up with enough change to make photocopies for her on the library's photocopier. I opened my wallet, but the only change I found was 10 cent Euro pieces from our trip to Spain in August. My mind registered only that the coins were useless because they wouldn't work in the photocopier, but when I offhandedly mentioned this to the girls, I realized that they had never seen this foreign money before. I let each girl keep a 10 cent piece - they initially tried to refuse, saying that it was far too generous a gift.

Though I no longer blink an eye at the sight of a Euro coin, I was these girls for the majority of my childhood. The 1 hour 15 minute journey from my house to TechnoBunny's brought me into an entirely other world. Foreign currency seemed quite exotic indeed.

Petal will never be these girls. With an aunt living abroad and her grandparents' homes mostly easily reached by plane, her life may seem exotic to many of her classmates who have roots closer to the Chesapeake. Petal will never be the girl staring in awe at the flat faced bus. I wonder which corners of the world  my passport possessing toddler will get herself off to in the years to come.

Family

My great-grandmother with her family in Mandal, Norway circa 1894. She's the baby. All of the children eventually immigrated to America.

As a lifelong lover of history, family has always been important to me. Learning where my family came from and what their lives were like has always fascinated me. A distant cousin once published a history of our family - in Norwegian - and I pored over the charts, names and dates until the cover fell off. My family is my North Star. No matter what my life in the real world is like at any given moment, the stability and predictability of holidays and gatherings with my extended family grounds me.

 One of the reasons I am such a believer in marriage over co-habitation is because of the recognition of the new husband or wife's joining into the extended family unit. Jack was my partner for years before we exchanged wedding vows. On that day, he became not only my lover but my family. Many lives seem to revolve around a central theme - the engineer whose biography is rife with an appreciation for science at an early age, the cellist who sought out music wherever her travels took her.

 The central theme of my life is my family - the intense bond my cousin TechnoBunny and I shared throughout my childhood, the sense of humor and categorization of the world Shakira and I developed throughout many many hours together in our 20s, the way motherhood has drawn me closer to my own mother than ever before.

 Shakira refers to me as the family historian because I can rattle off the names of cousins, their relation to us, where they live and who they're married to without so much as a pause. It's always fascinated me to trace the path of a single ancestor's descendants and to see how far the branches have spread. I hope this blog entry doesn't read like one long advertisement for ancestry.com (though I do love that site.) I just figured it was time that I put what is perhaps my life's greatest passion into words.

Me with some of my first, second, and third cousins and their spouses and offspring this summer at Lake Sebago in Maine. The cousins are all descendants of Bertha, Tonetta, Olava and Tobine - the four sisters pictured up top. I'm in the beach hat and TechnoBunny is next to me in the sunglasses and blue shirt.

Don't you just hate abandoned blogs?

I did not manage to capture any of my New England or European summer adventures over the past few months. Apologies.

I have a tendency to over indulge in nostalgia, a habit I have consciously been avoiding over the past few years. I also like to project far into the future, a habit which has not gotten any better. September will always be a time of freshly sharpened pencils, crisp new sheets of notebook paper. A good time to move forward. Petal is enrolled in new classes - they refer to the "semester" in her music class, too cute. The "curriculum" is tools, high & low, and fast & slow.

I work for an education non-profit specifically focused on teacher quality. At this stage of my life, I openly and guiltlessly rank work well below child rearing in terms of priority, energy and time.

But thinking so much about the education system and specifically teaching gets the wheels in my mind turning. Once Petal has developed an independent life, I want something to devote my energy to that is meaningful, interesting and challenging.

Is teaching that thing? Helping to prepare the next generation is certainly meaningful work. I'm familiar enough with the education system to know that, especially for newbies, it's definitely challenging. And my love of history ensures that the material I would present would always be interesting to me. Even the pre-reqs in social studies that I would need prior to enrolling in an M.Ed. in Social Studies 7-12 program fill me with giddy glee. I would love to study geography again!

I am notorious for changing my mind (I spent all summer telling anyone who would listen about how I've decided I want to work in education policy when Petal is older) so this new life plan could just be a blip on the radar. But right now I'm excited about it and, since we all know how important it is to live in the moment, right now I will just enjoy the excitement filling my present moment, regardless of what I actually choose to do with my future.

Army Green Bag

(This post has nothing to do with Jack's military service. It's just about the color of the bags I carry. And that's not a metaphor for emotional baggage. I just mean the sacks I use to transport my items.)

In my late 90s suburban high school, everyone and I do mean everyone had the requisite oversized LL Bean backpack. We were issued lockers but most of us barely used them. Instead, we lugged around pounds worth of knowledge in the form of textbooks, always using only one shoulder to bear the heft.

Most of the backpacks were purple or turquoise. Pink was avoided like the plague, so unlike the look favored by today's high school girls. I was quite proud of my army green backpack. I'd sewn on the patches myself - one of the symbol for Capricorn, souvenirs of my trips to Norway and to the Blue Lagoon in Iceland, and of course my favorite band, Pearl Jam. My love for Guns N' Roses was not fully fleshed out until college - back in the waning days of grunge's influence, Eddie Vedder rocked my socks. My AOL screen name was even EdVedandPJ.

I fondly remember that backpack and I wish I still had it or a picture of it - it definitely epitomized my style at the time. But I wouldn't have been caught dead with my high school backpack on a college campus, so it has been swallowed by the annals of family history that is my parents' home.

This morning while rushing Petal to kindermusick, it occurred to me that the diaper bag I was grasping along with my purse, reusable shopping bags and a 21 month year old is nearly the same color as that backpack that was nearly fused to my spine 15 years ago. Now, I no longer enjoy that brownish shade of green - this bag was Jack's choice.

Diapers and spare toddler clothes are much lighter than textbooks, so this bag doesn't weigh my shoulders down the same way. Petal will most likely be spared the years of nearly toppling over from the weight of a backpack, as technology will make the need to carry the heavy tomes back and forth obsolete. So perhaps the high school backpack will one day seem as quaint to future generations as the ink wells on the desks in the one room schoolhouses seem to us at the dawn of of the 21st century. Or maybe in 15 years the diaper bag will be gathering dust in the basement and, if I have managed to locate my old backpack, Petal will carry it at school as a retro throwback, the way I wore my mom's blue and white overalls from the 1970s to show how cool I was in 1998.

It was a beautiful way to say goodbye

We knew you were sick when we brought you home for the first time. We loved you with our whole hearts, knowing we were setting those hearts up to break. You spent your last 24 hours in our bed, still purring through it all. You had a final walk in the sun. I hate that it happened, but it was a good way to go.

2000-2012 - not a bad run for a cat with FIV!

Night Owl

When I was a kid, I was a huge bookworm. My parents and siblings slept on the top floor of our white, green-shuttered house on the hill and I slept on the bottom floor. The room was meant to be a dining room, but it functioned as a playroom for many years. When I was in second grade I moved in to escape my sister's snoring. A coat of cherry blossom pink paint on the walls, frilly white curtains, a donated lavender rug from a friend's younger brother, and it was a room fit for an eight year old princess. The best part of the room was the china hutch, which made a wonderful bookshelf for my dog eared, juice stained copies of the Baby Sitters Club and Sweet Valley Twins. I read The Baby Sitters Club Super Special #2, the one where the girls go to sleep away camp, so many times that the cover fell off.

Living on the bottom floor enabled me to stay up well past the time I was supposed to turn off the lights, devouring every word of Ann M. Martin's and Francine Pascal's. When Sweet Valley High misfit Annie attempted suicide, my heart jumped into my throat and all thoughts of slumber were pushed aside as I raced frantically through the final pages of the book. My imagination stayed up past bedtime also - after reading a book in the Nancy Drew Case Files series, I crept to the top of the stairs and urgently informed my mother that the rhythmic ticking outside my window was a sure indication that someone had planted a bomb. Master Detective Mommy quickly surmised that a melting icicle was the true sound of the noise.

My refusal to go quietly into the dark night continued throughout my school years. Now in a house across town in a second floor bedroom with a phone line shared only with my sister, I had friends, boyfriends and crushes with whom to while the night away. Being the kind of girl a guy could call at 1 am on a school night for a flirtatious chat fit with the slightly rebellious image I cultivated for myself, and when it came time to fill out my dorm assignment paperwork before leaving for college, I circled the latest time slots available as my preferred bed time. (FYI - filling out your paperwork that way screams "I like to party!" to housing staff, who will then be guaranteed to assign you to the least updated dorm with the fewest amenities. Live and learn.)

All that changed when I started dating Jack senior year of college. Because he was an ROTC cadet, he had to get up hours before the typical college student. Jack would turn in well before midnight, a concept truly foreign to me. I would watch Family Guy in the living room of my small apartment while Jack hit the hay in my bedroom and eventually his habits began to wear off on me.

By the time I had an internship in the elementary setting in graduate school, I thought I had outgrown my night owl days. I loved going to bed and sometimes it was a struggle to maintain enough alertness to talk to Jack when he would call from Iraq when I was ready to turn in. I frequently opted to watch tv with my sister on a Friday night at my parents' suburban home rather than drive into Boston to go out with my girlfriends. At 24, I felt "over" staying up late.

Throughout the rest of my 20s, I considered myself a reformed night owl. During our six months residency in Arizona, Jack and I lived in an apartment complex that never seemed to get truly dark. Despite the fact that I had very little to occupy myself, I was up before 7 each day, no alarm necessary.

And then there's now. Now I stumble bleary-eyed throughout the day, only filled with vim as the sun starts to sink. I drag myself out of bed at a more than decent hour (Petal has been sleeping until 9 lately,) still loathe to part from my covers. By the time Petal and I have gone to playgroup/music class/the library/errands or whatever else our morning entailed and then eaten lunch, we are both ready for a nap. I slink gratefully back into slumber, zonked after a mere 4 hours awake. I know I want to take advantage of the beautiful weather, but I just can't make myself leave my soft nest.

Around dinner time, I finally start to become alert. I head to the gym and return with a bounce in my step. I have endless patience with Petal. I finally get going on my work from home job, feeling as though my brain is finally on enough to process my assignment. I do the laundry. I write emails. I blog. I talk Jack's ear off. I finally feel like my batteries are fully charged, and my bed looks like just another piece of furniture instead of the forbidden Eden it appears when I have such diurnal difficulty staying away from it.

Is 31 too old to be going through a sleeping "phase" or am I doomed to be a night owl until I'm old enough for the early bird special?

Goodness of Fit

Goodness of fit is extremely important to me in all areas of my life. In most realms, I am extremely lucky. Jack and I fit together amazingly well and I can't imagine anyone who would make a better life partner for me. I am also beyond thrilled that fate saw fit to match us with the adorable princess we get to parent. I'm sure I would love any child I had, but Petal belonging to Jack and me and Jack and me belonging to her just seems to fit perfectly.

One area where I did not choose as well is my career. School psychology is a great career for many people and has many qualities to recommend it. Unfortunately, I am not suited for it - it always felt like a struggle to make myself conform to the job or the job to conform to me. I compare it to a starter marriage - I committed very early on at a young age where there was still a lot I didn't know about the world. The timing of Petal's birth afforded me the chance to make a clean break and I did so without (much) looking back.

But deciding to sever ties with one professional identity is only half the equation. There is still the question of what will come next. For the past few months, I have toyed with the idea of becoming certified to teach special education. I really enjoyed working in the school environment and I already know a lot about the special ed process, etc.

However, I have spent the past hour or so editing one of Jack's term papers and trying to explain proper comma usage. I find myself quickly getting frustrated with him and tongue tied in my explanations. Uh oh. If I want to pull my hair out when trying to explain something to my intelligent, highly motivated graduate student husband, how will I ever have the patience to try to teach learning disabled, most likely sullen teenagers? Looks like it's back to the drawing board. I know I want to stay working in the education field in some capacity, but what?

Undocumented

We are in the process of obtaining the proper paperwork for our trip to Spain for Shakira's wedding. This means we have currently signed over Petal's birth certificate, my current passport and our certified copy of our marriage license to the powers that be. This makes me very very nervous. I haven't been without a valid passport since 2004. I don't like the idea that I cannot currently leave the country - I couldn't get to Shakira if she really needed me.

Yes, I'm paranoid. But we almost lost Shakira in 2005, when she fell gravely ill while traveling in Costa Rica. We got a call that morning and my dad was able to get on a plane to go to her that night. Ironically, Shakira herself was passport-less at the time, as hers had been stolen. Unbelievably, the American authorities in San Jose allowed her friend and traveling companion to retrieve replacement passport so she was able to return to U.S. soil on the med flight necessary to bring her to Miami.

So today when I brought my documents to the post office to be mailed off to the processing center, I paid extra to have the package certified. This entitles me to check its progress on the usps website until it reaches Philadelphia. And track I shall.

Tick Tock Tick Tock

It feels like Jack will never be home from class!

Oh Monday...

- Husband's car with a dead battery? Check

- Health insurance plan refusing to pay for refill of prescription? Check

- Phone/power/internet going out during a work conference call? Check

- Slippery socks sending me skidding down the stairs and almost causing a heart attack? Check

- Toddler showing no signs of sleepiness at bedtime? Check

But luckily said toddler also took a 3+ hour nap this afternoon so Mama also got a nap, so I'm able to smile and shrug it off. And I had a blast in NYC with old friends last weekend so I have plenty to smile about.

Oops

My cousin TechnoBunny is here visiting for the weekend. I talked her into dyeing her hair blond and it came out, um, yellow. Like muppet yellow. I had vision of my beautiful cousin looking like a Nordic goddess and now I think she'll be so gun shy she'll never go near bleach again. She's in the shower scrubbing with Selsun Blue (the harshest shampoo we had in the house) trying to salvage what she can. I really really hope a professional can re-prettify her. Please keep your fingers crossed!

Justify

Something I just don't get about our society is how people wear their busyness like a badge of honor. The lowest blow in the working mom/stay at home mom debate is to imply that someone isn't busy enough. If you're not run ragged, you're not cutting it. No matter the effect all that busyness has on stress levels, sleep, eating habits, you name it. Busyness is next to godliness.

I don't try to compete with that. I am someone who is vastly affected by not getting enough sleep, not eating when I'm hungry, and not having time to myself. Maybe everyone is like me and most people just hide it better, I don't know.

My point is, I started a new job this week. It's interesting work in my field, with a mission I can support. It seemed like a doable commitment to sign on for while Petal is still little - 20-30 hours a week working from home.

I enjoyed the full day training sessions in the DC office this week. But after commuting back to the suburbs, I was zonked. There's no way I'd want to do that every day.

My mind started getting way ahead of itself, as usual. I jumped ahead five years to the time when Petal begins elementary school. And I thought, what if this is just what I did? I would be working doing something I enjoy, and I would have plenty of time during the workday to exercise, clean, and maybe even cook!

I don't know if I'm brave (good for me for following my own path!) or lazy (I can't hack it in the real world!) for plotting to get out of the rat race all together. Maybe a little bit of both.

Amazed

Watching Petal demonstrate new skills and make connections between things is an absolutely enthralling experience. In my still-novice opinion, the most awe-inspiring part of parenting is watching a tiny creature who has little beyond instinct to guide her in the world slowly (and sometimes quickly) make incredible cognitive leaps and bounds and become a reasoning, rational mini-person. Petal is a fairly verbal child, but there is still so much she can't tell us with her toddler vocabulary. So watching her demonstrate how well she understands us, concepts we had no idea she was grasping, it just takes my breath away.

Holy typos!

Guess I still have a few kinks to work out (see previous entry.)

Dragged into the Digital Age

I am typing this on my new IPad! And Jack will be doing his reading for school on his new Kindle Fire once the semester begins. He threatened to rerun the IPad yesterday because I had refused to take it for a spin due to my well-documented Fear of New Things. But when Petal went down for her afternoon nap and Jack prepared to head for the grocery store, he told me to play around with it. That sounded a lot more appealing than folding laundry, and by the time he got back I was hooked. And the laundry still isn