The Perfection in Imperfection

I am, finally, the mother of a beautiful baby boy.  He is wonderful.  He didn't used to keep me up all night until this week, and this is week #3.  The first two weeks were laden with intermittent pain and euphoria  of having a perfect baby, one who only woke up once a night.  Of course, that has changed now as he begins to transition out of the newborn stage.

The boy eats like a horse (like his dad) and can't be wakened if he is asleep (also like his dad).  He is stubborn (will cry for hours if you don't hold him) and expressive (he gets that from me).  :)

I love him so much.  I don't know what I will do when someone hurts him.   It will be very hard for me not to kill them.  You thought I was crazy before?  You should see me now that I'm a mom.

We lost our sweet puppy dog, Angel, earlier this week, and for the first time in over a month, I felt really depressed.  I will always miss her, since she was my first dog and I got her during a time when I was mourning my friend's death and other things going on in my life at the time.  She helped me to deal with things emotionally, and because of that, I think of her as a true friend that God blessed me with at the right time.  And she left at a good time too, when I have an infant who is becoming more vocal.  To be honest, I don't have much time to dwell on the sadness, though I still have my moments.

What's the most encouraging thing of all of this?  I can feel myself growing.  I can see my relationship with my husband getting stronger, though I thought the opposite was supposed to happen.

My husband is my best friend, and he has been very supportive and sweet throughout everything.  He tells me how awesome I am at being a mom.  He is becoming the loving father that I always dreamed of...and a better husband because of it.

People have stepped up and helped us in so many ways, I can't thank them enough.  We have been given countless gift cards, checks, gifts, clothes for Sampson.  My church has been awesome.  My pastor and his wife brought over food and a gift card for groceries from them and other members.  Friends have offered to babysit and give a hand, gladly.  I have never felt so loved.

Though life will continue to be hard, because that is just life, I am more confident that life will be okay.  It doesn't weigh on my shoulders anymore.

Tick Tock

Any day now.  I have contractions all night long, and yes, they are really painful.  I'm about to burst.  I know I'm a mom, and yet, I still don't feel like it.  I think I emotionally distanced myself when I was spotting and cramping early on in pregnancy, and definitely more so when they said something could be wrong with Sampson.  It was so heart wrenching, I feel like I turned myself off or something.  I know he's going to be okay now, or at least I think, but you never know.  The thought of loss early on was hard enough.  I couldn't imagine now.

As a result of turning my emotions off, I feel absent sometimes, and it almost feels like a dream.  I know a human being is inside me, but I can't imagine how I should love him or how I should be feeling.  I'm anticipating, but I feel guilty for not feeling completely overjoyed.  I feel guilty for the worry I feel.  I wonder what having a child will do to my marriage, to our finances, because I know all too well that adding another factor just makes things harder.  And how will I deal with it all?  How could I be a good mom?  The list of questions goes on and on in my head.  My mom says it will change when I hold him.  I'm sure it will, but I feel like I'm in a constant state of shell shock, and I don't know what to feel.

I love my child, but I don't know what that means.  I guess I'm just going to find out, right?

From the Wild

I will soon be a mother.  I guess this realization makes me more sentimental than I otherwise would be.  I also guess that most children, no matter how much they say they hated their hometowns growing up, long for home when they are finally grown.  I'm having a baby now, am I grown?

My home is a wild land, dry and harsh, hot, cold, empty and barren.  Phone companies such as AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint refuse to operate there since it's such a high cost area.  My father is employed at Panhandle Telephone, Inc., so I remember him explaining why no one wanted to be there.

And it's true.  No one sets out to Guymon, Goodwell, Boise City, etc., looking to start a life unless they grew up there.  Heck, I always said I would never come back, and who knows if I ever will.  And the people who grew up there are well rooted in families whose great-grandparents came for free farm and ranch land.  They are a tough people, friendly, stubborn and determined.  They come from people who stayed during the hardest time, and rode out the Great Depression, clouds of dust, and constant loss.  These are the people that didn't shudder at hard times, these active and hardworking ancestors.  They knew more than anyone what the very bottom felt like.  They also knew that helping each other was the only way to survive.

I suppose the only people coming to the panhandle looking to start a life these days are those who are brought in by the hog and beef farms, but until the 1990s, there really wasn't an influx.  I hear Guymon is growing now, changing much like other small towns.  Things are different.  The people coming in are still the hardworking type.  They're still the underdogs.

I introduce myself to people and tell them where I'm from--I take my left hand and use it as an Oklahoma map to show them where I call home.  I also explain that I'm in the part most weathermen cut off the screen.  I'm from where most politicians dismiss as unnecessary when it comes to running for things.  People really disregard us, and they shouldn't.  But you can't understand this all unless you've lived in the panhandle. 

No one wants no man's land, and when I left at 18, I drove away and didn't look back.  I didn't cry.  The big city awaited me.  The nearest "city" to Guymon is Amarillo and that's about two hours away, so you can imagine how a small-town girl felt moving to the city by herself.

It was liberating.

All the same, I can attribute a lot of my stubborn, hardworking tendencies to the panhandle that shaped my daddy, his daddy, and his daddy before him.  The same panhandle where my grandmother met my papa on Main Street.  The small, sleepy town that endures droughts, dust storms, ice and snow, tornadoes and 90 mph straight winds (trust me, our fence blew over twice) is the town that polished me.  The people, all of whom know your parents and grandparents, are friendly and they watch out for each other.  There is no road rage.  It only takes five minutes to get to the other side of town.

And really, it is a beautiful place, though there aren't any real trees.  That's the best thing about the panhandle--the sky is so open, and when the thunderheads come in bringing with them the sweet and rare smell of rain, there really isn't anything more beautiful.  Especially when they ride in during the sunset...painted pinks, oranges, and reds.  The lightning fills the sky, surrounded by super-cell mountains.  After months of arid wind, I can promise you there is nothing else that lifts a panhandler's spirits more than rain.  In fact, even when it's flooding here in the city after an overly wet season, I could never tire of it.  That's how much I love rain.

I always gripe about that drive back home, but honestly, it's always a good time to listen to my favorite music and take in the scenery and beautiful sunset clouds.  It's perfect for soul searching, because nothing does the soul more good than a long journey home to family, friends and memories.  That desert-like land will always be a part of me, and someday I'll tell Sampson all the stories I heard from my dad and grandparents.  The roots will always run deep.

So, besides me being pregnant...

Life is crazy.  I'm seven months pregnant, and I haven't posted anything on this blog in over eight months.  Living life can take a lot of effort and cooking a bun in the oven, yeah talk about mentally and physically exhausting.  Add on to that the death of my great grandmother, moving out of an apartment into a new house, a graduating husband (who started grad school three weeks after graduation), my sister's wedding, a wedding shower for my friend I tried to help plan, the death of my husband's grandmother, and a temporary job on top of that.

Yeah, life is crazy.

I still haven't caught my breath really.

My brain is fuzzy, and the saying about pregnant women loosing IQ points really scares me.  So I have been reading everything from the Qua-ran to George Bush's Decision Points.  Another one I'm on right now is Jerusalem 1913 about Palestinian-Israeli conflict.  God, please let me still have a brain after having a baby and don't let it turn into complete mush.  Oh, and a body too.  GOD PLEASE LET MY BODY BOUNCE BACK...just a little.  PLEASE.  It probably won't completely though.  I have stretch marks on the back of my thighs like a cat went ape crazy on them.  Love it.  

Baby Daddy

I'm starting to feel that little tickle in my stomach.  The one that tells me that I need a cute little baby, like many of my already-parent friends.  Sigh.  If life were super simple, it would be an easy decision to make.

Last month I had a worry-fit about whether or not I would be a good mother, and blah blah blah.  But I'm really sick of worrying.  In fact, I really don't care anymore.  I want a kid.  I've been back and forth on this, so here it is.  Who's to blame for this sudden shift in attitude?  Well, you can blame my husband and how amazing he is with children.  It makes me melt.

Yesterday, he was holding a little boy in his lap, tickling him and teasing him, and I remembered one of the biggest reasons I was attracted to him.  My good gosh, he's going to be an awesome dad.  He chases our friends' kids around, lifts them up, and the children just love him.  He has a gravitational pull and all the little children just run to him.  I mean, literally.  I love the smile he gets when he's playing with them.  I love the way he talks to them.

We can't really have children right now, because he's still in college.  And after that, he's going to get his graduate degree.  So, really children aren't a possibility right now...I guess.  I also have to put him through school with a job, so yeah, it's going to be hard being the one working and having the baby.  But I don't want to wait five years.  I don't think I could.  I'm ready now.  But, I'm going to try to be patient for at least another year.  Maybe.