a few of my favorite things 2013: a moment

This is my favorite moment from 2013:

It's from my trip back to Virginia for my 20 year high school reunion this past summer.  The day after the reunion, I met up with a couple of my friends at an old park in the neighborhood we had grown up in. Most of the playground equipment that we remembered had long since been taken out and replaced, which was sad. Except for this sweet old metal whale! And you all know how much I love whales anyhow. So I told my friend I wanted a picture of me sitting on the whale.  Well, I sat down on it and the springs on the poor old whale were so old and loose that as I sat on it's tail, I immediately swung so far back that I almost hit the ground, which of course came as a bit of a surprise, so I started laughing uncontrollably as I swung back up and leaned forward to keep myself upright! And this is the shot she got of me on the whale.  People have told me that they like this picture of me, how nice it is to see me genuinely happy and smiling and laughing. And I agree with them. It isn't often that I get pictures of myself laughing. And I don't often like the way I look anymore smiling too hard, honestly. My face gets all scrunched up and I have a double chin and my eyes are squished and it's really not my best look, take my word for it. But this, I like this picture. And I liked remembering happy times of my childhood with good friends. Lots of good times at that playground.  So many memories. So this is a good moment.:)

Honestly, the trip to Virginia was kind of a hard one for me. 

(I'm just going to leave these photos interspersed out of order throughout the post because it's too much of a pain to try to put them in order, so just enjoy them for their randomness. Maybe they'll make some sort of sense to you. I'll put captions at the bottom. There.:))

The whole idea of going to the 20 year reunion was a hard one. Not knowing who would be there. If people would recognize me. Knowing I have changed - a lot. Had 4 babies. Etcetera. But also knowing that I don't care too much. That I don't care enough to keep me away anyway. But also being very nervous. What have I done in the 20 years since High School? I went on a church mission to Germany, I got married, I graduated from college, had a baby the month after and I've been a stay at home mom every since. That has been my choice and I'm happy with it, but it is hard sometimes to tell other people that who may have "expected" that I do other bigger and better things. I was afraid of listening to a night of "oh I always thought you would do ____" whatever that might be....

And then being overcome with memories of high school. It's just the name of the game, right? And oh, my. It's just kind of overwhelming. Sometimes. It can be that way for me.

And I don't go back to Virginia often. I was born there and lived there my entire life until I got after my mission when we moved after I got home. So the place itself is very strong with memories, for me. Especially this time, with the reunion. It just felt saturated. Dripping with memories everywhere I turned. I was kind of a mess. And I was very nervous about traveling with the pain, too. The flight. And I had never ever gone on a trip all alone before. I know that seems silly, being an adult and everything, but my anxiety was just very high and my pain was very high. I had a bad migraine every single day of the trip. That alone makes me a little crazy. I stayed with my sister and her husband, who I appreciated very much. They worked full-time so I was left to do whatever I planned to do, which was perfect. But I didn't have as much of a plan as I had planned to have, which was stressful for me. I would very much like to be a person that can be spontaneous and can go with the flow and just do whatever comes my way and whatever but I learned that what this does is increases my stress a hundred fold and then I become sort of paralyzed with indecision, and then I make bad decisions. Or I drive around aimlessly and get lost, or end up places I don't really intend on ending up. Or going the wrong way down one way streets. Or all of the above. It's not really good for me. I get emotional.

Some things worked out really well. I did see some friends that I hadn't seen in many many years and I loved catching up with them and it was wonderful. Some things didn't work out as well. Some plans fell through. I got lost, a lot. Every day I got lost. My GPS on my phone kept dropping out, leaving me driving along with no more directions and pulling into random parking lots trying to get it to reconnect and turning around multiple, multiple times, every time I tried to go anywhere. Northern Virginia is a zoo with traffic anyway, but everywhere I went had changed unrecognizably. Even places where I knew I should know where I was, I no longer had any clue where I was. I got lost late at night coming back from the reunion in my own neighborhood, the one I lived in for over 20 years. I was turned around, completely disoriented and about in tears (in my defense, there are no streetlights in the neighborhood so it was pitch dark and I just have a terrible sense of direction - plus, all the trees had grown so much taller!). In fact, I think just about every single day I was there I ended up in tears for one reason or another. I couldn't find my best friend's house in Fredericksburg (she no longer lives there). I drove around where I knew it should be, just to look at it, because I had time to kill, and never even came close. No idea where I was.

It was so overwhelming and disorienting to be "home" but to feel so lost.  I just felt lost. Virginia will always always be home for me. But I felt like in some ways, I was saying goodbye on this trip. There won't be another high school reunion for however many years. I tried to soak in as much as I could, though I know it will never be enough.   I didn't belong anymore. I don't belong anywhere. I've become homeless.

The reunion itself was good, I was so glad that I had gone, although for some reason I managed not to eat a single bite the entire night. So many of the people there were people I had known since kindergarten. They weren't really my "crowd" during high school. But they felt almost like family to me, I have just known them for so long. I don't know if they feel the same way about me. They probably don't. But oh well. I was happy to see them, at any rate. I was the one who became the "alternative girl" into middle school and high school and stopped hanging out with the cool kids. They just thought I was weird. So the reunion was mostly the more popular kids.  I was ok with that. I don't really care. Most of them didn't remember me unless I had already been friends with them before High School. Hahahaha.;) Oh and if I'm going to classify cliques, some of the really smart kids were there too . I knew them too, happily. So I had some people to talk to. But I stood the whole time not really knowing who to stand next to, becoming increasingly uncomfortable in the heels I wore that I hardly ever wear. Ha. The music was loud, people danced, I laughed and talked to people and caught up and tried not to cry and tried to decide how honest to be about my life and pain issues. But it was good.

There were sooooooo many people that I wish had been there that weren't though. Many many many. It made me miss them.

(I did also get to be there for my sister's baby shower for her first baby which was just so much fun!! I do hope to be able to get out to visit her and her new little family more often. I wish, I wish....)

Oh. And I just discovered that I have lost my photos from this trip. All of them except for what I posted in the reunion group on FB and what I posted personally on FB and on Instagram. I'm a little heartbroken about it - there were a lot of just little things, places and buildings (like the house I grew up in and the church I attended) that I took pictures of that are lost and that I don't know when I will get back to go see again. They may not even be there when I get back there again.  I get attached to places. I seem to hang little pieces of myself in the places I've been and when I go back, I see myself there and say hello again. It's important to me, part of who I am.

Anyway, so I guess I ache for what I've lost, as we all sometimes do.
Childhood, places as I knew them, memories, friendships and relationships as they once were, photos, home...
It was an interesting and sort of hard trip to take. But I'm still really glad I did. We can never really go back to anything. We know this. Some people have no desire to go back and see the places where they used to be. They don't want to be reminded of painful pasts, or memories they've put behind them, and high school is just so done, right?
But I guess I'm never one to shy away from nostalgia even though sometimes it hurts. I need to be reminded that the good parts of who I was are still part of who I am. I'm still that girl too. And I still have a home in Virginia, even when I feel lost and homeless.

(photos:
-  me on the whale
-  me and Megan who I've known since kindergarten under our Class of 93 sign
 - my Senior class photo
- beautiful green VA trees
 - old map of Northern VA in the Fairfax County museum I ended up in one day
 - me looking through old nostalgic photos before my trip
- my high school memorabilia
- flying out of Reagan National Airport over DC - saying goodbye
- Virginia postcard
- Megan, Anne and Me ( I met Anne in middle school but she lived in our neighborhood & knew Megan in neighborhood preschool)
- me in front of our High School, the night of our reunion before going over 
- Scott, Ben and Erik that I've known since kindergarten or at least 1st grade
- view from airplane
- me and Shelly who was my best friend in 6th and 7th grade, then she moved away but we stayed in touch
- Amy, Megan and me (we've known each other since kindergarten)
- view of Rappahanock River, Fredericksburg, VA - one of my favorite places
- Kindergarten class picture (pictured, me, Megan, Amy & Scott - from above pictures - can you find us? Erik and Ben were in the other kindergarten class)
- Senior Class memorabilia table - including the literary magazines that I was a huge part of
- Anne, Carolyn and me (Carolyn lives near me! but this was the first time we'd seen each other - across the country - haha)
- My very pregnant little sister Melissa at her baby shower
- Erin, Christina, Amy and me - we had a separate little reunion get together

becoming a mother

 “When a woman gives birth, 

two are born; 

a baby 

from the womb of its mother 

and a woman

 from the womb 

of her former existence."

 -Marianne Williamson

The arrival of Mother's Day always does something to me, puts me in a contemplative mood, perhaps especially because it coincides with the month of the birth of my firstborn, so I am always thinking in particular of when I became a mother.  This child, my daughter, this baby, who suddenly came into the world and transformed me into a mom.  I struggle, as perhaps all moms do, with feeling adequate, with feelings of guilt, all my shortcomings laid out in sharp detail with every parenting misstep, every single day.

And now I find myself in an interesting stage of parenting.  This middle stage. All my children are in school.  It's an "easier" stage in a lot of ways.  Not yet driving or dating. No potty-training or diapers. No nap schedules or nursing schedules. We can leave them with a sibling who can babysit. Admittedly, there is more fighting, whining, screaming, throwing things, hitting, and crying than I would have expected at this stage, but I am learning that things are very rarely, if ever at all, like you expect them to be.  Really. Like my face pain.  Just when things were supposed to be getting "easier" . . . nope, BAM! Let's hit you in the face (almost literally) with chronic pain instead. Have fun with that. 

Anyway.  I wanted to tell you the story.  This story of when I became a mom.  Just because all stories are fun, right?  And this is my mother's day story. And we all have our own stories. I don't mean to diminish anyone else's or glorify my own. Yours may be a story of not wanting children at all, or wanting but not being able to, perhaps a story of having children young or waiting til you're old, whether by choice or by circumstance, of adoption, of infertility, of being rich or being poor, or having a single child, or 12 children, or something in between, of being married, single, divorced, widowed. I don't know all of your circumstances, how can I. We each have our own story to tell. 

This is mine. 

Zac and I had known each other about 4 years when we got married so we felt like  we already had a somewhat solid foundation and knew each other very well. Although there is always an adjustment period being newlyweds, there was a deep well of trust and emotional bond that we had to draw from from the very beginning of our marriage so that we felt we were ready to start the next phase of our life together. Even though we were both still young college students, we felt strongly that as soon as I graduated we should start our family. 

I was graduating in April so we figured May would be the absolute earliest that we'd want to have a baby, counted back 9 months, figured it would probably take at least a few months to get pregnant anyhow (right?! I mean, of course!) and we started trying.

And I got pregnant right away. 

Of course. 

That was September. So I spent Fall semester pregnant, sick and running out of my classes puking. Then Winter semester I had a full time internship during which I became very swollen, uncomfortable and very pregnant.

I graduated 8 months pregnant. 

Here is my department head congratulating my very obviously about-to-pop belly: 

A month later we welcomed Abigail into the world (I've written the birth story on the old blog, which I need to import here sometime):

Having a child I think is like a million other hard but wonderful things in life where you cannot really wait until you feel ready or you will never do them. You are never ready. There is no ready. You can never be ready for something so completely transformational, so unexpected, so deeply individual.  

So was I ready? 

Of course not. 

I would never have been ready. 

No one ever is.

Ask any mom. Any parent. I don't think anyone is ever really prepared for what lies in store when one becomes a parent because it's never really ever what one expects it to be.  It can't be. That's just the common refrain of life isn't it? 

So there I was. I was 24 years old. Just graduated from college. Zac had a really great, well-paying, important-prospecting summer internship at a firm in DC so we were actually packing up our apartment and leaving to drive across country. In 3 weeks. 

Um. Yes. This was slightly crazy. And turned into the perfect recipe for a delicious brew of postpartum depression, but I didn't realize any of that at the time. It wasn't any one thing's fault. It was just a combination of factors.

(Here is zac with 3wk old Abigail at a gas station stop somewhere in Wyoming) 

We packed up everything we thought might need for the 2 of us and a newborn baby that we could possibly squeeze into our tiny Tercel floor to ceiling, front to back, and we took off, stopping at least every 2 hrs to nurse this tiny infant and change diapers and outfits and blowouts at the side of the highways and at gas stations and rest stops and soothe her whimpering and crying all along the way across the country.  I remember she still had a bandaid on her heel from her PKU test in the hospital and her umbilical cord stub fell off somewhere along the way on that trip. It was . . .  perhaps . . .  the longest car trip I have ever been on in my entire life.

Then we eventually arrived to stay in this strange apartment that was part of an semi-attached garage in the house of a lady who attended our church there in Fairfax,VA.  We were sub-letting the apartment from a couple who were coming out to UT for a couple months and thus leaving it furnished and leasing it out for the months they were gone.  We would occupy it for those 2 months.  But the owner of the house was an older lady whom I felt like never really liked us very much (who knows why) and I felt uncomfortable and shy and weird in this other person's apartment with their furniture and belongings. It just felt strange.

Zac worked long hours. I was home alone with Abigail without a car in this apartment. It was so hot and humid outside, I was afraid of the baby overheating, and I don't think I even had a stroller. I felt self-conscious and even paranoid going outside (clearly something was going a little bit wonky in my brain). I was a brand new mom with no friends in the immediate area and I had not a clue what to do. We didn't even have a TV (and this was before prevalent internet). I read some books. I called my mom and cried to her. I nursed my new baby and napped with her and talked to her and watched as she developed new skills. But that was all I ever did. I was lonely and depressed.  But I didn't recognize the symptoms of postpartum depression at the time.  It was only looking back in hindsight that I see it and sometimes I am a little sad that those were my first months of motherhood.  But I know now it was also more than just circumstance - it might have happened to me even under the very best circumstances just because of my very susceptible chemical makeup. Anyway.

 I also had no clothes that fit me. None. I think my socks were all that I still had that fit. Nothing else. Even my feet had swollen and become a half size bigger.  This persisted as a problem because we were still rather poor college students (trying to save his great internship income, of course), now with baby costs, and also I was still holding out great hopes that I would soon be able to fit back into my pre-pregnancy clothes. That's what "everyone" said would happen, right? That was the expectation. So I wore Zac's baggy clothes to get by and tried to adapt to my new body that felt so foreign to me.  I remember the first time I tried to go for a run that summer, the first time since sometime before I had gotten big into pregnancy, and I felt shocked by what my body had become.  It wasn't me. It couldn't be. And yet I looked down at myself and yes it was.  Oh. 

And I never did get back into my pre-pregnancy clothes. I guess that's part of my point in this story. More than just the clothes, I never went back to person I was before I had Abigail. I never could. I don't know if I would want to. Everything changes. Everything. When you become a mother. If I wrote about all the ways that I changed, this story would never end. 

But this is my story now.  It never ended. I guess it wasn't how I expected it to be. Nothing ever is.

This is the story of when I became a mother.

Everyday I become 

more of my story.

This is my story.

Everyday is my story.

I become more 

everyday.

Related posts that got me thinking:
Why Mother's Day is For the Birds
Don't Call Me Mommy - Unless I Birthed You
Birthing a New You

Summer Fun {7}

Visit from old friends!

Mary and I became good friends in VA back in 2000-2001. We both had young families with 1 child living in small apartments (I soon became pregnant and had #2). Then we both moved and left VA sometime the summer of 2001.

Now, we each have 4 kids

and we've kept in touch over the time and distance and still love to get together and chat any chance we can get.

yay for friends! :)

Home to the Commonwealth: "Look at me! Look at me!" (and other random thoughts)

( ^^ bonus points to any of you that recognize that as a reference to a Veggie Tales episode. Nobody? 'k, nevermind.)


ok, here we are at the very end of my trip posts!! At last! Almost 2 months later! oh well.

One of the funny things I did on this trip was attempt to master the "self-taken portrait" technique. Pretty sure I failed in the attempt. However, it was pretty fun to try. ;)
So, there's a little montage of most of the attempts. I'm sharing them with you for your humor quota of the day. Go ahead and laugh. I'm ok with it because I know I pretty much look like a dork. (My personal fave is the one with me squinting into the sun and tilting my sweaty red face into the picture frame, and effectively completely blocking the Capitol Building which I was trying to get in the background. HA!)
I'm not the most photogenic gal in the garden (whatever that means) - and this proves it. So I think I'll stick to pics of my kids, and flowers, and sunsets from now on. Eh. That's ok.

ok, final random thoughts:

- on the way driving to Melissa's, as we did quite a few times over the 10 days, we passed Fairfax Hospital which is where I was born. Also, incidentally, it is the hospital that Heather and Chelsea were also born in (the 3 of us: 1975, 1984, and 1991). I think we're the only 3 in the family that were born there. And all 3 of us were there together! WOW!! (Someone took a picture to memorialize the great place as we drove by - but I don't know who has that pic). Too bad.

- our hotel was also around the corner from a certain Kaiser Permanente medical building where I went to pretty much all my Dr appts from the time I was maybe 8 until I was 22. Ohhh, the memories. ;)

- Other than that, though, a lot of things have changed unrecognizably and it always throws me off and disorients me. Don't you hate that?

- Inside jokes: "He's so big, he's so cute!!" "It's a Kaiser thing" "In Your Eyes" "and we're merging . . . again"

I don't even remember what else I was going to write about, but it seems like there were some things. Disappointing. Probably more so for me than for you. ;)

phew!! Hope you've enjoyed these recaps and posts about my homeland.
(Now, to catch up on all the summer fun posts I've been letting lag behind . . .
oh, heavens.)

Home to the Commonwealth: Day 9, Great Falls, VA

Monday, June 6 was the day that we were flying back home to UT but our flight wasn't leaving until the early evening so we had some time for one . . . more . . . little . . . adventure. Melissa and Chris were off on a little honeymooning adventure of their own, so we decided to drive over to Great Falls National Park since it was relatively close, beautiful, full of memories, and within easy access of the airport to boot! It is, yes, another one of my favorite VA places.

When I was about 14 (?) we came here to go rappelling for a church youth camp activity-thing. We rappelled down a 70 ft(?) cliff down onto the ground right by the water, which was sort of freaky. I was really proud of myself for doing it though. ;) I'll dig up a picture someday to show you.

And then my family and I came again several times.

And I brought Zac there once way back when we lived in VA and Abigail was a teeny thing.

It's just the perfect combination of rushing water, green trees, waterfalls, rocks to climb over, trails to hike. All those wonderful things that I love so much.

(and it's amazing to think about the floods they have there when the Potomac river reaches above where these overlooking platforms are and even higher. Amazing and terrifying. Water is pretty incredible.)

So, there it is. Sigh.

It's been so long since I've been home now, that not only does it feel like the whole trip was a dream, but I am surely forgetting some things that I meant to include in these posts. I'll have to think some more and see if I remember anything really crucial and then I'll have just one more trip post for you!!

Home to the Commonwealth: Day 8, Wedding Photo Extravaganza!

ok. Here's what we're going to do. In the interest of time I'm just going to add some little captions to all of these fabulous photos (and not even put them in order) and hopefully somehow you can piece together the whole magnificent wedding day story.

Oh but first, one part of the story that isn't told in the pictures: the night before the wedding I was woken in the middle of the night with the worst headache of my entire life. Seriously. Severe pain behind my eye and in my head. I considered calling and waking up Zac just to have some consolation from his voice. And, after taking lots of pain meds and still rocking on the floor, crying and holding my head for a few hours, I almost woke up my mom at about 3 am to take me to the emergency room to get some stronger meds cuz I thought I might die. It really was that bad. But another hour later I finally fell back to sleep. But in the morning, I stayed in the hotel to try to get a few more hrs of sleep while everyone else went over to Melissa's for more wedding prep. (Oh and there was another night when apparently I woke up Heather with yelling out in my sleep. I was having a nightmare that I was being hunted down and killed. Yeah, fun times sharing a hotel room (sorry about that Heather).) ;)

ok. Those are just a couple sidenote journal-stories for ya.

Now for the wedding!
me, and all the visiting sibs: Chelsea, Heather, Liz, baby Miles and Devin

wedding ceremony in Melissa and Chris's beautiful backyard

professional wedding pics that I can't resist sharing

my gorgeous little sister Melissa

reception lingering into the night, talking, laughing and listening to great music:)

bride and groom cuteness

um, books from our childhood that Melissa has stashed on her bookcase. Some of them don't belong to her. ;)

my own pics of the reception evening

making a heart pic with sparklers:)

paper chains!

just married spoon!

my brother Devin and his baby, Miles

sisters Melissa and Heather

Melissa, beautiful bride

we made all those tissue paper flowers and strung them all over the car

we did good, if I do say so myself:)

Chelsea painted the directional signs:) And this is Melissa and Chris's cute retro house in Falls Church, VA.

Mr. and Mrs. Forks - no, that's not their name . . . it's just . . . they're forks. uhhh . . .

Melissa knitted the hearts on the cake topper. She also knitted a similar little heart for the ring pillow.

Groom and Best Men in Converse:)

me and Melissa

the happy Newlyweds

we got to pick up the wedding cake! Mom was very nervous about it . . .

Heather's instagram pic of our lovely tissue paper flowers

And a Hans Christian Anderson Fairy Tale book that was my favorite - somehow Melissa ended up with it. I'm determined to find one of my own someday.

It was really a wonderful day. There was rain partially predicted for the day - but it didn't rain. And everything turned out so beautiful! I'm so happy for Melissa and Chris and excited to welcome Chris into our crazy family. And we didn't even get stuck in traffic for the BIG Peruvian election across the street (was it Peruvian?!) I guess that's another story . . . ;)

(Visit Melissa's blog to read her own wedding recap here)