Mae @ Rainydayinmay

We don’t get to talk often…

Published on September 10, 2011 by Mae @ Rainydayinmay2 Comments

Dearest Joy and Jennie,

I am sorry that we don’t get to talk as often as I would like for us to. This adulthood gig is often a bit harder than I had once thought. It’s amazing how the early morning can dawn a brand new day with a fresh clean slate, and after three blinks and a whole lot of rushing- it’s past time for bed.

How does that time warp happen?

Despite not talking as often as I would like. Despite not seeing each other as often as I’d like- which, for the record, I’d like more than talking… I want you both to know I love you.

I love you and I am always there for you.

I love your kids… Your beautiful families.

You are both beautiful mothers. I know this, even if I don’t talk to you as often as I’d like… Even if I barely get to see you. Your babies are so blessed to have your love…

I love that my childhood is entwined with yours. For twelve years, before I was led to your doorstep, I begged God for a sister. Even then, as those childhood tears hit my pillow- God knew I would someday have three. While it is a horribly tragic thing that the world has to have children’s homes and foster care- there aren’t words to tell you how grateful I am, that my sad path led me to you.

Thank you for sharing your amazing parents.

Thank you for playing in the Holly Hobby kitchen, for remembering last lines in books (that I don’t even remember), for sharing a passion for 90’s flicks, and for being such beautiful, strong and amazing girls-turned-women. Thank you for opening your hearts to me still, beyond the CCR days. Thank you for loving my family and from the deepest depths of my soul thank you for keeping me in the loop and including me in the intimate and agonizing time surrounding the loss of mom.

I am so proud of you both.

Proud to know you.

Proud to love you.

Proud to call you my sisters…

Oh babies…

Published on September 9, 2011 by Mae @ Rainydayinmay5 Comments

I have thought of you, dreamed of you and imagined you more than I’ve given collective thought to any other person. I’ve imagined your tiny fingers and your sweet toes.

I have dreamed of what your sweet skin would have smelled like.

I have ached to know more than the imagination of what your wiggly, warm little body would have felt like in my arms.

Less and less I am kept awake, in the darkness of the night, by thoughts of you.

More and more the aching subsides, to know you.

I wish that I could have met you… That things would have been different for you…

For us.

Never more than a tear away, my soul reaches for you often.

And someday, on the other side of this life time, I will finally know what your eyes look like and how the curl of your lashes lay, or the perfection of your smiles. The decade-long burning question of what your favorite color would have been, will be no more. Surely there are favorite colors in heaven…

You were mine, safely nestled inside of me, but for a moment. Now I imagine you all golden curled ringlets, rosy cheeks and little boy tough. I imagine you happy and spirit whole, playing with other precious children who never knew the cold hardness of life. I hope you remember to gift hugs to your grandma Julie, great grandma and grandpa Dugan as they surely aren’t too far away from you.

Wait for us.

Your daddy and I are coming, it just isn’t quite time yet.

I wish I could have touched you, heard you, held you.

I ache to meet you…

I breathe easier knowing that someday I will.

Maggie…

Published on September 8, 2011January 17, 2013 by Mae @ Rainydayinmay3 Comments

Dear Maggie,

Oh this letter is all a swirl of things to say… It’s funny because I write to you all of the time, this should not be any different right? Well, except for the fact that it will be shared with the entire internet…

When I took on this 30 days of letters challenge, I had no idea whom I would fill said 30 days with. None. When it came to today’s “internet friend” category, I was even more lost. Though I know it’s completely acceptable these days to go around making friends online- i don’t do it. I don’t really connect with others in forums or anything like that. Honestly, I wouldn’t even typically lump you under the internet friend umbrella. You are simply my friend Maggie. My husband and kids know you as my friend Maggie. Friendship really should be that simple. But, for arguments sake, I guess you are technically my internet friend. 99% of our friendship is woven over the internet. Plus, bonus: I get to write to/about you on my blog and let the whole world know how amazing you are.

Because, you are pretty fantastically amazing, Maggie…

How we even became friends, I don’t remember. Something to do with Myspace and writing…???…

Anyway, whatever those details were- I am so incredibly grateful.

Truly.

I can not even tell you how many times your name has been scripted in my gratitude journal. I can’t. I can tell you though, that it’s a bunch.

I love you, my friend. It has been such an honor to grow to call you my friend. Not my internet friend, but my actual friend… You have been such an honest support to me and words could NEVER convey what that has meant to me. We have shared sadness and frustrations and fears in a way that many couldn’t understand… and then on the brink of all of that- your amazingly beautiful little Evie came to be… And everything about her (and you, of course) just spews hope in my world.

Not hope for the same things, (that would be impossible!) or baby things even- but simply hope for good things. Goodness. Your story- Evie’s story- is goodness… Goodness and beauty and light and love all bundled up in your gorgeous little girl.

Thanks for sharing your journey with me. Thanks for sharing your life and your honesty with this girl who is just another girl on the internet.

i love you,

Slow Love…

Published on September 8, 2011 by Mae @ Rainydayinmay2 Comments

The current BlogHer Book Club selection is a memoir by Dominique Browning entitled Slow Love. As the economy crumbled more and more, Dominique writes of her journey from the editor in chief of now dead House & Garden magazine to finding a way to embrace and enjoy the moments of her life…

I love relatable memoirs. I love a beautifully penned glimpse into another person’s hurts and triumphs. As great as a good novel can be, knowing that there is something real resting between the lines of a memoir is comforting. Even though I have never been part of a greedy, backstabbing corporate world, as Dominique has, I felt as though it didn’t matter. So much of the way she reminisced about lovers, and the youth of her boys reached me. In the ways that she struggled with, at first simply getting out of bed and later getting through a day, I saw myself there in her words. In the way that most of us women struggle with change, she is a voice that some of us long to listen to.

Dominique has a lovely way with words, weaving them authentically and still somehow poetic. Slow Love goes beyond what other memoirs, such as Eat Pray Love, try to do because she arrives to her realizations and life’s wisdom without lavish trips or unattainable measure.

Slow Love reads like a cup of tea with an old friend, and yet it packs a convicting soul punch as well.

J…

Published on September 7, 2011 by Mae @ Rainydayinmay5 Comments

Dear J,

The list of people who know about you, about how unkind the years have been to you, and about the completely blatant wreckage you left in me- is very small. When you told me that any semblance of the good and honorable guy you’d had ownership in once was gone- I should have heeded your warning.

I always accepted responsibility for that.

Though the ability to create amazingly beautiful things still courses wildly through your veins, that is where the end of any goodness is.

You toy with the lives of people who love you, just to see what damage you can do. You delight in the power you wield to hurt people who care about you. You are an alcoholic, of choice, and the most shallow person I know. You masquerade through your days pretending that your opinion is superior by comparison, and that the world is full of spineless ignorance- save you, of course.

It just isn’t true, J.

You are a coward.

You are so unbelievably scared of everything, like a mouse. You fear being hurt- so you make sure that you wound instead- and those wounds run deep. Trust me, I know.

You are stingy with your words and commitments, like a weasel.

You are arrogant, and yet that ego is unfounded by anything that really exists.

It’s in your head that you live in a realm where you are the brilliant and abyssimal king, (to borrow your word) to the hoards of us ignorant roaches and maggots who beg for your garbage.

In reality, Jeremy Stephen Wagner- you are the cockroach while the rest of the world simply embraces life and works everyday to achieve happiness and reality.

Looks like you are the ignorant one after all.

And the one truly alone.

And fairly pathetic, too.

And i would say it’s a shame except that it really isn’t because, and to quote- “that guy you knew, he’s gone.”

Paint your heart out, J- because by my calculations you don’t have much heart left.

Karma’s coming,

P.S. You were right about one other thing… the day did come where I don’t miss you- or think you’re worth my time. Thanks, for that…