Birth, Life, Death, and Rain

Note: I wrote this October 1st, but due to some issues with my computer and not having Adrian’s set up I wasn’t able to post the picture that I really wanted with it, so I’ve just been holding on to it. So realize that whatever is here is now really really old information. I no longer have four months to mull over my transition to motherhood! I never did get the picture to work that I wanted with it, so just imagine there’s this neat picture of my grandma in the 40s holding my uncle as a little baby. This is so old that I almost feel like I shouldn’t even bother to post it, but I think I will anyway. It’s been sitting in our list of posts for so long, making Adrian nuts, that for all that effort I might as well just publish the thing.

Last weekend (about a week ago now, I guess) I made another quick sneak trip to California. My dad’s brother had died, and the funeral was on Monday. It’s his family role to give eulogies, it seems, and so he got the job of talking about his brother’s life and telling stories. Luckily he was there before we were, by the way, because my mom and I got lost three times en route, and from looking at the map and rushing I started throwing up… it was quite the start to the morning. And my grandma and other uncle (the only one of my dad’s four brothers remaining alive) barely made it from multiple flight issues. But we all eventually got there and it was actually quite nice. I heard stories I’d never heard before about times my dad spent with his brother and his wife, like having bean wars. Apparently they’d have these battles with forts and everything in the backyard where they’d spit beans at each other through straws. Odd, but apparently they all got really into it and had a good time.

It was a little drizzly that morning, and my dad said that it was appropriate because his family always liked rain. He said that his brother loved it because when they were all young and it would rain their parents would open all the windows and the whole family would watch and listen to the rain. It suddenly clicked why I love rain, too. Did my dad do this with me as a kid? I don’t remember, actually, but I know that I love listening to rain. And what do you think I had I done that very morning before the funeral? My mom and I heard thunder, so I took Trevor and Tyler up to the balcony doors on the third floor for a good view. We opened the doors and sat and watched the rain and listened for thunder claps. I enjoyed the full-circle feeling of it all.

Because my grandma was out of town, my dad had gone to her house to clean and get everything ready for people to come over after the service. I was with him on Saturday after he picked me up at the airport. Admittedly I wasn’t a ton of help, but I did go through and find a bunch of old pictures. I’d been wanting to get some of that from my grandma. She’s never been a big talker, at least in my memory, and I don’t know a lot about when she was younger. Anyway, so I borrowed the pictures and took them to my parents’ house to scan. I never burned myself a disk, but I did email a few to myself, including this one of my grandma. I think I like it so much because my grandma looks so young, something I’ve never even heard about, as I said. It’s from 1943 in Chicago, and she’s holding her first baby, the uncle for whose funeral I was home. She looks happy. I wonder how she felt when she was at the point in life, more or less, that I’m at, with my first little baby coming. Okay, so she was ten years younger than I am (and I’m not exactly old), but that’s not the point. So then I also wonder: what was life like for my mom’s mom at my age? If I have the timing of things right, by my age I think she had four kids already with no husband around. I don’t feel that same sense of curiosity with my own mom, because I know her and have always looked at pictures and movies from their 20s, so it’s not really an unknown to me.

Speaking of this baby, she’s getting big, which means so am I! I’ll try to take a picture of myself this weekend. Any day I’ve showered and done anything more that put my hair in a ponytail–or put any makeup on!–I don’t think about taking a picture. When I do think about it, I certainly don’t want a picture of myself because I probably haven’t showered or anything. Overall I feel great. I can feel her wiggling around, which is so cool. She’s been sleepy the past few days, though, I think. Hehe. I still sleep through the night without bathroom breaks and have avoided serious indigestion or food weirdness or random cravings. If one of us talks about a food, it will suddenly sound good to me, but it’s not like I have a “MUST EAT THAT FOOD NOW!” feeling or anything. So far I’m getting the fun parts of this stage of pregnancy without any big negatives. I’m grateful for it. Only about four months to go! Neat!

I have moments of fear about the responsibility of having a baby and raising a child. For the most part, I’m very excited, but I just worry about being a good mom and somehow teaching her all she’ll need. And then I wonder about having more babies. Two sides there, too: I’m so excited for this baby that I can’t imagine ever wanting another one (because how can you improve on such a lovely situation?), and then I also can’t imagine how much work two–or more–kids would be. I realize I have plenty of time to work out these things in my head. It’s too late to question whether I’m ready for a child, and perhaps that’s why we get them first as babies. We get to care for them and love them infinitely before they start testing us.