A Blast from the Past...But Can it Last??

I met my first love when I was 14 years old. I was crazy about him from the minute I met him. Over the next five years...through high school and a little bit into college, our love would grow into something more serious than i believe most young kids experience. For one thing, I went to a continuation school the last year of high school. and my father, being especially lax about such things (or maybe just not having a clue as to how to handle such a free spirited, strong willed firecracker of a daughter) let me make the hour long train ride into Berkeley (where my sweetheart lived) approximately once a week. Once there I would stay for a few days at a time (until I had to return back to school) and my love and I would spend endless hours which turned into endless days listening to music, watching movies, hiking around the Berkeley hills, eating, giggling, exploring the city, passionately arguing and passionately making up. Being the strangely enlightened teenagers we were (he much much more than I) we saw a counselor a couple times a month for couples counseling, faithfully used birth control and visited the University campus and botanical gardens frequently for sightseeing and make out sessions. I had never known anyone like Jon. His parents were two very intelligent university professors and Jon was a well traveled vegan that spoke more than one language, listened to progressive music, meditated and was an amazing artist. In addition, he was sweet, kind, gentle, funny and I was head over heels in love with him. After high school, Jon went to Europe for 6 months and things began to fall apart. He met someone for a short time and I began meeting other people too. When he came back to the states he moved to Santa Cruz and I followed. He was enrolled in University of Santa Cruz and I was enrolled at a community college. We kept our relationship going for a time, but by then our feelings were muddled by so much time apart and confusion as to where we stood. After a year or two I met someone that would be a long term relationship (4 years) for me. I called Jon over to my house and ended things between us for good. he cried, I cried. we listened to Lauryn Hiill's "Keep It Tight" while he held me close and I breathed in his scent, thought about all our memories together and wondered if I was making a mistake. At the time, it seemed this was the right thing to do, and in hindsight, although the relationship I moved onto didn't last, and didn't end well either, I wonder if Jon and I would have fared better if we had stayed together, or if we would have ended up resenting each other or hurting each other by not sharing the same feelings or by meeting other people and moving onto other serious relationships eventually. Either way, it was the end of an era for sure.

Today, I am married and I have a beautiful son. Although it is not always sweet words and tender feelings and there are, to be honest, some things about my husband I downright do not like, there is much love and a long history between us. Plus, the addition of family, children and going through real life hurdles together, does make you stronger and add to your feelings of devotion for your spouse.

This being said, I was going through an old box of stuff today and came across a small stack of letters that Jon had written to me while he was in Europe. Reading through them brought back a lot of nostalgia. In his letters, his love and devotion to me are clear and his words are full of the strong, hormone fueled feelings that only teenage love can produce. He speaks of us being soulmates and therefore loving each other enough to feel that we are connected at the soul. He talks about me being amazing, strong, and in some ways, fragile. He speaks of our love being intense, potent and the best feeling in the world. Reading through these letters made me feel good that someone had held such intensely wonderful feelings for me but it also made me sad that real life does at some point have to intervene. I got to thinking, why is it that feelings that intense can't be maintained for a lifetime? I mean, I believe that, to some extent they can. When my husband is not around me for a length of time, I miss him terribly, but at the same time, I have responsibilities and bills to pay and distractions and I cannot just lay in bed and mope all day thinking about how much I miss him. I asked my dad if he thought that the feelings of first teenage love can last and he replied, "I don't think so, I mean, people that have been together 60 years, you don't see them just sitting in each others laps and kissing and staring at each other all the time, the guy is usually just sitting on the couch watching TV and the woman is doing whatever she is doing."

I think I realized right then why a first love is so special and why it is rare, maybe even downright impossible, to ever capture that exact feeling again. When you are young and unencumbered, the only thing you have to focus on in the whole world is each other. You don't have bills to pay or a mortgage to worry about or kids diapers to change or teenagers eating everything in the whole house or an old cat pooping on the floor...again. The only scheduled time that is required is school time or time to see each other. When you are fighting it is because he looked at another girl too long, not because you overspent on your credit cards and don't know if you can pay your rent. So here is what I realized. No, love may never produce those same feelings without a boatload of hormones running through you, but maybe it can be even better (and much more real than that). Maybe the feeling you get when you look back on your life and you have a gaggle of well rounded children and grandchildren, extended family, friends, neighbors and acquaintances that care equally about the well being of both you and your spouse and you have built a whole LIFE together with hard work and have worked equally hard at keeping your love alive, maybe THOSE are the ties that truly bind you together in a love built of not only passion but mutual respect, admiration and devotion to one another. And hey, that sounds pretty damn life altering, amazing, potent, and intense to me.

I am so glad to have known Jon and I will never forget our experiences together. We are friends to this day and I have nothing but love in my heart for him, for what and who he was, what we had, what and who he is and who he will become. He is amazingly talented and a beautiful person. Our experiences taught me so much and were invaluable at helping to shape me into the person I am today. We don't talk as often as I would like but I hope, more than anything that he is happy and that I made as big of an impact on his life as he made on mine. I hope that one day, I can dance at his wedding, meet his children and, when we are old, that maybe we will one day find ourselves sitting in rockers with our respective loves and family and can look back at our lives, look at each other and agree...that we sure did good :)

Much love to you and all whom you love, have loved and will love!

-New Mommy in Town

Breathe in, Breathe out, Breathe Easy

I cannot believe that my due date is a mere 7 days away (hopefully not longer!). I am feeling many uncomfortable pangs these days, everything from mild back pain to heartburn to excruciating pelvic pressure. All I can do is keep myself occupied, continue to ready the house for baby and try to get some sleep in here and there.

As the date approaches, I am getting more nervous, excited too, but a bit anxious. I try not to read TOO much information about babies these days and I am relying more on what my doctor tells me at each visit rather than the stack of printed materials they shower me with. Not that I don't enjoy reading about how to make sure baby's umbilical cor doesn't get infected, how to install a car seat properly, how to breastfeed properly and how to protect against SIDS, Flat Head Syndrome and Rickets all in one sitting, but I find that too much information, taken in all at once is more conducive to a full blown anxiety attack than to feeling like a well informed, confident parent.

So...as the days tick by, I have been looking around our nursery with a sense of pride at all the preparation that we have gotten done, I wonder at every quiet, peaceful moment with my husband, "is this the last one of these we'll have" and I get a little anxious thinking about this whole new life we are entering into. But above all, I am trying to keep the faith. Faith that my marriage will be strong enough to withstand sleepless nights along with a mountain of chores and bills, faith that my baby will be healthy and strong, faith that together my husband and I will raise a well adjusted child that will choose the moral high ground no matter what this crazy world might try to throw at him. I am realizing that now, more than ever, I need to stay present, live in the moment and take things one day at a time. All I can do is try my best and hope that with a mountain of faith, a whole lot of patience, and a little wisdom, everything will be all right!!

So here, as I begin, just like so many women before me have and countless women after me will, an anxious but eager warrior, facing the unknown with a sense of trepidation and wonder, committing to protect my baby from environmental pollutants, flat head syndrome, buck teeth, rickets and vitamin D deficiency, I will use the tools that life has given me to try and figure it all out in time. Throughout this journey, I will continue to work with my doctors, my husband, my baby and my own best instincts to provide my child with the best life that I can provide him.

In doing this, I can rest assured of at least this much- that at the end of the day, although I might be new to this, and although situations may be thrown at me that I have no idea how to handle, I will pray for wisdom, do my best and continue to observe life (mine, my husbands and my child's) as it unfold around me, exactly as God has intended it to.

Breathe in, Breathe out, Breathe Easy,

-New Mommy in Town

Letter To My Son

I can clearly recall the day that I first found out, I was pregnant with you. I had just returned from meeting your daddy for lunch, at the shipyard in Portland , Oregon where he was working. I had suspected for a few weeks that I might be pregnant but was putting off taking any tests mainly due to my fear of the unknown. That day, I knew that I could not hold off any longer. I went to the drugstore and bought a pregnancy test. It tested positive. I went back to the drug store and bought another test. That tested positive too. I went to the dollar store and bought 6 pregnancy tests. All positive.

As I sat in the midst of my sea of pregnancy tests, I felt a mixture of emotion and questions like I had never experienced before? Would I make a good mom? Was I too selfish of a person to make room in my life for a child? Would your father be happy to hear the news, scared, excited, overwhelmed? Your father wouldn’t be home for a few more hours, which may as well have been years as I sat and watched the clock wondering when would be the best time to tell him. It turned out that the best time was to blurt out the news right when he walked in the door. I asked him to sit down and I told him that I loved him more than anything and then I said, “I’m pregnant”. He sat there in stunned silence for a bit and then he asked to be alone. I don’t know what he was feeling, or what I was feeling for that matter. It wasn’t that we didn’t want kids or hadn’t talked about having them it was just not something that we were necessarily prepared for right then. We were getting married in a month and had planned to take a honeymoon, come home, settle in and start looking at buying a house. It seemed that now, all that was to be put on hold, perhaps indefinitely.

In the days that followed, my emotions swung from daydreams of picture perfect scenarios of being a mother to utter sadness at what would be the loss of my life as I had always known it. Suddenly, my life was not mine anymore, my life was and would forever now be all about your life. Everything that was previously mine would now be yours. Sometimes the thought of no longer just living for me seemed incomprehensible and terrifying.

My emotions vacillated between these extremes for weeks as I contemplated the changes to my body and my outlook that pregnancy and raising a child would bring. Your daddy didn’t seem to share my fears as he encouraged me to sleep, kissed my belly in the morning and called us “his loves”. I was amazed at his ability to love you, even before you were fully formed, and it reminded me of all the things that I love about him and assured me that he would be an amazing father. Still, I felt in some way that I was not living up to my part of the bargain. Everything that I read made it seem as though every woman is instantly overjoyed to find out she is pregnant. I could not find any articles on sadness, fear or being overwhelmed with finding out that you are pregnant. I felt alone and like maybe there was something wrong with me. Was I not going to be a good mother? With trepidation and excitement, I made an appointment for my first ultrasound, hoping that the doctor would be able to help me answer some of the questions I had.

At 14 weeks I went in to have my first Ultrasound. The doctor that saw me was wonderful. She assured me that I was not alone in any of my feelings and gave me the names and contact information for support groups and exercise groups for first time moms. She checked my weight and measurements and assured me that everything looked normal. She then rubbed an enhancing gel on my stomach and used a machine that employed sound waves to pull up an image of you on the screen. She laughed as she noted that it was hard to get a clear image of you because you were moving so much and I thought, “he’ll be restless, always wanting to be in the go, just like his mama”. Then, something magical happened, the clearest picture of you appeared on the screen. I could see in full detail, the shape of your head and the outline of your nose, mouth, eyes and lips. There you were, lying peacefully in my stomach, kicking your tiny legs and rubbing your eyes with your tiny fists, sheltered from the loud outside world by the silence and insulation of my belly. You turned right to the screen at one point as though looking right at me and saying, “it’s going to be all right mom” then, you put your hand, palm down against my belly. It was right then that I fell utterly, hopelessly, completely in love with you. As I cried and laughed at the same time, I knew that from that moment on, I would do anything for you. Whether that means cutting out all alcohol, caffeine and junk food during pregnancy, changing diapers and staying up all night to soothe your tears, bandaging skinned knees or mourning the loss of a loved pet or friend with you. I will be there for you, for whatever time god allows us to be together, I will be by your side to protect you, to love you, to guide you and to cherish you. As you are forming in my stomach, each little kick or stretch that I feel inside of me makes you all the more real and special. I rub my belly and talk to you and let you know how much you are loved, already, and you haven’t even made your grand entrance into the world yet. Your daddy has bought you a crib, and toys and car seats and clothes. Your nursery is all set up and ready to go. You have a multitude of aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and family that are eagerly awaiting your arrival and can’t wait to meet you. You are so loved little one. You are loved now, you will be loved tomorrow and every day after. What is conceived in love, is sure to find love in the world it is brought into, and that is my wish for you, that you will always carry our love for you in your heart and let that love be your guide.

What is mine, what is ours, will forever be yours.

-Your Mommy