Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Age eighteen

The day I leave for the next four years, my mother makes me a big breakfast. We packed the small U-Haul trailer the night before and the next morning the four of us leave together, my parents, brother and me packed into the white Blazer, my childhood bedroom jammed into the trailer, everything clearly labeled with my name.

We drive I-5, a route I learn to simultaneously love and hate. We pass fields, dilapidated gas stations and cows. Today is my first day of college, my first night away from home. Everything is ending. Everything is beginning.

When my mom, dad and brother leave the next afternoon ---after the never-ending unpacking, after the nervous meet and greets, ---I'm hit, powerfully and suddenly, by the understanding of how alone I am. I have two roommates, a cross-country team, and hundreds of other freshmen starting at the university, but I don’t know any of them yet.

I go home at Thanksgiving, 101 days after I waved to my parents from my apartment parking lot, and my dad is at LAX to greet me. He makes small talk on the entire 90 minute commute home, updating me on local town news. For the next three blissful days, I am cocooned within my family again: turkey dinner, high school friends, familiar trails and an awkward date with my boyfriend – at this point maybe in name only.

But the time comes for me to leave again, and when it does, my mother and father drive me to John Wayne airport and we sit at the gate, and I realize that I am eager and excited to fly back to Sacramento, and get back to my new friends and new school and new life - and this thought makes me feel guilty.

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Monday, March 15, 2010

Driving Miss Daisy

Forgive me Internet for my lack of posting, but the newest member of our household arrived two weeks ago, and has consumed my every waking moment (and even my sleeping moments!) Instead of giving you the same ‘ol birth story (which now, I know every birth is different, but essentially they are all the same), I am stealing the idea for the posted blog below from Becoming Sarah. Sarah writes about mommyhood with equal parts hilarity and sincerity; although personally I think she is much too excited about her daughters’ dirty diapers. But, to each their own.

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So, I hereby present you a concise version of Daisy’s birth, by the numbers:

8 looong days past my due date when Daisy was born

 

7 our reservation time…No, not for dinner, but at Labor &

Delivery for an induction.

37 exhausting hours of labor

 

1 centimeter dilated when the doctor broke my bags of water

 

9 hours of pitocin before I caved for the relief of an epidural

 

4 turkey sandwiches J ate, which the nurses kept sweetly

bringing to him

3 different types of nausea medications to keep down ice chips,

with mediocre effectiveness, I might add…

 

3 nurse shift changes during the course of my labor

 

1,800 grueling seconds of pushing before Daisy

was born

 

1 amazing, beautiful, and extremely kissable baby girl to show

for it. Basically it was totally worth it.