I did not pick the title of this post. In fact, I did not write this post but will add to it at the end. This comes from Brandi, who is my nephew David’s beautiful bride. She has her own blog called Mommy Tales from the Beach. There is a link to it here so be sure to be a regular with Brandi.
She wrote this wonderful post yesterday and it moved me very much. I noticed a lot of what happened to me years ago with my ex-wife and the mother of our son. I will tell you about that later, but first, here is something special about family from Brandi.
David and I started dating in 1994 when we were 16. From the time we became adults (18-19-20ish), David had made it clear that he did not want to have kids. I, knowing that he was perfect in every other way, shrugged it off and told myself that it was okay, I can get through life without kids, living vicariously through family and friends. When we were going to get married, he brought it up to me again, the idea of never wanting kids and I went along with it. I even convinced myself that even though children were totally fun to play with, I didn’t really want to be burdened with the responsibility of having to raise any of them.
Back in 2007, David had changed his mind on his own free will. I have no idea what happened, what the change was, how long it took, but one day he told me that he was having a change of heart and wanted to have children. Shortly after I went off of birth control and six months later I was pregnant with Zack.
Today, I was watching my son do his toddler thing. He was telling me a story in his language (the one I can’t really understand but try to) and laughed, several times, in the middle of it. I’ve said it before plenty of times that I can’t believe he’s already 15 months old. While Zack was talking his head off, my baby girl growing inside of me was doing flips. There are some days, some moments, where I still can’t believe I’m a mom.
It’s hard to believe such a short time ago, David and I were going to be one of those couples that decided not to reproduce. Now, we have a toddler with a baby on the way. We have gone from staying up super late on the weekends only to wake up sometime a little before noon to going to bed by midnight (or earlier) knowing that we’ll be up sometime between 7:30 and 8:30. We traded in our leather home theater chairs for an Ikea chair that fits better in the living room to accommodate the toy corner.
We still have our fun. We see our friends every weekend and we still play our video games. We can even still watch movies, however, that doesn’t happen until after Zack goes to bed.
I’ve said it to David before, but I’ll say it again here. I am so incredibly happy that he changed his mind. I am truly blessed that we have this life now that feels so astonishingly complete.
Hard to follow that, but I will give it a go.
When I met and married Maureen, another wonderful woman, we settled in to our new togetherness. We had met running a 17 mile training run for a marathon. So running was a big part of our lives. We traveled a lot in California and some in other states. We visited Yosemite, Monterey, San Francisco, Orlando, New York City, Boston, Cape Cod, Hawaii a couple of times, Canada and other places I can’t recall now. We ran so many races and were just on the go, go, go. There was no talk of having children. It was something we had dismissed since we were having such an active and fun time without little ones.
Then one day, Maureen mentions to me she would like to be a mother. Whoa, where did that come from was my first thought. A definite upset of the apple cart. I was resistant for sure. Why mess with such a good thing? I was what you might call, a hold-out. And my hold-out lasted quite a while….months. I just couldn’t wrap my arms around this idea.
Then one day, I can remember it like yesterday, I was walking in Parkway Plaza in El Cajon, Ca (near San Diego) when I noticed this incredibly cute little stuffed bear in the window of a toy store. I have no idea what it was that suddenly pulled me to that bear. But there I stood, in front of the window, looking at the little guy and thinking how neat it would be to have a child with whom to share this bear.
I walked in, bought the bear, got a card and presented it to Maureen with a “Mushy Moo” note saying, “I am ready now.” I had come around to be in the same place Maureen had been for months. This all took place in the summer of 1983 when I was 37 and Maureen was 32. The following April little John Bradley (Brad) was born. However, he was dealt a bad hand and did not live through the day.
We were not deterred and in July, 1985, Jeffrey Ryan was born in San Diego. What a day that was.
He became the light of our life and our traveling companion. When Jeff was 10 weeks old, we took him to Hawaii. Then he went again when he was 14 months. We took him to Yosemite and I carried that little squirt all over the Yosemite Valley. He went everywhere with us…Orlando, Washington DC, Williamsburg, Monterey, San Francisco, New York City and other parts near and far. We had decided to keep being active and include him in every part of our adventures. We have so many great memories from those days.
I know there are those of you who had children much earlier in the process. I was 39 when Jeff was born. My best friend’s, John and Kathy, were 21 when their son, Tony, was born. We enjoyed those early years in completely different ways but both were exciting and rewarding. Those of you reading this probably have stories just as rewarding about how and when you decided to bring some little rug rats into your worlds. Brandi and I would love to read about it, so don’t be shy.
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