The Little Home We Outgrew...

We purchased our little townhome in 2005 and quickly outgrew it.  As the burden of it's ownership grew over the years, I became less sentimental about it.  But there are some irreplaceable parts of our life that couldn't exist as-is without it...


These walls have witnessed emotions from me that so few know I experience.  

They have heard friendships ended, and laughter abounding.  
They have seen sleeplessness nights, and days filled with play.
They have seen puppy accidents, and the melody of a welcoming trio of dogs.

They have seen heartache, and they have seen new life created.
They have heard moans of defeat, and those of ecstasy.
They have heard me weep, and they have heard my babies cry.

They have heard countless "I love you's", and a fair share of less pleasant utterances.
They have heard dreams spoken, and disappointments shouted.  
They have worn my memories, and housed my secrets.

It is the place where I finally stopped being the person I thought I should be, and became the place where I reclaimed my path to being the person I need to be.  

In the end, it was my home.  Our home.  The place where I grew from a 20 year old girl lost in my own small world, to a wife, a mother, and a confident nearly 30 year old woman.  The place where we grew into a family, from a couple lost in love, but struggling with diverging plans.  This is the end of an era and the beginning of our next.  We are beyond life-creating mode and into life-living mode.  In the words of my wise and poetic husband, "let's do this shit!" 

Photo courtesy of Mike Akers

Raising Freethinkers

When I was ten years old, I heard the word "agnostic" for the first time.  I asked my dad what it meant and he gave me a brief explanation, but encouraged me to look it up myself.  In the archaic age of paper-based research, I did just that.  As a naturally inquisitive child, I immersed myself in that research.  My focus wasn't just on agnosticism and atheism, it was on theology.  It was on the world's religions.  

I began reading the Christian Bible and requested my mom take me to the church services of a few different denominations.  None of it clicked with me.  Over the years, I consistently found so many disparities between myself and any deity or organized religion, that I nearly certainly considered myself agnostic.  I wasn't sure that a deity outside of the those in mythology and tall tales existed, but I couldn't bring myself to think one certainly did NOT exist.  

I traveled through adolescence on a quest to find something that made me feel differently.  I was almost always the odd one out.  So few of my peers could fathom my disbelief.  That adversity caused me much introspection and even more knowledge-seeking.  I continued to read the Bible, I continued to learn, I watched religious-based films...I was searching to be proven wrong.  But, I wasn't.  As I became a young adult, I realized that I am an atheist.  I am still fascinated by religion, but it is not mine to have.  

I refuse to baptize my children "just in case", because I think it is preposterous to consider that a child even has the capacity to "sin". 

I do not fear death without an afterlife, because I know that the true "afterlife" is the memories we gift to those still living.

I do not need salvation, because I live an imperfect life that I am proud of.  

I know that my children are not deprived of the valuable lessons that can come with religious affiliation, because I lead my life as a role model that I am comfortable with them emulating. 

We learn so much more by what is modeled for us, than what is merely spoken to us.  So instead of regaling life's lessons through age-old stories, I do it with my words and actions each and every day.  I am not necessarily raising Christians or Muslims or Buddhists, I am just raising good people who are free to think as they choose.  So for any religious-based worries for my children, I bid a sincere "no thank you".  Mike and I long ago chose to impart our children with knowledge, rather than religious affiliation.  We will let each of our daughters check-mark their own boxes when it comes to spiritual identification.  

  

The Wrong Twenty-One

I have received the familiar green postcard I see every other year.  It is time to renew my nursing license.  This is my fifth time receiving this little card, and I've decided it will also be my last.  I have chosen not to renew my Registered Nurse license.  It is a dichotomous pull for me, but I have realized at this point I'm only holding on to it for the off-chance I may need it.  I've learned over the years, that off-chance isn't coming.  I have been asked numerous times, by a variety of people why I left my job as a nurse and haven't gone back.  Here is my why...

In May of 2005, I was newly engaged, weeks away from closing on my first home, and being pinned as a Registered Nurse...I was also twenty.  At twenty years old, I knew I had adulthood by the horns and I was certain I would succeed.  Before I graduated, I already had a great job offer: a full-time day-shift position at a fabulous hospital, working on their medical-surgical floor!  I was thrilled and felt ready to take my NCLEX (the computerized nursing license exam).  Since this is the test I'd spent the previous two and half years preparing for, I booked a hotel next to my testing facility to take make sure I wouldn't be late for the exam.  Mike accompanied me and even drove me to the facility.  Twenty-five minutes after dropping me at the doors, I called him to say I was ready to be picked-up.  A few weeks later I learned I had passed and enthusiastically started my nursing job in late-June.  A few weeks later, on July 15, we signed on our little townhouse.  It was going to be our starter home for the next three to five years.  I was doing this adulthood thing!  I was able to check all the boxes I had assumed entailed being adult.  So I worked and planned our wedding.  All the while, I was rapidly approaching my twenty-first birthday.

Reality was slowly rearing it's head to me, and my twenty year old self was too naive to understand or adapt.  I was a good nurse and I was frequently commended by coworkers and patients.  I was requested by patients that were admitted to our floor regularly, and I put my nursing school knowledge to work.  What was missing, was life experience and personal confidence.  I knew pharmacology like the back of my hand, but what does a newly twenty-one year old young woman say to a fifty year old woman dying of cancer?  I remember working a PM shift and being assigned a patient with metastatic pancreatic cancer, awaiting her consultation with hospice the next day.  She had morphine infusing through an epidural, but was still in an immense amount of pain.  I looked at her chart and saw that she had an as needed order for buccal morphine: in essence a morphine lollipop.  So I went to my Pyxis (the computerized medicine vending machine), and dispensed one for her.  I brought it to her and she silently cried.  She would be facing tomorrow's consultation alone.  Her family refused to see her, and  she knew that she would also likely die alone.  I sat with her far longer than my supervisor would have liked, and just held her hand.  At twenty-one, I could feel compassion for her.  That was never difficult.  But I couldn't really wrap my brain or heart around her reality.  Nor was I sure I wanted to be exposed to those realities yet.  But I kept on trucking, because her thank you and kiss on my hand, encouraged me that I was doing something right.  

A few weeks later, I was working an overnight shift on a Saturday and was assigned a post-surgical patient.  There is protocol to follow with post-op patients, and I usually looked forward to them because the care expectations were very clearly defined.  I met the patient and noticed a cot on the floor of her private room.  She told me that she had trouble sleeping without her fiance present, and the previous RN said he could stay the night.  I said ok and kept making my rounds.  A few hours into my shift, around 2:30AM I heard yelling and a crash come from the room.  I signaled to my nursing supervisor and went into the room.  The fiance had thrown the cot against the wall and assaulted my sleeping patient.  I stayed in the room until Security came and tried to gather details.  After everything settled down, I asked my supervisor if I could go out for a break.  By this time, it was nearly 4AM, but I knew that Mike was still up.  I called him, because I needed to hear someone familiar.  He couldn't talk then because he was playing poker and it was down to him and another player.  I hung up the phone and stood outside in the stark quiet of the four o'clock hour and realized I was living the wrong twenty-one.  I was too young to handle this.  I was too naive to be an adequate caretaker.  I was not ready to help other people live, or die, through the ugliest parts of life.  I needed some irresponsibility that I never allowed myself.  I needed to slow down.  I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I would have heard those exact words. 

In late-November of that same year, I resigned my position.  I did not have another to replace it, and I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but I knew I didn't want to keep working as a Registered Nurse for that moment.  The problem, is that with nursing, so little experience means nearly no future job potentials.  Looking back, it was probably foolish.  Looking back, I would do many things differently.  But I'm not looking back, I'm looking forward.  And because of this time, my life is being lived the way that fits me best for now.  I have let go of the guilt and settled into my confident adult self.  Now I just have to figure out, what I really want to be when I grow up. ;)

The Fog of Motherhood

I have always had plans on top of plans, and contingencies for those plans. It's my nature. It's what keeps anxiety at bay for me.  On top of always juggling plans and schedules, I've usually been great at multi-tasking them with reality. In that regard, motherhood is a great fit.  The difference between my pre-kid days of organizing life and my days as a mom, is my level of focus.  

Before children, I could give each of my tasks my full attention. Since becoming a mom, I feel constantly distracted. I am in a perpetual fog of motherhood. Of course I had the hormone-induced distractibility of pregnancy and post-partum with each of my girls, but this fog is lasting. I can no longer sit through a workday without my to-do's pushing their way into my focus. I can't make it through an outing apart from the kids without wondering: How  are the girls are doing? Are they missing me too much? Or at all? Have they eaten? Did they poop? Are they behaving? Did Addy nap? Has D been polite? My distractions are endless and always coursing through my mind. They are also inescapable.  

While the thoughts sustaining my fog are ever-changing, it's existence is not.  Five years from now, my focus on potty-training and sight words, will be replaced with Adelyn learning to read and Danica enduring the woes of fifth grade.  Ten years from now, Addy will begin learning algebra, as D learns how to drive.  And twenty years years from now, I will be learning how to mother women, rather than little girls.  

As the days and years of motherhood cycle by, I am realizing that this fog, in some capacity, is mine forever. For me, it is a by-product of motherhood. My heart, and focus, will never be untouched by my little ladies.  

Differing Wavelengths

Back when I was a perfect parent, better known as the time before I ever became pregnant, I just knew that I would have the intuition necessary to understand my children.  I was certain that I would have the magical ability to understand, interpret, and appeal to the children of my once upon a future.  Fast forward into reality, and it is just not so.  

My children both exude so much personality and truly make each day an adventure.  Of course, they help me once again see the world through the eyes of a child.  But our adventure goes beyond that.  Through Danica, I have been gifted the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of a child whose perspectives vastly differ from mine.  She and I are on different wavelengths.  Where she is bold and brave, I am cautious and hesitant.  Where she is sensitive and worrisome, I am strong and confident.  What feels impossible for her, seems effortless to me.  Within these fragile and stark differences, lie my greatest parenting hardships and also my most valuable parenting lessons.  

I knew that to be the mother I always wanted to be, that I would need to digest life into kid-appropriate lessons.  I naively did not realize, though, that I would need to process those lessons in ways that feel very foreign to me.  I function on reserves.  I achieve my happiness through seemingly small occurrences throughout my days.  Things like the perfect blend of creamer in my coffee, unusually tender hugs from my girls before I head out for the day, or a random morning "I love you" text from Mike.  These "little things" satiate my need for positivity each day.  They help me keep my spirits up and withstand the tough or monotonous parts of life.  Danica sees things differently, though.  She might say that even with the creamer, the coffee is still too hot to drink.  She might see that Adelyn hugged me first, so hers doesn't count.  She might notice that the text from Mike interrupted our time to cuddle.  

As I continue to learn the best ways to parent her, I am realizing more and more how much I have to step out of my comfort zone to do so.  I have to adapt my expectations and redirect dismay.  Some days, it is just plain hard.  But for my sweet, spirited Danica, I will never stop trying.  Through this journey in parenting, I have realized it may just be our differing wavelengths that have always caused her to need me so intensely.  I am her balance, and just maybe she is mine.    

Making Memories

With two kids under six, a husband, two dogs, a nearly full-time job, and Mike and I both returning to school, my life is constantly in schedule-juggling mode.  We are always in a mostly-manageable state of disarray.  That being said, though, we are also constantly making memories.  Whether it's a family vacation, Danica learning to read, or Adelyn mastering the phrase "Mama needs her coffee?", we are always in memory-making mode.  Some of these are memories well-documented with pictures or video, but most are tucked away in my bank of reminiscence.  For now, I draw on those when life feels overwhelming.  In those moments where I feel lost in a sea of tantrums and messes, I think about how proud D was when she learned to say "computer" instead of "compuker".  I remember how delightful belly giggles sound when the rest of the world feels ugly.  I look at the photo sitting at my desk and remember how amazing it felt to share the awe of the ocean with my girls for the first time.  I remember these moments, but then look forward to the memories to come.  I think about our next trip to Disney.  I think about taking the girls to the local playgrounds, now that Addy is mobile enough to enjoy them.  I'm excited to truly share my life with the beautiful people Mike and I have created.

But then, in my spirit of over-analyzing everything, I wonder when memory-making stops.

When does life stop being so dynamic?

When will I stop updating the pictures in my frames?

When are my memories more monumental than my future?

I don't want to be there.  I don't want to stop being optimistic, forward-thinking, and hopeful.  I want my tomorrows to be as exciting as my yesterdays.  I have begun trying on a very foreign-to-me concept...embracing change, rather than anxiously anticipating it.  Hopefully, this will help me continue to make memories and not stay stuck in a life of reminiscence...

"Goodnight, Mom!"

It's happened.  I didn't think it would affect me like this, but it has.  Since giving birth to Danica five-and-a-half years ago, I have referred to myself as a mom.  In reality, though, I have always been mama or mommy.  Friday night, when Danica said good night to me, she called me mom instead.  Since then, I have consistently been mom to her.  Over the past few weeks, she also begun helping with chores on her own accord, cooperating with her sister like never before, and redirecting her overwhelming energies into a refreshing calmness.  

I know she's transitioning to greater independence right now.  I also know that transitions usually have a relatable difficulty for Danica, so I'm choosing not to churn the waters and make into a big deal with her.  But mom sounds so foreign. My heart aches a tiny bit every time I hear my new name.  It's strange how two fewer letters can mean so much.  For now, I will tuck away my sadness, and try facing this transition with the same positivity that Danica is giving it.  Let's see what this next chapter has to bring...