By Way of Explanation

Some of my closest friends worry when I explain myself too much that I have slipped back into patterns of living my life to please everyone else and placing myself on the lowest rung of what's important. A slightly censored walk down memory lane with my oldest daughter yesterday brought back memories of how much I used to do that and showed me with older, more experienced eyes how much those incredible women loved me and helped me get over that part of myself. (Natalie has become friends with one of Susan's nieces, and I was telling her how that all fits together in the grand scheme of things. That conversation alone would make for good blog fodder, maybe later this week.) So, I want to reassure them that while I don't feel the need to apologize for things I said in my last post, I do want to clarify what I wrote lest I come across as "ungrateful" which is a quality I do find unappealing in people-and overwhelmingly a problem for today's youth. (And this I know very well because I work with them.)

The last part of my Week In Review post mentioned my disappointment that no one from my local church congregation attended my baby shower. This is not because I have greedy aspirations for baby gifts, it was a "diaper" shower and even without any of their participation I received plenty of those. (At least 2-3 months' worth.) But what does hurt is that this baby will be raised not just by me, but by the very people who avoided my shower yesterday. In a couple of months, my husband will name and bless this baby in front of them, standing in a circle with some of their husbands. As much as I'm dreading it, I will have to inconvenience myself finding nooks and crannies to nurse in as this building has NO dedicated space for that and an overcrowding problem anyway. I'm pretty dedicated to breastfeeding, and typical Okie culture is not exactly supportive and (as I've been told) neither is this particular branch. However, I have responsibilities to myself, my children, and the other church members to show up and contribute and I will do that despite the huge annoyance that finding a place to feed the baby is going to be. (Elisa was still nursing when we moved here, so I've already dealt with this once.) When the baby reaches 18 months-old, she will be in the Nursery, then in the Primary, and so on and so forth and these people will be her teachers. She will be PART of this congregation. Could no one take a couple of hours out of their day to celebrate her anticipated arrival with me? Apparently not. And it makes me not want to share her with any of them.

If I've learned one thing over the course of this particular pregnancy, it's that whether or not it was my intention to get pregnant, the ability to conceive and have a healthy baby at the age of 37 is really a miraculous thing and whether it's the first baby or the fifth baby, ALL babies arrivals should be celebrated. I don't know why it took 5 kids before I figured this out, but I'm guessing all the extra testing (which prompted a little too much research on my part), watching some of the people closest to me struggle with infertility, and a few very publicized losses here in the Blogosphere earlier this spring have really opened my eyes to the fact that I am supremely lucky and blessed to be having a healthy baby-even if it is "another girl," even if I have done this four times before, and even if it does make me "an unemployed mother of 5." (Ten points to whoever guesses which one of the family members has been tossing that one around over the last month.) Because I've read too much about all that can go wrong with pregnancy at my age and because I've been exposed to a lot of grief and loss both in my personal life and here online in the last nine months, I am extremely grateful for this little girl-perhaps more so than I was for any of my other children because this time I get it in ways that I didn't before now.

When I was still working and we were doing our Land Run re-enactment week, there were two older ladies who volunteered. One was back from the year before, the other was the wife of our accountant. Both women are lovely and I was happy to spend time with them between teaching sessions. Both of them come from the Baby Boomer generation who, like my FIL, believe you should only replace yourself and your spouse when you reproduce and both of them told me that if they had to do it over again; they would have had more children. Seated next to me at my shower yesterday was the hostess's mother. She raised her children in Peru and of the nine she gave birth to, only five lived past their first year or even past their first few hours. My kids think she's their "abuelita" too and she has showered each and every one of them with hugs, kisses, and that adoration understood primarily by those few other women who have stood in her shoes and know that each baby really and truly is a miracle. I'm very grateful that I didn't have to learn that lesson in the same way that she did, but I'm glad that I eventually did learn the lesson. And so, I am not apologizing for anything that sounded like "sour grapes" yesterday. But I also feel the need to explain where my mind and heart were when I wrote what I did and I don't think I can do it any better than I've just done here.