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November 24, 2004
Thanksgiving is really my favorite holiday. It’s all about a great meal, giving thanks and enjoying time with family. This year Thanksgiving also falls on our wedding anniversary, which is nice. I certainly give thanks for the ‘sliding door’ that opened a little over five years ago and led me to the man who is now my husband. Anymore it seems like my life is broken down into a series of before and afters… Before I was married, after Ava was born being the two biggest markers, obviously, but there are many, many others. I can’t believe the changes the past fours years since I became a married woman have brought. And while I am profoundly grateful for most of those changes, but at times it is hard to fathom that I am nearly 33, a wife, a mother, a step mother, that I’ve been in the same job for four years, that I live in Iowa, that I put my husband through law school, that I own (well, the bank owns) a home… How did all of that happen so quickly? Six years ago I was living in Washington, DC and I vividly recall that Thanksgiving. I participated in a wonderful tradition during my four years in DC – every Thanksgiving I got together with a group of friends (we rotated houses) and we enjoyed the meal together. That year the dinner was at my house and it was a ton of fun – good food, great conversation, some games, some wine… Everyone left stuffed and happy around 8:30pm. It was a nice night and I sat on my porch alone. I remember feeling content, grown up, independent – proud that I was able to build my own life. I also remember feeling a little bit lonely. If I had a crystal ball I wonder what I would have thought looking into the future at THIS Thanksgiving?
I love movies that have a “what would have happened IF” sort of component to them. An all time favorite – “It’s a Wonderful Life” what if George Bailey had never lived? “Sliding Doors” what if Gweyneth wouldn’t have missed that train? “Frequency” what if Dennis Quaid hadn’t perished in the fire? I don’t think it’s healthy to spend a lot of time second-guessing your decisions, but I do love those stories. And on occasion I do allow myself to wonder what life would have been had I made a different decision or chosen a different path.
John and I have decided that Thanksgiving will be an immediate-family only affair for us. It is never very fun or relaxing to get caught up in the meal for thirty people gig. We’re going to do a fairly simple dinner at our house and then go to my folk’s house later for some dessert and conversation. Meghan announced this weekend that ‘the boyfriend’ will be joining us for our meal. I have mixed feelings about that, but am certainly not going to suggest he isn’t welcome. We got to talking a little bit last night and are thinking we may actually try to time the meal to coincide with Ava’s nap. At eighteen months meal times with our girl are not a very relaxing event. At best we get 10 or 15 minutes before she starts feeding the dog or smearing her food on any available surface. We’ll see… I do like the idea of the WHOLE family eating together. Perhaps I should let that go in the interest of all of us enjoying our meal? I’m not sure.
This past weekend we had a visit from my mother in law which also meant Meghan and Lane were with us all weekend. By the end of the weekend our house felt very, very small. My MIL is a wonderful, wonderful woman. Loving, kind, warm… But she is ‘up, up, up’ all the time. The kids (all three of them) just drink in that constant ray of sunshine and love. I think the person I enjoy watching the most is Lane – he is such a neat young man. He is very sensitive and self-aware for a 16 year old. Admittedly I don’t know much about boys – I imagine raising a boy would be the same, yet completely different. I think John has done so much to inspire a soulful, compassionate, kind person. It is exemplified in how he treats his grandmother.
John and I took advantage of Marilyn’s presence and went out to dinner AND a movie Saturday night – mostly to mark our anniversary. We had a very tasty meal and then went to see “Bridget Jones Dairy 2.” I’m not sure what to say about the movie. I really enjoyed sitting in the theater with John, being entertained by a light-hearted film. The movie was probably really only ok, but the experience was good. For dinner that night I had a steak de Burgo that was super, super garlicky. I ended up feeling a little bit sick to my stomach, which really sucked. I would not have anticipated that. No vampire would come near me with the amount of garlic I normally consume. But the garlic is what seemed to make the meat kind of sit like a lump in my stomach.
Beginning Sunday night our Patito has been very emotional. I don’t know if she’s teething or has some other issue. She has been exceptionally whiny, unbelievably fussy, difficult to soothe and generally not much fun to be around. I’ve tried giving her a little Tylenol operating under an assumption she’s working on some new toofers (she seems to be full of extra drool) but I don’t want to medicate her if there’s another issue. Monday night it took her over an hour to settle down to go to sleep. That is just not at all like her. She fussed it out in her crib at an epic volume for 20 minutes before John went up and tried to rock her. No go. So he laid down on her floor for 30 minute or so. No go. Finally he got up and left her. After another 10 minutes or so she drifted off to the land of nod. Tuesday morning she woke up crying “Mama” and didn’t stop until I dropped her off at daycare. She didn’t have a fever or any other ‘owies’ I could determine. In an act of desperation I popped in some Tylenol and loaded her into the car. 19 turns through “The Wheels on the Bus” later I somewhat gratefully left her at daycare.
While Ava seems to add (and drop) words by the day, this weekend she figured out apple “Awpuwul.” Mostly because she has a shirt from babyGap that has a big velvet apple on the front of it. The shirt is really cute and whenever she wears it she hears a lot of “Do you have an apple on your shirt?” Monday morning I was folding some of her clean clothes while she was sitting in her crib reading her books and generally giving me he*l. I come across her apple shirt and she about launches out of the crib “AWPUWUL.” She starts tugging at the shirt she has on doing the whole point and whine thing I love so much (not really) for the apple shirt. So I changed her clothes so she could wear the apple shirt – how could I not?
Despite the fact that we replaced Ava’s beloved Nikes with an identical (just one size bigger) pair she still is insistent on taking them off in the car. “No shoes!” I don’t get it – I thought maybe her little Eccos weren’t as comfortable as the beloved Nikes. She doesn’t seem to complain about wearing shoes almost any other time. Ava won’t keep socks on at night – she’s like her mom – I like to sleep with my FEET OUT of the covers. Ava absolutely adores having her feet rubbed, especially if there is lotion involved. Can you even imagine what will happen once she discovers pedicures? She’ll groom her pretty little feet right into the poor house. Some days it would be so nice to jump inside their heads and learn more about what’s going on. I know I am a person full of quirks and preferences. Why wouldn’t my daughter be? It surely must be frustrating not to be able to say “Mom, I really prefer to ride in the car barefoot and here’s why.”
Last night (Tuesday) John and I went to a surprise 40th birthday party for a friend of ours. My mother stayed with Ava. As I mentioned, our girl has been a bit of a fuss bucket lately. As I was driving to the party I called my mom to remind her of something (we always play Ava’s African Lullaby CD when we lay her down to bed) and my mom tells me Ava’s been standing by the door since I left crying “Mama.” Dagger through the heart. I am sure my mom was paying me back for something horrible I did when I was a teenager, but really, why did she have to share that? Of course Ava rallied, played, enjoyed her bath and fell asleep while my mother rocked her. And of course I didn’t learn about any of this until we actually got home.
Tuesday night at the party, seconds after walking in the door after John had moved to the bar to get us some drinks I ran smack into my ex-fiancé. When I was painfully young, just finishing graduate school, I was engaged to a really lovely man who was just finishing law school. With the benefit of nearly 10 years of hindsight I can say that I believe we really did love each other and that we were in no way ready to get married. Not to each other. Not to anyone. Because we were young and stubborn our break up was not handled well. It lingered in a neverland for several months before finally acknowledging the end. The issues that contributed to the demise of our relationship could take up several entries. In a nutshell, his parents were very concerned about the fact that I wasn’t Catholic and we all behaved horribly, myself included.
During the course of our relationship I had some fairly significant gynelogical problems. I had a cyst on my ovary that ruptured, painfully, and when they did the laparoscopic surgery they discovered significant endometriosis, uterine fibroids, polypus on my cervix, my uterus is tilted…. It just felt like the list went on and on. My gynecologist was a very thorough, serious man and he put me on a six-month course of Lupron to try to curtail the growth of the endo and, in his words, help preserve my fertility. He advised me of the possibility that it might be difficult for me to conceive and that it would be wise for me to avoid delay in starting a family if that’s what was important to me, as these issues tend to exacerbate with time. Making the decision to end my engagement to the ex for a long time felt like throwing my chances to be a mom out as well. When the ex-fiancée and I broke up one of the ugliest things he said to me was that he had been willing to give up on his chance to have biological children to be with me. It stung because I wanted children, it implied that he was making this big sacrifice where he had never indicated it was something he was worried about. It made me feel defective. That statement stayed with me for a long time.
The ex met someone new right away, got married about 10 months after we pulled the plug to a very nice, but fairly boring woman. They have two children, I think. We stayed in minimal touch for awhile, thankfully moving past some of the ugly things we said to each other and getting to a place where there were no bad feelings, but really nothing left to say. After I moved to Washington, DC we sort of fell out of touch and we hadn’t spoken in over six years when we ran into each other last night. Interestingly we have some mutual friends, including the man who’s birthday we celebrated last night. I was always a little surprised our paths hadn’t crossed sooner. When we ran into each other he said hello and the next words out of his mouth were “I understand congratulations are in order.” I said, “excuse me?” He says “I heard you have a daughter. I am so happy for you. I know how important having children was to you. I thought about calling you when I heard, but I didn’t know what to say.” I thanked him, we chatted for a few more minutes and moved on. But I felt like I’d been stripped bare. I was surprised that he went to such a personal place after so long of being out of contact. I believe, because I really do think he’s a good man, that he was genuine and that in a way he was trying to say he was sorry for that awful fight so long ago. I know the benefit of time and perspective have left me regretting things I did and said during the course of our time as a couple.
And BTW, I have to say, for the first time ever in my life I looked particularly fabulous for such a random encounter. You know how usually when something like that happens you’re in sweat pants with no make up and a gigantic zit? Well not so last night. I had on my favorite pair of jeans – 7s that I wear when I want to feel extra stylish. A beautiful cashmere sweater I bought on deep discount last year, I was having an extra good hair day and, miracle of miracles I had just applied lip liner. My wonderful husband reacted to this run in a completely low-key way, just saying “well, baby, you look fabulous and I am certain he is eating his heart out right now.” What a man!
I’ve discovered an ever-expanding world of blogs on motherhood and infertility and I am sucked in. I am humbled by their writings and their experiences. I feel a huge amount of empathy for women who struggle with infertility. It took 14 months for us to conceive. I hate to enter the morass of a ‘pain index’ but I do realize we are lucky beyond all measure – we didn’t have to move on to any invasive assisted reproductive technology, I did become pregnant and I hold a gorgeous, healthy, wonderful daughter in my arms. 14 months is nothin’ compared to what many people have endured and continue to endure. I was heartsick each month of our TTC journey, hoping, planning, analyzing every symptom, timing sex, envying friends and knowing that my body had some chips stacked against it to become pregnant. And I vividly remember the horrible disappointment when month after month rolled by with no pregnancy. I don’t know what kind of miracle happened in month 15, on the eve of calling my gynecologist to begin to discuss next steps, but I am grateful everyday for my remarkable daughter and know fully how lucky I am. I am thinking of jumping off the iParenting ship. I’ve looked around at other diary host sites… I love this format (as you all know) for processing my life, but I’ve found the forum to be disappointing. I don’t think I can commit to a blog, but I think I’d like to write more often, about different things instead of these marathon entries. Thoughts?
This morning Ava woke up early – 5:30am saying “Daddy!” John went into her room, changed her and brought her back to bed as he’s done so many times. Ava’s “Brown Bear” book was on John’s nightstand and she picked it up and asked him to read it to her. I was laying there next to them, watching them, drinking them in. On the eve of my four-year wedding anniversary I just have to say I am profoundly and utterly grateful for my brief glimpse into my own “what if.” I am so relieved, happy and certain in the truth that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. I am blessed beyond all measure to be married to my true love, my soul mate and the best person I know. And by some twist of fate we’ve been given the privilege of raising our remarkable little Ava. My heart is full.
Thanks for reading—
--Kate
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