A Family of SIX

My husband and I were blessed with 3 wonderful children.
For 19 years,  that was it.   We were done. 


Until 2010. 


I wasn't an accident.


We didn't really plan it, though.


It just happened.


At the age of 51, we have added another daughter.

 

Kerry met Jojo in the summer of 2009 when they played on the same summer softball team.

During that summer, they became fast friends.

Since that summer,  we have seen quite of lot of Jojo.  

At first, she was really quiet and we hardly knew she was here.  

But by the summer of 2010, she was a fixture in our household.

She has been present at almost all of our family events.

She has become a sister not only to Kerry, but to Annie too.

She helps Annie with her math and chemistry homework

and spends time with her, even when Kerry is away at school.

She is a big softy... except

                        ...except when she is on the mound pitching.
                        When she's pitching, I barely recognize her!
                                        She looks so fierce!

                       She is like a daughter  to Vance and I.
                              We get more hugs from Jojo
                    than all 3 of our natural children combined. 

Jojo is a friend to our pets too, and has an especially close relationship with Mr. Wiggles!
And now she is a mother-figure to our new kitten, Maddie.

          This fall, we taught Jojo how to  carve a pumpkin.

 

 And I was honored when she asked 

if I would take her senior pictures.

Beautiful!

I DON'T have pictures of all the times we enjoy with Jojo just hanging around the house. 
I DON'T have pictures when we lay around on the couch watching TV together.
I DON'T have pictures of times we sit around talking about the events of our day.
I DON'T have pictures of teaching Jojo to peel a potato or make a grilled cheese sandwich.

I wish I did.  Because those are the really special family times.

Jojo will go away to college next year and we will miss her a lot.

But I know when she's home we will spend some good "family" time together again.

It's Puzzling.

                                 

                                     

               I LOVE JIGSAW PUZZLES!

I have been working for weeks on this puzzle.  It has been soooo difficult because so many pieces look alike.  But I'm getting there, slowly but surely.  I am drawn to it like a magnet.  I find it hard to walk by it without finding just one more piece.  And when I begin, time flies so fast that I realize an hour has gone by!

What is it about these puzzles that is so intriguing?

                Upon opening the box, the jumble of thousands of pieces
                          is screaming to be put into some kind of order.

My mind begins to calm as I look more closely and I am able to group them based on their similarities.

         Even though they all might look the same sometimes,

                each piece is unique with variations in
                    color, shape, patterns, and size.

                    No one piece is more important than another.

           Even though the surface may look even to the naked eye,
                    some pieces stand out more than others.

                    Sometimes it is difficult to see the picture
                                  when you are too close...

               so it is necessary to step back and distance yourself
                               to understand the bigger picture.

       While the front of each piece is smooth and shiny,
look a little deeper and they are all made from the same stuff.

    It really bothers me when I think I know EXACTLY
                        what I am looking for,
                            but I can't find it.

                       Have you ever looked at two pieces
            and wondered if they were really meant to be together?

     

       Yet at other times it is so blatant that they were meant to be.



      Have you ever searched for hours for a missing piece...

                          only to come back the next day
                    and see it staring you right in the face?


  There is SO MUCH to learn from a jigsaw puzzle!

 Addendum:   The puzzle is done!  Thanks to Kerry, Lucas, and Annie who worked on it with me this afternoon for a few hours to get it done!

A Long-Awaited Friend Request

When I joined Facebook in June of 2009,  I was very naive.

I naively believed it would be nice to be FB friends with my kids. 
I naively believed people didn't put private things out for all to see.
I naively believed my kids wouldn't say anything hurtful about me on FB.

I was wrong on all three counts.

My FB bubble was burst one day after I disciplined my daughter, Kerry, for stealing my hairbrush from my bathroom for the 20th time.  When I read the words "I hate mom", I knew deep down that she was just venting.  I knew she didn't really mean it.  But no mother wants to see those words.

So I made the decision to "unfriend" my kids.

Since that time, I've become more FB savvy.  And my kids have matured.  Adam and I have been FB friends for a while.  But Annie and Kerry have refused to accept every friend request I send their way.

My friend Ann's daughter Taylor sent her a friend request in September after leaving for her freshman year of college.   I thought maybe Kerry would do the same.  WRONG.

She has remained steadfast.

UNTIL YESTERDAY.   When I saw a friend request from Kerry I didn't quite believe it was for real!
When I asked her why she finally did it, she claimed it was because she wanted me to see the skiing pictures that she posted yesterday.

I like to believe there is more to it than that.

Maybe I am being naive,  but I would like to believe it means that our relationship is evolving from strictly parent-child to one that includes friendship.    I know that Kerry is a very loyal friend and I would value that friendship. 

                         But I'll take "Facebook friends" for now.

NOW I Get It!

My mom has been gone for almost 4 years.  She died relatively young at the age of 78.

I wish she were still alive today so I could tell her "NOW I get it!"

As was common in the 1950s, my mom did not work.  She stayed at home with us while my dad worked.
She cooked, cleaned, shopped, did laundry, paid bills, and drove us around.  But the thing I loved most is that she was always there for me while I was growing up.

I thought my mom's whole purpose was to be my mom. That's how she made me feel.  And I loved it.

When I was a teenager, my mother and father began to go out more often on the weekends.  My mother loved to look pretty and dress up in nice clothes and my father was proud to be with her.  They would go to the lounge at the Ramada Inn and listen to someone play and sing songs from their era.  They had lots of fun and made lots of friends. 

Then it happened.  My mom became a singer.

It began with just a few songs, but progressed to where she was singing and entertaining much of the night.  She had always loved to look pretty, but now that she was in the spotlight, she began buying a lot of fancy dresses.

Frankly, I didn't get it.  I admit it - I WAS EMBARRASSED. 

This wasn't my mother!

My brother and sisters and I would go to the Ramada sometimes on Saturday night and listen to her sing and meet all of her new friends.  They were all from the "older" retired generation whose kids were grown. 

THEY WERE HAVING A LOT OF FUN AND JOKING AND LAUGHING.  I didn't like it much.

This wasn't my mother!

My father was very proud of my mom and enthusiastically supported her dress-buying habit.  What was he doing?

This whole new life of theirs continued for many years until my mother's long-term smoking habit caught up with her.  She developed breathing problems (COPD) and had to be on oxygen 24/7.    Her singing career was over.  I knew she was sad.

This is a rare picture of my mother with her oxygen tubes.  She usually took the oxygen off for pictures.

Less than a year later, my mom noticed a growth on her neck.  She told me about it the day this photo was taken.  It was the last picture I have with my mom.  She really didn't look this good in reality.  I knew how important it was to her to be pretty, so I fixed her up a bit with photoshop before I sent it to her. 

Within 2 months from the time this picture was taken,  my mom was on a ventilator on enough morphine to keep her comfortable.   I wondered if she knew who I was.   She died a few months later.

I have been thinking lately that I am now about the same age my mother was when she began her singing career.  

After attempting to juggle motherhood and a job, I discovered I could not be the mom I wanted to be while working.  So I quit work before Annie was born.  I have never regretted it.

But now I am faced with Adam and Kerry away at college and Annie a sophomore in high school.  I have always LOVED photography and so I am spending lots of time learning about f-stops, exposures, off-camera flash, photoshop, etc.  It is SO EXCITING!  I can definitely see myself doing more and more as my mothering duties continue to subside.

I can't help but compare myself to my mother.  She had always loved to sing and be pretty.  She chose to do the things she loved after her children didn't need her so much anymore.   She needed to have SOMETHING ELSE. 


NOW I get it!  I REALLY get it.  I thought I got it years ago, but I really wasn't capable of truly understanding until I came to the same time in my life.

             I wish she had never been a smoker.

         I wish she was here to see my children all grown up.

 

           I wish I could tell her how sorry I am.


I am so sorry that I was embarrassed by her new passion. 

I am so sorry that I didn't fully support her new passion.

I wish I could tell her how PROUD of her I am now.   Now that I really understand.  Now that I get it.