The smell of fall was in the air even as the late summer sun tickled my skin, when a thought occurred to me out of the fading blue sky: I was going to be a mom. A parent. Responsible for another human being's every waking, breathing, sleeping, eating, crying, laughing, pooping, puking moment. I would love to say the thought filled me with joy, but the truth is I was shocked, numb and generally scared, if not "to death," to within an inch of my life.
I had always planned to become a mother one day. When I was a child I used to claim I wanted 12 children, with dubiously chosen names, like "Serendipity" and "Wilcox." But when I found myself turning 30 with no children in tow and no soulmate to boot, I began to rethink my entire plan for my life. Maybe having a husband wasn't necessary. Maybe kids weren't either. Maybe I needed to create a new vision for myself, one that involved ME as the main character, traveling around the world, learning new languages, experiencing new cultures, really LIVING! But as exciting as that was, it could have its drawbacks, I thought. First there's the money factor. I mean, flying isn't cheap. And traveling to foreign countries alone isn't really safe. Plus there's all that packing and unpacking and worrying about whether or not to drink the water. And really, how was I going to travel the world hither and yon for any length of time when I hadn't even managed to move more than an hour away from my family before because I got too homesick? Time for Plan C. So instead of setting off on a whirlwind adventure that I wasn't so sure I even wanted, simply to escape my lonely life, I went the modern route: to the Internet, Jeeves!
Internet dating had wooed me once before in my mid-twenties with disastrous results (that's another blog..a long one) so I was wary of trying it again. But when you are a 30-year-old single woman who has dreams of marriage, children and family but who hasn't, in recent years, had more than a couple of mostly casual 2-3 month relationships, you'll pretty much try anything! So after checking out a few different dating sites I decided to try www.date.com because it was free to post a profile AND read your e-mails. You only had to pay if you wanted to send an e-mail yourself. Being both lonely and frugal I decided this was the place for me. I took advantage of the "show interest" option that came with the free package and nervously checked a box next to the user name of a guy who caught my eye. Would he like my profile? Would he respond? Would he wonder why a fab girl like me was still single at the ripe age of 3-0? Would we hit it off? Would this be the One? Would I please stop asking myself these ridiculous questions already?? Then..there it was. An e-mail. From him. (squeal!) OMG, I feel like a teenager again just typing this. Anyway, he wrote me a very nice note, the verbage of which I forget, but I'm sure it had something to do with how beautiful I was and how my answers to the profile questions were so incredibly witty and well -written, at the end of which he provided his personal e-mail address so that I could write him back without having to sign up to pay for doing so. Smart move, 'cause cute as his profile picture was and all I'm not entirely sure I would have shelled out the $14.95 or whatever it was just to say "Hi." (ok, I probably would have, but moving on...) Some time later we met in person and sometime after that we got married. (but that part of the story is another blog, too. :-))
The outcome of this blessed union was a surprise wedding gift, the kind of which you have to wait 9 months to unwrap. So there I was on that late summer day realizing for the first time that my life was about to completely change forever and that I had not only taken on the title of "wife" just a few scant weeks before, but would now be becoming a "mom" too.
This, my new baby of sorts, will follow my life from that point forward to share with all of those who are interested how someone like me transforms from a woman to a mom, and what she learns along the way. Some lessons come easily while others are hard-learned, but each day brings new realizations and reasons to laugh, cry and rejoice in all that is "motherhood."
Join me on my journey ... I could use the adult conversation!
Nanner
No comments:
Post a Comment