Category: gratitude

Maybe not forever, but even so…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay4 Comments
I decided to take part in Five Minute Friday this morning. The theme is on Friends.


START. 
Every summer camp camp fire ended in the same sweet and lulling song, Friends are friends forever… 
But they aren’t. 
Despite the pledges and lifelong plans made at the age of sixteen. 
Despite the thousands of notes signed BFF. 
Despite the shared heart necklaces. 
And it’s a little sad. 
It is sad, to me, that something as natural as friendship- something we NEED even- has to be so hard. And as we get older, things don’t seem to get any easier. 
Few of us have good, true friends. Those of us who do could literally count those friends on one hand. 
I am fortunate enough to be one of those people. Someone with a handful of good friends. Ironically they aren’t really friends with each other. We don’t travel together, in a pack. There are no weekend retreats, the lot of us. We, the handful of us, are spread out across the country. 
Sometimes I want to feel sorry for myself about this. 
Sometimes I actually do. 
But the truth is, I am so lucky to have them. 
My life is better and far more meaningful. My sadnesses are far less dark and ugly. 
And I suspect that i too am better because of them. 
Friends may not be friends forever. Some friendships may time out or expire but it’s the having the true, authentic love of a good friend at all that matters anyhow.
END.
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Goodnight…

Published on by Mae @ RainydayinmayLeave a comment
Chw, 
There is something so healing about kissing you good night. No matter what the day proceeding the kiss has held, everything- in that moment- is as is it should be. 
Thank you for that. For being part compass, part anchor and yet flexibly loving me in the way in which you’re willing to raise port and sail in whichever direction the wind dreams to take us. 
I love you… 
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to the moon and the stars…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay7 Comments
Dearest Genny,

   My first impression of you is tiny red nose and palms flat against glass. Your nutmeg hair in pig tales, your big saucer blue eyes full of emotions I didn’t even have the courage to name…

   Your first words to me asked if I was your new mommy… I loved you. I wanted to hold you and reassure you. I wanted to not touch you and prove I would not push you into loving me. I wanted to take you home and keep you safe from the world which had hurt you…
I wanted to turn around and leave.
You scared me…
You were so small and full of life. Just below your surface there was an entitled rage that only confronted my internal knowledge that I was not the woman for this job. I knew I did not have what it would take, to be your new mommy.
You only mommy.
Forever.
I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t not do it.

  Later, as you played on the indoor playground, and you giggled- you challenged me. There, in your wildflower eyes you dared me to stick around. You dared me to love you, no matter what.
You broke my heart, right then and there.
A four year old baby should never know those sorts of sadnesses…

  Even later yet, while putting your few clothes into your new dresser, you followed behind me re-packing your things. When I asked why you would do that you said “it’s too hard to pack when this family is over and I have to move.” When the clothes managed to stay in the dresser and your ugly suitcase was moved to storage, you cried. True, fat, salty tears tainted every ache that had lingered in your girlhood eyes, unspoken.
Only hours had passed, since we had met you and yet I felt as though lifetimes had mounted upon my shoulders and nestled in.
I knew that, whether I was up to it or not I had to be your mommy.
My heart begged, in a stabbingly violent and  secure way to be your mommy.
For the first time ever, I held you in my arms. Your chubby hands were hitting, and reaching with all your arms could give, behind me- PLEASE, PLEASE,” your tiny voice wailed, throat already swollen and ragging from crying, “I need my suitcase, please let me have my suitcase. PLEASE, i have to have it for when I get a new mommy and daddy.”

Do you remember what I told you, as you glared up at me?
Sweet, beautiful girl, five years from now you will look back and remember this moment and you will know that I told you the truth when I say we are the last mommy and daddy you will ever have. No more families. This is yours, and you belong here, forever.

Today is eight years, exactly, since my promise. Sure, I have been frustrated- but I’ve never wished that wasn’t true.

I love you, baby girl. Happy family anniversary! I love you to the moon and stars and then a whole lot further… 

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to you, who broke my heart…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay5 Comments
Dear Uterus, 
You sucked. Seriously… 
You were given how many jobs? Menstrual cycle, babies… Isn’t that kind of it? 
I mean, i completely get messing up sometimes. What’s a missed period here, or some extra troublesome cramps there? I totally could have worked with that… None of us are perfect… 
But what you did to me, for no reason, goes beyond the bounds of uterine decency. 
Were you special needs? Were you born sociopathic? I just don’t get what I ever did to deserve your incessant bullying. I did the math once and in the 11 years where our job was to work together- you failed me 132 times. That is ONE HUNDRED and THIRTY TWO TIMES… So, in a nutshell: EVERY FREAKING MONTH. And you couldn’t regularly screw up either.
No. 
I mean, what did you do? Were you Sybil of the organ world? Multiple personalities galore? One month you would become “skip a cycle, but here have hellishly bed-riddening cramps”, and then three months later be “here’s your period!” (ala’s JN from The Shining) 
And while we’re on the subject- about those “periods”… yeah. You knew you weren’t God, right? Sending down a rush of blood in the way Noah dealt with rain was a little unrealistic. 
I could have forgiven you for the completely uncalulatable, a bazillin-knives-in-the-gut cramped out, and completely embarrassing trail-of-blood memories but it was the next part that you took to far. 
One miscarriage, as heartbroken as I felt, would have been bearable. Even the doctors assured me that was normal. But why the second, with the perfect baby-boy ultra sound and the joyful husband met by crushing blows of suffocation and heartache? Why the third, fourth or fifth/sixth for that matter? Why take me (us, really) through all of that only to accept our fertility drugs and feign three months of pregnancy only to psych us with what was actually a nerf football sized tumor… 
Enough was never enough with you. You took and took, literally… Blood, babies, life, tears and then you tried to go for the kill and take my heart too. 
Your last deal- pre-cancerous cells… 
With your poker face you dared me to make a move. 
I saw your puny cancer threat and raised you a hysterectomy, bitch… 
Take that… 
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i blame germany…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay1 Comment
I miss you. 
A lot. 
I miss the way you laugh, and the talks we have. I miss the life that you bring home, just when you walk through the door. 
I miss that good, secure, mom feeling when the door is locked and night and I know that you are there, under our roof, sleeping. 
I miss you being big-brother-mean to Genny. 
I miss goodnight hugs. See you later hugs. 
I miss movie chats, and watching them. 
Chw misses you too. Projects and dreaming of projects… 
I miss that too… 
I miss how happy we all are when you are here, because we feel more whole. Complete. 
The basketball hoop misses you. 
It gets, pretty much ignored, when you aren’t here. 
Against our knowledge a rather large family of wasps moved into it, over the summer. I suspect they are illegals. I am allergic, you know. The last time I was stung, i was hospitalized. It was ugly. I was stung by a German hornet. Now suddenly we have a family of illegals living in our hoop. Germans? Maybe… Anything is possible. 
Germany, and eventually somewhere much uglier, hotter and more dangerous, is way too far away. I know it’s not your fault, and I know you’d come home today if you could. I also feel it’s only fair to warn you that I’m not kidding at all when I say that once you come home- you won’t leave. i won’t let you. i know I’ve said it before, but this experience has taught me that drastic measures are needed… 
At any rate, if I ever get all emotional on skype and try telling you about the wasps and how much they make me think of you- now you’ll know what I mean. 
They only serve to remind me of this blindingly horrible thing that i couldn’t forget even if I wanted to… 
I miss you. 
A lot. 
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