Mothers Day

I know that Mothers Day is still months away. However, I am compelled to write about my Mom and mothers' in general. Hang in there, you will see why.

My mom was the stereotypical mother from the 70's. When she married my father, she was willing to move back to rural America, for the farm life my father had grown up with and was most familiar with. Not an easy task for a woman who was born in Chicago and moved to Denver. She was a big city gal with a big city mindset. However, she was willing to sacrifice her big city dreams for her man. If it was important to him, it was important to her. Later she admitted that she was intimidated by Dad's side of the family, they were farmers and that was an unknown to her (even though she graduated from a high school whose mascot was the "Farmers"). Unbeknownst to her, Dad's family was also intimidated by this educated, professional, city woman. Funny how our own insecurities are our own and that everyone is dealing with their own.

Mom and Dad had multiple miscarriages before I was born. I believe they had 3. Having been through this shock and disappointment once, I am not sure how you keep trying after three lost pregnancies. But they did, on their fourth try they had a daughter named Jennifer, but something was wrong. Her heart was not formed properly and she died 3 days after being born. Again, how do you continue to hold out hope for healthy children? Regardless, they did. A year or so later my twin sister and I were born. 2 weeks late. And very, very heavy. I was 9 lbs 2 oz and my sister was 9 lbs 6 oz. That is a grand total of 18 1/2 lbs (if you needed me to do the math). We were once an Iowa record for largest set of twins. Our pregnancy was not without problems. After getting pregnant, she was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm, and was told that she wouldn't survive child birth. They decided to go ahead with us, but again, I can not imagine the fear and trepidation that you would feel knowing that there was a chance she would die in childbirth.

Clearly she didn't. I wont bore you with my picture perfect childhood. Just know that my it shaped the rest of my life.

Growing up, I was always closer to my Mom than my Dad. I think that sons are closer to their mothers and daughters are closer to their fathers. There are exceptions, but it seems to hold true in my world. Dad was always the bread winner, always at work or at drill for the National Guard. We didn't do a lot of father/son activities, but I don't know that I missed it. I was raised with an extended family, both blood and "adopted". And they all took an active role in my raising and activities.

Back to Mom.
I don't think I truly appreciated my mom until my wife and I got pregnant. I became much more aware of a mothers role in a child's life. When our son was born, she was so excited both for us and for her. After 8 years of marriage, we were finally providing a grandchild for spoiling. Secretly, I couldn't wait for her to meet our little man.

She did not disappoint with her "over" loving of our son. Kisses, hugs and smiles were all abundant. She was like a kid at Christmas. Giddy would be the best description of her with HER grandson. As my new family grew to adopt the ways of my childhood family, I really began to understand what sacrifices each parent makes when raising children.

My wife quit her job at the bank after only 1 day back from maternity leave. I had tried to convince her to not go back, but she was independent and needed to decide for herself. As her maternity leave was coming to a close, she was starting to realize that she didn't want to hand her son over to a sitter while she went to work. She wanted to be there for every first he had. Not be told about them.

After a year, an opportunity arrived to move my family back to the area I grew up in. Why wouldn't I? Good job, good pay and near both my parents and hers. My mother was ecstatic, her grandson was going to be very close. We got the family back to Iowa in the fall of 2003 and things were good. We were renting a house for cheap, my job was awesome and Grandma's were happy.

A few months after getting back, we found out we were pregnant. We could not believe it, it had been so long that we were happy with our one son, but another child would be great. At our first trimester checkup, the doctor couldn't hear the heartbeat. We were devastated. It was such a terrible time for us, that I don't remember much about it. Not long after that, my maternal grandmother died. She had lived almost 84 tough years. At the end, she had dementia and Alzheimer's. She didn't remember my wife and had a hard time remembering who I was. It was OK to let her go for those reasons, but it was still a great loss for the family. We all mourned the loss of our grandmother, she was the family glue.

A little more than a month later, my wife was having some teeth pulled and I was on call. So my mom decided it would be a good idea to have my son for his first overnight stay. We were happy to have my parents watch him at such a young age.

That night, my dad called me. He told me that I needed to come get Nicholas. Something was wrong with mom and she was en route to the hospital. As it turned out, that aneurysm that she was diagnosed with 30 years earlier, had finally let go. My son, "helped" the EMT's push the gurney out of the house. That image has stuck with me since my father told me about it.

That was just over 7 years ago. In that time, I have been able to move this from daily thought, to weekly or monthly. But I will always think of my mom. Since she died, another grandson was born (making 4 total), my younger sister got married in Chicago and moved to Denver (sound familiar?), I am moving away from Iowa, etc... I guess everyone else's life doesn't stop, just because Mom's did.

What has happened has opened my eyes further to what Mom's do. They keep families together. My dad has remarried to a great woman, but it isn't the same. My son has only spent the night one time at Grandpa's and he will be 9 this spring. Family Christmas isn't the same. Big family Christmas is non-existent. Where I knew my cousins pretty well, I don't know my cousins kids very well and by default, my son doesn't know any cousins but my sisters boys. Without Grandma and Mom, our families have drifted apart. Not intentionally, but it has happened.

I have also noticed how my son views me and how he views his mom. It is a familiar dynamic. She is clearly the "go to" parent. She is the glue that holds our family together. While I am off in my new position in a new state, she has kept things going back home until our house sells and we can get the family moved to Oklahoma.

I would be remiss if I don't mention how much my mom meant to my wife. She misses her as much as I do. She learned how to be as a mother from my mom much more than she did her own.

We can't help but wonder how life would be different if my Mom were still alive. I guess we will never know.

New Year brings changes

It has been a while since I have been on here. A lot has gone on in the last few months that I need to bring you up to speed on.

December was spent in Iowa. My boss told me to go home for the month, work from home and use up the last of my vacation at the end of the year. Sounds good in theory, but I wasn't really thrilled with the idea. Working from home is hard to do, to many distractions, to many other things to get done. My time at home up until this point was for visiting or taking care of small issues. I also knew it was going to be hard on my family. Sounds weird right? Being apart for so long created a vacuum where I should have been, my wife was a "single" mother and therefore responsible for all aspects of raising our son. Our parenting style is "good cop, bad cop" and I am the bad cop. She wasn't used to being the hard nosed bad cop parent, therefore our son got away with far more than he should have. When I got home, I was summarily ignored. Not surprising, but it is what it is. I started noticing the talk balk, the bad attitude and the raised voices. This was going to stop. So, bad cop was home and back in charge. My son really resented this for weeks. By the time the month was over, we were back to "normal". Just in time for me to leave again.

January came in with a blast of arctic cold. -30 to -40 wind chill that night. Good ol' Iowa, less than 2 days earlier, it was 60 deg. With that, I headed back to Tulsa. My thoughts were stuck on selling the house and getting the family back together under one roof. Still no bites on the house, but honestly, once Thanksgiving was near, I knew the house wouldn't garner any interest until after Christmas. At this point, I was pretty low, my thoughts, hopes and even optimistic ideals had been drawn down. I spent my birthday alone, as I wanted to use my trip home to celebrate the wife's birthday. That week, we had a showing on the house and it seemed to go well. But no offer. We then had a 2nd showing to the same couple, and started to get our hopes up, maybe we we might get a birthday present after all. By the time I headed home, we had gone through offer and counter offers and accepted a deal on the house. What a relief.

With the offer on the table, we have to turn over possession of the house by Feb. 18th. Short notice for sure. My wife an son will be moving into her mom's house while we look for a place in Oklahoma. I was out with our realtor last week and looked at about 10 houses. But really only liked 2 or 3. The good news is that Tulsa is full of short sales, foreclosures and a market full of homes for sale. We just have to wade through the houses and find the right one.  My wife was supposed to come to Tulsa today to start house hunting, unless you have been living under a rock, you know that Tulsa is buried. At least 12" of snow fell yesterday on a city that shuts down at 4". No house hunting this week. She is supposed to come down next week, but not sure if the roads will be good enough by then.

Things are finally moving forward, but slowly. When I accepted this job back in July, I never thought that Febuary would come and I would not be with my family. It looks like it will be 2 or 3 more months before we are done and in a home here in Oklahoma. There is light, however faint, at the end of the tunnel.