Last year I posted my master list of things I want to do and places I want to see before I shuffle off this mortal coil. Recently I got to cross off one more item from this list and I enjoyed it so much, I hope to go again as often as possible in the future. The newly-completed goal is number 47 - raft on a level four rapid. Doug and I went to Chattanooga for a long weekend and ventured over to the Ocoee River for a morning of white water rafting. Doug was a little nervous having never been before but the rafting bug bit him and, by the time we reached the final rapid that morning, he was already talking about "our next rafting trip." I can't wait!! The rapid fire level four rapids were exciting and make me crave more of the same.
I've highlighted my newly accomplished goal and duplicated the entire list here as a reminder of what I want to choose next. After all, I still hope to complete a minimum of 15 of these before I turn 40. Now just two more to reach that goal (which makes me wish I had challenged myself to 20 before age 40!).
Original list from 2000:
1. Graduate from college (completed December 17, 1993)
2. Marry my Prince Charming (wedding date August 10, 1996)
3. Take an Alaskan cruise (dream vacation started August 11, 1996 - honeymoon!)
4. Buy a new home (contract signed to start construction on November 19, 1999)
5. Get all of my photos into scrapbooks (completed in August 2002 - I stayed caught up for three days until I started a new roll of film and haven't been caught up again since. The 17 rolls of film in Las Vegas, the Hoover Dam, and the Grand Canyon one month later certainly didn't help!)
6. Finish at least 20 scrapbooks (currently have 13 complete and 4 in process)
7. Pay off all bills and buy something fun
8. Lose 25 pounds (now I need to modify this to lose at least 40 pounds but 25 would be a start!)
9. See the Grand Canyon (completed September 2002)
10. Go to a weekend scrapbooking retreat or convention (first one was in May of 2001 and I've been to several since)
11. Have a child (My beautiful little J arrived on April 3, 2004)
12. See another Broadway show (saw my first one while in high school and saw the equivalent of one in London but am always up for another)
13. Adopt a puppy (This one would probably fall off my list now as I've seen the trouble they are for people who like to travel even for a weekend.)
14. Be a Stay at Home Mom (I would love this so much more now than I ever thought possible when I wrote this.)
15. Take Doug to the Smithsonian Museums (Although I've been 4 or 5 times, Doug hasn't been yet and I think that is a tragedy as much as he likes history and museums.)
16. See all 50 US states (29 down, 21 to go! Airports or just driving through don't count - I have to stay the night and/or see at least one "site.")
17. Buy a new car (not "previously owned" - I know this is extremely wasteful and frivolous but just once it would be nice to own a car that has never belonged to anyone else.)
18.Take a photography course
19. Learn to paint
20. See Mt. Rushmore
21. Visit a volcano
22. Ride in a hot air balloon
23. Visit Yellowstone National Park
24. Ride in a helicopter
25. Take a cooking course
26. Watch a sunset from Central Park (I've been to Central Park but would just like to stop the frantic sight-seeing and enjoy the sun setting over the city's impressive skyline.)
27. Have three months' salary in savings
28. Take a vacation with Doug, Mom, Dad, Sam, and Sandra (completed in September 2002 with our trip to Las Vegas, the Hoover Dam, and the Grand Canyon and again in May 2007 with J's first trip to Gulf Shores, AL to see the beach)
29. Visit Russia
30. See the Hollywood sign
31. Visit New England in the Fall
32. Celebrate 10 years of marriage (completed August 10, 2006)
33. Spend a whole week at a Bed and Breakfast (Doug and I spent a weekend at one years ago and it whet my appetite for sure.)
34. Ride a train through Europe
35. Smile and laugh more often (Someone asked me, "How will you document this one in a scrapbook." I have no idea but it is a wonderful goal to have each and every day.)
36. Snow ski
37. Visit Ireland
38. Go on another cruise (anywhere!)
39. Visit Vancouver again (Doug and I only had one night in Vancouver on our honeymoon and we really want to see more of it.)
40. Visit Germany (my dream vacation destination)
41. Own a piano
42. Celebrate 25 years of marriage (only 14 more to go!)
43. Celebrate 50 years of marriage (only 39 more to go!)
44. Retire while I am still young and healthy enough to travel and enjoy myself
Items added in 2005:
45. Ride the hills of San Francisco on a streetcar
46. Attend a TV show taping
47. Go white water rafting on a level 4 rapid (the most difficult one I've been on is a 3)
48. Meet someone famous
49. Go sailing (I went once on a little catamaran but neither me nor the other person aboard knew what we were doing and generally just fell off the thing a lot.)
50. Swim with the dolphins
51. Ride in a go cart
52. Go scuba diving or snorkeling
53. Visit a spa for a massage (Completed with Doug in Memphis in the Summer of 2006 and again at the Marriott in Florence, AL in August 2006.)
54. See the lights of Christmas in Manhattan
55. Go horse back riding (I haven't ridden a horse since I was a teenager.)
56. See the Great Pyramid in Giza, Egypt
57. See the Aurora Borealis
58. Ride on the Orient Express
59. Learn to dance
60. Learn to fire a gun (I haven't fired a gun since I was a kid at my grandfather's house.)
61. Learn a martial art
62. Go to Australia
63. Learn to knit (I tried this once already and failed miserably so I'll have to give it another go sometime.)
64. See the Great Wall of China
65. Take the Sound of Music Tour in Salzburg
66. Drive or ride on US 1 - the Pacific Coast Highway - in California
67. Get my kicks on Route 66 (While I've been on parts of Route 66, I would love to drive the length of it from Chicago to Los Angeles/Santa Monica.)
68. Enjoy every moment with J
69. Be serenaded by a Venetian gondolier (Unfortunately the gondolier in the Venetian casino in Las Vegas just didn't satisfy this desire.)
70. Ride a mule to the bottom of the Grand Canyon (I traded a ride in a Cessna over the Grand Canyon for this the last time. I won't make that trade off next time.)
71. Gaze upon a magnificent waterfall. (I've seen several waterfalls but none that seem to qualify for this awe-inspiring goal. I guess I'll know the right one when I see it.)
72. Eat a hot dog at Nathan's original Coney Island location
73. Visit Seattle
74. Attend Gospel Brunch at the House of Blues
75. Visit the Art Institute of Chicago (completed September 2006 - our favorite place on our Chicago Anniversary trip)
76. Ride a mechanical bull
77. Stay in a teepee at the Wigwam Village in Cave City, KY
The beginnings of my list for 2010:
78. Shop Munich's Christkindlmarkt
79. See the Neuschwanstein Castle in Füssen
80. Go to Oktoberfest in Munich
81. Eat at Mrs. Wilkes' Boarding House in Savannah, GA
82. Stay at Gravetye Manor in Grinstead
83. Stay at the Kinloch Lodge on the Isle of Skye
84. Kiss the Blarney Stone
85. Drive the Grossglockner Road in Austria
86. Eat a chocolate at Mary Chocolatier in Brussels, Belgium - the premier shop for chocolate in the world
87. Travel the Romantic Road in Bavaria
88. Take Doug to the Sopporo Snow Festival and the Tsukiji Fish Market
89. Stay at Mackinac Island's Grand Hotel
90. See the trail one of my ancestors trekked - The Lewis and Clark Trail
91. Go to Carnival in Rio de Janeiro
92. See the Acropolis in Athens, Greece
93. Visit Santa's Village in Rovaniemi, Lapland, Finland
Edited to add number 94. Play paintball.
22 September 2008
17 September 2008
Advice to a Friend
I had a friend email me this week asking for my "sage advice" on motherhood. I'm not sure I have any of that but I wrote back just the same. Following is most of what I sent to her. After I sent it I realized that there were several things in here that I want to remember about being a mom - the good and the bad - so I thought I'd put it here, slightly altered to remove names and protect the innocent. Some of it is in response to questions she posed or statements about herself but I think it all makes sense even out of context.
Hmmmm..... what to tell you so it is honest without scaring you.....
Just kidding.
My honest answer is that things will never be the same but that is okay. Not only okay but fabulous. I think everyone is different in how a pregnancy and the crazy hormones affect them. For me, I became terribly forgetful both during and after my pregnancy and this has never gone back to "normal." There is a reason I keep such an organized calendar with everything from doctors' appts to soccer practice to when my library books are due --- it is because I can barely remember how to dress myself sometimes, it seems. I also cry at the drop of a hat - something I don't at all know what to do with to this day because I never had that problem pre-J. But, what I have come to realize is that is okay.
Being a mommy to someone whose whole life is dependent on you is both the most terrifying and most fulfilling feeling I've ever had. It doesn't equate in any way to how you feel about any other aspect of your life. The way you love your husband or your father or your sibling or your friend will pale in comparison to the amount of love you will pour into this one tiny being. The attention you give those people will pale when compared to the attention this little one not only requires but what you want to give. It doesn’t mean you have less love for those people, just that this tiny person depends on you for every need in their life. I find myself dropping the housework on a dime to read a little boy a story because I know, at that moment, nothing matters to him more in this world than his mommy. The housework -- or whatever it is -- is so unimportant at that moment. There is a reason we finally had to break down and hire a housekeeper. My housework will never be more important to me than those 10 minutes of storytime for as long as J wants me to spend time with him (because I know it won't be like that forever). There will come a day when he not only doesn't beg me to be with him, he wouldn't dream of wanting me there.
Work is the same way. All of those things that you are stressing about at work... when you are on maternity leave, those become someone else's problems at least for the time you are away. You CAN NOT worry about that while adjusting to motherhood. There simply isn't enough of you to go around and your little one deserves and will demand your undivided attention. There is no planning around him - he will dictate things for a while. I had a very healthy and uneventful pregnancy and relatively easy delivery. I was still more tired in the first week than I have ever been in my entire life. The good news? It does get better and easier even as it changes.
Life with an infant, a creeper, a toddler, a preschooler, etc. is a daily-changing affair that requires your flexibility but also, I believe, your organization. You will rise to the challenge because you are driven to do so. You will become what you need to be because you, like me and many others, see there is no alternative for raising a happy, healthy, intelligent, productive member of society. Honestly, there are days you don't know what you are going to do or how you are going to get through it. There are days that you realize you not only don't have all the answers, you'd be thrilled to come up with one solid lead on any answer at all. Motherhood is tough. I think anyone who says it isn't is ignoring some vital part of their child's development. And, between you, me, and the other women out there, I think we have it a little harder than the men. I don't mean in the physical sense of carrying the child or breastfeeding or any of those things. For me, those parts were a sheer joy. I mean in the pure emotional attachment we have to our kids. There is something about carrying that child that makes you forever linked to him in a way that I don't think any man can fully comprehend. This may not be true but I believe it to be true. There is a reason we women are the ones who can sit up all night by our child's bed when they are sick despite not having slept in days when the guys have long-since drifted off to sleep unintentionally on the sofa. It is the most remarkable feeling on earth.
Now, I say that like it is always a good thing. It isn't. You will worry. You will lose sleep. There are nights I don't sleep at all for worrying. About money. About J's school. About his behavior. About ridiculous things like potty training. There is just a switch that comes on the moment you find out there is a child on its way that makes you realize you are the sole provider for this child forever. I am not discounting a father's role but I do believe that no matter what happens in our lives, it is our mothers we always turn to or want to turn to and I think that is doubly true for boys. They always have a soft spot for their moms (at least in normal, functional families).
As for making mistakes or missteps - just think of them as a fact of life. You are going to be pulled in lots of different directions and you will occasionally make mistakes. The more you open up to people and allow them to see what is going on with you and why, the more I've found people are willing to work with you. As you know, J struggled for about a year. Things have only in the past month and a half righted themselves. There were many, many days when I had to drop everything here at work to go pick him up. I worried there would be repercussions because I used all my sick and vacation days and had to start taking unpaid days. The surprise? More people understand family problems and maternal issues than you might believe. But, my view point is, if they don't understand, do I really want to work for people like that anyway? I do worry that my maternal obligations and choices might eventually effect my employment but that is a risk I have to take. My child will always come before my job just as I know yours will as well. We don't have it in us to be any other way and I think that is a good thing.
As for your health, just remember that you are no use to your child unless you are healthy. Put yourself first in taking care of yourself when at all possible. There will be times when you will not sleep for 2 or 3 days because of extenuating circumstances. There will be times you have to get out of bed when you don't feel good because your child needs you. However, when at all possible, take care of yourself as well. Most husbands will rise to the occasion just as mine has. They have something in them too that we probably can't relate to and can't understand. Paternal instinct gets overlooked and overshadowed by the maternal counterpart but I think it exists and in abundance. Allow him to make his own mistakes and find his own way to becoming the type of father he wants to be. Take it from a control freak, it is hard to step away sometimes - particularly when you don't agree with what they are doing. But, it is vitally important for them to go their own way. Let him. He will surprise, astound, and wow you.
The third trimester (if your pregnancy is anything like mine) will be the hardest. I wish I could sugar coat that but it seems to be the general consensus among all women I've known who have ever been pregnant. That's when my memory went. I had to lie down half way through the day on more than one occasion because I was simply too tired to go on without a 10 minute nap. I would get up, shower, then have to lie back down for 5 minutes because the sheer act of getting ready in the morning was exhausting and draining. My ankles disappeared entirely which, for someone working on their feet on concrete floors all day, presented their own problems. I was exhausted, bloated, emotional, and generally disorganized and, yet, you have to keep going. I worked until the day I went into labor. I don't recommend that. Take a few days, if you make it to your due date, prior to your date to rest. You will need it. That was my one regret about the entire process though I thought I still had time.
Routines, you ask? I vaguely remember what the concept of a firm routine looks like? I haven't actually experienced it in over 4 years. If there is one thing motherhood has taught me, it is flexibility. It is always good to have a plan but be sure you have at least two back up plans as well as a willingness to go off-plan altogether when all three of those initial plans don't work out. Whether it is the babysitter who calls because she got a better offer for what to do on a Friday night (though is at least smart enough to camouflage it as a sore throat) or a child projectile vomiting all over you in a crowded Olive Garden, you have to learn to be flexible and laugh at those little moments. Children crave routine so trying one is always good. Children also do whatever they can both willingly and knowingly and unknowingly to disrupt those routines. You just have to go with it. Life is too short to obsess about things like that.
You are right about one thing - motherhood's theme should be "suck it up" a great deal of the time. We, as mothers, must almost always put ourselves last in every equation for the peace and furtherance of our families. However, the payoff of that is that you have this wonderful, beautiful, smiling, joy of a child in your arms at the end of a long and trying day when you feel like nothing is going right and you will never be "first" again. It is true that one of my favorite things in the whole world is the feeling of a baby's breath on my neck as he sleeps peacefully and quietly in your arms. There is no feeling in all of this world like it and it can't be replicated with someone else's child. No matter how many children you've held in your lifetime, they can't hold a candle to the feeling you have the first time your baby falls asleep in your arms. And all of those other worries and trials and issues just melt away... even if only for a few minutes.
Every single day is a roller coaster ride. My best "sage advice" is to strap on your seat belt and get ready for the ride of your life. It is more than worth the price of admission!
Hmmmm..... what to tell you so it is honest without scaring you.....
Just kidding.
My honest answer is that things will never be the same but that is okay. Not only okay but fabulous. I think everyone is different in how a pregnancy and the crazy hormones affect them. For me, I became terribly forgetful both during and after my pregnancy and this has never gone back to "normal." There is a reason I keep such an organized calendar with everything from doctors' appts to soccer practice to when my library books are due --- it is because I can barely remember how to dress myself sometimes, it seems. I also cry at the drop of a hat - something I don't at all know what to do with to this day because I never had that problem pre-J. But, what I have come to realize is that is okay.
Being a mommy to someone whose whole life is dependent on you is both the most terrifying and most fulfilling feeling I've ever had. It doesn't equate in any way to how you feel about any other aspect of your life. The way you love your husband or your father or your sibling or your friend will pale in comparison to the amount of love you will pour into this one tiny being. The attention you give those people will pale when compared to the attention this little one not only requires but what you want to give. It doesn’t mean you have less love for those people, just that this tiny person depends on you for every need in their life. I find myself dropping the housework on a dime to read a little boy a story because I know, at that moment, nothing matters to him more in this world than his mommy. The housework -- or whatever it is -- is so unimportant at that moment. There is a reason we finally had to break down and hire a housekeeper. My housework will never be more important to me than those 10 minutes of storytime for as long as J wants me to spend time with him (because I know it won't be like that forever). There will come a day when he not only doesn't beg me to be with him, he wouldn't dream of wanting me there.
Work is the same way. All of those things that you are stressing about at work... when you are on maternity leave, those become someone else's problems at least for the time you are away. You CAN NOT worry about that while adjusting to motherhood. There simply isn't enough of you to go around and your little one deserves and will demand your undivided attention. There is no planning around him - he will dictate things for a while. I had a very healthy and uneventful pregnancy and relatively easy delivery. I was still more tired in the first week than I have ever been in my entire life. The good news? It does get better and easier even as it changes.
Life with an infant, a creeper, a toddler, a preschooler, etc. is a daily-changing affair that requires your flexibility but also, I believe, your organization. You will rise to the challenge because you are driven to do so. You will become what you need to be because you, like me and many others, see there is no alternative for raising a happy, healthy, intelligent, productive member of society. Honestly, there are days you don't know what you are going to do or how you are going to get through it. There are days that you realize you not only don't have all the answers, you'd be thrilled to come up with one solid lead on any answer at all. Motherhood is tough. I think anyone who says it isn't is ignoring some vital part of their child's development. And, between you, me, and the other women out there, I think we have it a little harder than the men. I don't mean in the physical sense of carrying the child or breastfeeding or any of those things. For me, those parts were a sheer joy. I mean in the pure emotional attachment we have to our kids. There is something about carrying that child that makes you forever linked to him in a way that I don't think any man can fully comprehend. This may not be true but I believe it to be true. There is a reason we women are the ones who can sit up all night by our child's bed when they are sick despite not having slept in days when the guys have long-since drifted off to sleep unintentionally on the sofa. It is the most remarkable feeling on earth.
Now, I say that like it is always a good thing. It isn't. You will worry. You will lose sleep. There are nights I don't sleep at all for worrying. About money. About J's school. About his behavior. About ridiculous things like potty training. There is just a switch that comes on the moment you find out there is a child on its way that makes you realize you are the sole provider for this child forever. I am not discounting a father's role but I do believe that no matter what happens in our lives, it is our mothers we always turn to or want to turn to and I think that is doubly true for boys. They always have a soft spot for their moms (at least in normal, functional families).
As for making mistakes or missteps - just think of them as a fact of life. You are going to be pulled in lots of different directions and you will occasionally make mistakes. The more you open up to people and allow them to see what is going on with you and why, the more I've found people are willing to work with you. As you know, J struggled for about a year. Things have only in the past month and a half righted themselves. There were many, many days when I had to drop everything here at work to go pick him up. I worried there would be repercussions because I used all my sick and vacation days and had to start taking unpaid days. The surprise? More people understand family problems and maternal issues than you might believe. But, my view point is, if they don't understand, do I really want to work for people like that anyway? I do worry that my maternal obligations and choices might eventually effect my employment but that is a risk I have to take. My child will always come before my job just as I know yours will as well. We don't have it in us to be any other way and I think that is a good thing.
As for your health, just remember that you are no use to your child unless you are healthy. Put yourself first in taking care of yourself when at all possible. There will be times when you will not sleep for 2 or 3 days because of extenuating circumstances. There will be times you have to get out of bed when you don't feel good because your child needs you. However, when at all possible, take care of yourself as well. Most husbands will rise to the occasion just as mine has. They have something in them too that we probably can't relate to and can't understand. Paternal instinct gets overlooked and overshadowed by the maternal counterpart but I think it exists and in abundance. Allow him to make his own mistakes and find his own way to becoming the type of father he wants to be. Take it from a control freak, it is hard to step away sometimes - particularly when you don't agree with what they are doing. But, it is vitally important for them to go their own way. Let him. He will surprise, astound, and wow you.
The third trimester (if your pregnancy is anything like mine) will be the hardest. I wish I could sugar coat that but it seems to be the general consensus among all women I've known who have ever been pregnant. That's when my memory went. I had to lie down half way through the day on more than one occasion because I was simply too tired to go on without a 10 minute nap. I would get up, shower, then have to lie back down for 5 minutes because the sheer act of getting ready in the morning was exhausting and draining. My ankles disappeared entirely which, for someone working on their feet on concrete floors all day, presented their own problems. I was exhausted, bloated, emotional, and generally disorganized and, yet, you have to keep going. I worked until the day I went into labor. I don't recommend that. Take a few days, if you make it to your due date, prior to your date to rest. You will need it. That was my one regret about the entire process though I thought I still had time.
Routines, you ask? I vaguely remember what the concept of a firm routine looks like? I haven't actually experienced it in over 4 years. If there is one thing motherhood has taught me, it is flexibility. It is always good to have a plan but be sure you have at least two back up plans as well as a willingness to go off-plan altogether when all three of those initial plans don't work out. Whether it is the babysitter who calls because she got a better offer for what to do on a Friday night (though is at least smart enough to camouflage it as a sore throat) or a child projectile vomiting all over you in a crowded Olive Garden, you have to learn to be flexible and laugh at those little moments. Children crave routine so trying one is always good. Children also do whatever they can both willingly and knowingly and unknowingly to disrupt those routines. You just have to go with it. Life is too short to obsess about things like that.
You are right about one thing - motherhood's theme should be "suck it up" a great deal of the time. We, as mothers, must almost always put ourselves last in every equation for the peace and furtherance of our families. However, the payoff of that is that you have this wonderful, beautiful, smiling, joy of a child in your arms at the end of a long and trying day when you feel like nothing is going right and you will never be "first" again. It is true that one of my favorite things in the whole world is the feeling of a baby's breath on my neck as he sleeps peacefully and quietly in your arms. There is no feeling in all of this world like it and it can't be replicated with someone else's child. No matter how many children you've held in your lifetime, they can't hold a candle to the feeling you have the first time your baby falls asleep in your arms. And all of those other worries and trials and issues just melt away... even if only for a few minutes.
Every single day is a roller coaster ride. My best "sage advice" is to strap on your seat belt and get ready for the ride of your life. It is more than worth the price of admission!
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