Tag: Life changes

Love-Me Plant Lady

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I’ve been trying to get a bunch of things done today, so I’ve been ignoring my computer.  When I finally took a few minutes to check my email, I noticed I had a new one from my aunt with some information about where I could view my cousin’s wedding pictures online (I posted a few of them back in July when I wrote about the wedding – you can read that post here).

I just finished looking at the pictures.  They were awesome!  Aaron Borchers did their wedding photography and he did an absolutely fabulous job.  But that’s not what this post is about.  As I was looking through the pictures, one member of the wedding party stood out to me (and no, I don’t mean the bride, though she was gorgeous, or the groom, who looked quite dashing in his tux).

More memories from the year I turned twelve are this-a-way! Follow me!

Old friends are the best!

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Growing up, I was the oldest kid in my neighborhood by a couple of years.  There were only a few other families with kids around as we lived in an older neighborhood.  A couple of kids were three years younger than me, a couple were five or six years younger than me, one was nine years younger than me.  The closest kid my age – my best and oldest friend, and my maid of honor both times I was married, she is awesome – lived three and a half blocks down the street.  While that wasn’t exactly far away, the situation didn’t exactly lend itself to easy visitation, either.

After my mom passed away, my dad used some of the life insurance money to replace our sidewalk (which really wasn’t sidewalk so much anymore as it was part of the yard) and to build a garage.  One day when I was eleven, my sister and I and the aforementioned best friend were riding our bikes around the newly-poured driveway and garage foundation (the garage had not yet been built).  One of the neighbor kids wandered over and wanted to play with us.  She and my sister were pretty good friends, even though my sister is four years older.  My sister has a talent for making friends – I think she was good friends with every kid in our neighborhood at one point or another.

Anyway, we decided that we didn’t want to play with her that day.  As a rule, I never wanted to play with this particular girl as she always kind of got on my nerves.  But how many people always love all their siblings’ friends?  Anyway, since we didn’t want to play with her, we told her to go home.

This didn’t go over very well. At all.

Ten is for friends

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Yesterday I wrote about my mother’s diagnosis with cancer.  Despite all the treatment she received and all the prayers said on her behalf, the cancer spread rapidly and she died the year I was ten, one short year after her diagnosis with breast cancer.

My mother was 31 years old.

I have now lived nearly two thirds of my life without my mother.  I remember her, but not as well as I would like.  I am lucky that I have had people to ask about her over the years.  She also evidently enjoyed writing, as I once found a notebook filled with poetry and a partially-used diary along with a couple of papers she wrote while in college.  I treasure these things for the insight they’ve given me into a woman I barely got the chance to know and for the insight into the child that I used to be.

Ain’t nine fine?

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As you can see from the strap around her neck, shutterbug-ism runs in my family. 🙂
Photo courtesy of Martha DeGroote

Well, no, actually.  At least, not for me.  If you thought my seventh year was bad, hold onto your hats.

When I was eight, my mom went back to school to become a medical transcriptionist.  She finished her program a year later and was offered a job at a local hospital where she had interned while studying.  But within a month, it was clear that all was not well.  A visit to the doctor, followed by a mammogram, confirmed the truth.

She had cancer.

A mastectomy was scheduled and chemo was ordered.  But with a diagnosis of advanced breast cancer, a cure was a longshot.  She did everything she could to beat it.  Prayer after prayer was said by more people than I can count.

We spent a lot of time together that year, visiting places like the Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend.  But we also spent much time apart, as she traveled to the Mayo Clinic and the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics for treatment.  She even got on an airplane for the first time in her life and flew to Texas to visit a childhood friend.  The time apart was hard on me, as I was very close to my mother.  But it was not as hard as what was to come.

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

Lucky seven? I don’t think so.

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Isn’t she cute?
Photo courtesy of Vickie Hansen

When I was growing up, seven was somewhat less than fun.  When I was seven, my two-year-old niece passed away.  I remember sitting on my mom’s lap when she told us what happened and being nigh inconsolable.  A few years later, when my sister was seven, a girl in her class was killed in a car accident.  She and her family were on their way to church when they were hit by a drunk driver.  Her seatbelt snapped, she was ejected from the vehicle, and their van rolled right over her.  I remember thinking when we went to her visitation that she looked like she was seventy, not seven.

Finally, a race Jeff Gordon can win!
Picture by Kay Kauffman

But thankfully, seven has been a perfectly lovely age for my kids thus far.  Tomcat competed in his first Pinewood Derbyat the age of seven.  He even came in third place – not too shabby, especially since neither of his assistants (Seymour and Aunt M.) had any experience in Pinewood Derby racing.  Tadpole got a new little brother at the age of seven and was tickled pink because a new little brother meant she didn’t have to share her bedroom.  She was, however, disappointed that she had to give up her bunk beds.  Apparently she hadn’t thought of that when she said she wanted a brother.

The maternal instinct is strong in this one.
Photo by Greg Kauffman

I hope the age of seven will be equally uneventful for Cricket and Thumper.  But then again, who knows?  By that point, I’ll have teenagers running amok and things are never uneventful when there are teenagers on the loose.

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

Six years old and crazy already

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I hate to make sweeping generalizations, but I think all writers are a little bit crazy in their own unique way.  Tales about eccentric and reclusive writers throughout history abound.  In my online writing group, the Alliance of Worldbuilders, every time someone pops their head into the forum thread to join in for the first time, we try to warn them that we’re all mad here.  Sometimes, they happily throw their own unique madness into the mix right along with ours and hilarity ensues.

My own particular brand of crazy began developing at a very young age.  See, there was this boy in my class.  We met in preschool and it was love at first sight.  Well, it was love at first sight for me, anyway.  He wanted nothing to do with me.  But that was only because he didn’t know me!  So I followed him around the classroom like a puppy, from the blocks to the sand table to the picture books and back.

When we started kindergarten, it was more of the same.  He made my little five-year-old heart flutter so!  But still, every time he saw me, he would take off running.  How on Earth was he supposed to get to know me if he wouldn’t stand still long enough to talk to me?  If he wouldn’t get to know me, we couldn’t fall madly in love!

But then first grade arrived.

Kindergarten envy

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When I was five years old, my mother cut my hair.  Well, she didn’t do it, she took me downtown to the Hair Clinic and had Angie cut my hair.  The point is, prior to the age of five, I looked like a girl.  When I started kindergarten, though, I looked like a boy.  The pictures of me on my very first day of school are about the only pictures of me in existence that look like pictures of my kids.  Several of my old teachers are still teaching at my old elementary school, where Tadpole and Tomcat now attend classes, and they’ve said more than once how much Tomcat resembles me.  I vehemently disagree with this, as he is the spittin’ image of his father and the older he gets, the more he looks like him.  But, at the age of five, with hair so short I couldn’t even put barrettes in it, we looked a little bit a like.

My first day of school. I was so excited!

There were two girls in my class who had hair long enough that it reached their waist.  Oh, how I envied their hair!  One girl’s was dark blonde; the other girl’s was red.  Every day they came to school with their hair in barrettes or ponytails or braids and every day I envied their ability to change their hairdo at a moment’s notice.

Four

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Four.  Today is the fourth day of October, the fourth day of the blog challenge, and I must admit that I am finding myself a bit stuck.  I seem to have a shortage of four stories; I can’t remember any stories of myself at that age and the one I was going to relate about Tomcat’s first fishing trip can be found here.

But, now that I’ve been interrupted and had my poor fried brain distracted for a bit, I’ve remembered a story.  I actually had this one in mind a couple of days ago, only for it to be forgotten because I didn’t write it down (yes, I’m already suffering from CRS at 28).

Anyway…

Troublesome Threes

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My grown-up guy
Photo by Kay Kauffman

When I was growing up, my aunt used to babysit.  She watched a little boy who had the same name as my cousin, right down to the middle name, so my cousin became Big D. and the boy my aunt watched became Little D.  That kid is now in his early twenties and, last I saw him, taller than me, but he’ll always be Little D. to me.

Anyway, my aunt watched this kid when he was a toddler, and I remember her talking about the terrible twos and the troublesome threes.  I didn’t really understand what she meant at the time and since I was a kid myself, I didn’t really care, either.  Now, though, I know exactly what she meant and boy, do I care!  As I recall, Tomcat’s twos weren’t overly terrible, though Cricket’s twos have thus far fit that bill, but boy, were his threes ever troublesome!  I suspect Cricket’s may be the same way, but I’m hoping they won’t.

When Tomcat was three, our lives were in a state of upheaval.

Two-fer Tuesday

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Today is the second, which is the perfect day to write about age two.  And, lucky you, I’ve got a couple of stories!

I am two years and five months older than my younger sister.  For most of our lives, we’ve fought like cats and dogs, although we do seem to get along better now that we don’t live under the same roof.  I’m glad, because we’re all each other has left of our immediate family (by which I do not mean the families we’ve created for ourselves with our husbands, both of whom we love very much).

I digress.  I do that a lot.  Anyway, rumor has it that once upon a time, like say, before she could walk and/or talk, my sister and I actually got along pretty well.  Turns out I was a helpful little stinker.  Too helpful, even.  See, we had this grate in our hallway floor upstairs for the furnace vent and apparently I liked to help change my sister’s diapers at the tender age of two and a half, whether she needed a diaper change or not.  Being a wee lass, I was not exactly up-to-speed on the proper diaper disposal techniques, so I lifted the grate and chucked them down the vent.

Cricket is now a very helpful, sometimes too helpful, toddler of two.  He enjoys helping me change Thumper’s diapers, though he and Thumper are closer in age than my sister and I.  Thank goodness, though, that Cricket hasn’t yet taken it into his head to change Thumper’s diapers by himself – I have a hard enough time convincing him to keep his own diaper on during naps and at night.  For some reason, he thinks he’s old enough to go commando.  A couple of times, it’s resulted in a very large, very smelly mess in their bedroom.  It even led to a failed attempt at potty training.  I swear my kids are plotting to drive me loony.  Still, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Wait, I take that back.  I would change one thing.  I’d be a lotto winner – then I could afford the diapers.

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.