Discovery

As we laid Pard to rest under the lilac tree in January, I was filled with a heartache that is still, even five months later, indescribable to me. With all the tenderness in the world, Scott dug the hole, crawled into it and laid Pard's body in the ground. Facing West in true cowdog tradition, I had written in the Pard Letters. I watched that part, and turned away before the backhoe could move the earth to cover him over. That is one thing I could not witness, and for that, I asked Pard to forgive my aching soul. Tears still quickly slip from my eyes as I write this, as they have done many, many times since that day. I still tell P goodnight, I still touch his collar left on my beside cabinet. I miss him every day. But since his passing, and through the healing process that is beginning, something magical (for lack of a better word) is happening in our home.

It started with the change in the energy of our home. A slight shift at first, then growing and changing. On Easter Sunday, Scott was confirmed an Elder. Which in our little world means he now holds the Melchizedek priesthood, which is something we have never had in either home since we were about 12 and 10, respectively. The beginning changes were small, but people in our ward were noticing. They came up quietly and told me they could see the light in his face, the change in his countenance. They saw how happy I was, how happy we were, and told us what they saw. Inside our home, spiritually, things ar changing for us in amazing ways, but it is subtle, still and gentle.

Outside our home, things are changing as well. Next to the darker lilac tree, the lighter-colored lilac bush in our backyard has never bloomed more than maybe three blossoms at best in the nine years we have lived in our home. This year it has fully blossomed. It is beautiful and the whole landscape is breathtaking to us. I take so much joy in listening to the birds singing, the owl hooting, the chickens talking to each other. Scott brought in more dirt to extend the garden, and we planted it as a family the other day. Something small, but something we have never done together, in harmony and with laughter sprinkled in with the seeds that were laid in the ground. Perhaps it's just my view on things, but the grass almost sparkles, it's so bright and fresh. The flowers offer so much color and I can't wait to see what the rose tree will look like when she's fully in bloom. The tramp is just crying for a warm night, so we can sleep on it and the firepit waits for marshmallows and starburst candy. The whole thing just begs for friends and family, barbecues and night games and memories to be made.

The beauty of back garden takes away some of the pain I feel now, when I look at the bare spot where my beloved dog now lies. I think of his body, not in repose like I did before, but now nourishing the ground, filling our garden with a special magic that is spreading to the inside and outside of our little home. I am so grateful for the love and protection Pard showed our family when he was here, and am so thankful for the same, yet different, kind of love and protection that continues on afterward. His little body may be gone, but the strength of his spirit lives here.....from the living room where he spent so much time, to his resting place outside. Pard is here, and I am ever-thankful that my eyes and heart are open to see and feel this. As I sat down to write this, moved to do so quickly, which happens when I write, I realized upon finishing that it was five months ago today that we said goodbye for now. For this is how the Lord works, in His most mysterious ways. How lucky we are to realize this now....to learn such a lesson from loss, experience peace and witness the sheer joy of discovery.

These are a few of my favourite things ♪ ♫

The other day, our local news station posted an update on facebook about the cold weather we've had since, oh I don't know.....October? I thought about making my own snarky commment on there too, until I started to type and realized that I have absolutely no reason at all to complain about cold weather. We know it's cold, but heck, it snowed last June, and it's only rained and been windy so far. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I really don't have much to complain about, but I have much to be grateful for.
◘ I have a roof over my head that is stable, which provides protection against the elements, and if I put my back in to it, cleans up pretty nicely. In a neighborhood that I cherish, in an area that is not damaged by earthquakes or tornadoes or flooding. I have a home.
◘ I work with people who truly like me and make me laugh hysterically and who don't care when I'm late or when life gets in the way. I am happily employed.
◘ I have a family that is alive and well and for the most part - healthy, and who love me unconditionally. I am not an orphan.
◘ I have a daughter who snuggles me and tells me how beautiful I am - regardless of morning breath, an unwashed face and dry, contact-laden eyes that can barely open at first. A daughter who is vibrant, healthy, alive. I am a mother.
◘ I have a husband who has gone above and beyond preparing our home for the impending arrival of family I've never met, fixing, texturing, painting, skirting-boarding (is that a word?), mowing, raking, hauling in fresh dirt to extend the garden, tilling said garden, fixing a bird-proof netting/wooden support thingie for the strawberry patch, making a firepit for us to enjoy on warm and chilly nights and roasting marshmallows for his little girl. I am not a widow.
◘ I use the internet tonight to blog, not as a desperate search for a loved one, or to tell relatives that I survived devastation.
◘ I am going to sleep tonight in my beautiful king-size log bed (our wedding gift from my mother) with it's flannel sheets and an open window. I will snuggle with my dogs, my cats, my husband and I will rest peacefully, knowing I am safe.
◘ I am going to get up in the morning, and have fresh, clean, hot running water to bathe in.
◘ I am going to wear whatever I want to. Because that is my choice.
◘ I am going to church tomorrow. Because I can.
◘ I am going to teach 7 year old precious souls to the best of my ability, and tell them of their Heavenly Father's love for them, and show them that I love them. Because I am free to do so.

At the close of this extraordinarily busy day of cleaning and yardwork and chicken-chasing and neighbor-talking and enormous preparation, I am finding a multitude of choice blessings to be grateful for. These are just a few of my most favourite things.

Three for Thursday - A first for yours truly

Three favorite items of clothing:
1. Muh Arizona jeans. I have 3 pair, all.the.same.
2. Brown Ariat ProBabys, broken and broken in :)
3. Layered Modbe shirts

Three things in my house that I wish were self-cleaning:
1. Does the backyard count?
2. The laundry
3. The litter box

Three favorite summertime lunches:
1. Fruit pizza
2. Chicken/walnut/craisin-salad croissants
3. Turkey/avocado in a tomato-basil wrap

Three things my child says that she picked up from me:
1. Shut the front door......and I'm not talking about one with a doorknob.
2. Crazy Utard drivers!
3. *The voice*....used when the dogs are in trouble

Three good movie recommendations:
1. Eat, Pray, Love
2. True Grit
3. The Holiday

Three inexpensive date night ideas:
1. The drive-in movies
2. Orange Leaf
3. Driving to Heise

Three favorite flowers:
1. Gerber daisies
2. Wildflowers
3. Orange Asiatic lilies

Three places I'd like to visit:
1. Home to England
2. Lanzarote
3. Greece

Three good habits that I practice:
1. Brushing my teeth at least 2x/day
2. Making it to church every week
3. Making sure every mouth is fed before mine

Three pictures:
1. The tree we thought was a weed at first, grew in between the chicken coop and the shed. It grew and grew and so we transplanted it to the middle of the yard. I christened him George.

2. Because only Jay, our crazy rescue cat would choose to lie down next to a crackling fire. A campfire. So we pulled out the marshmallows and basked in the glory that is our little home.

3. And this one, because I'm lucky to have friends that don't get mad at their sewing machines and throw them downstairs like I do. And sparkly turquoise curtains make me happy :)

The power of Eleven

Eleven is my favorite number, partly because of it's earthly and spiritual significance in my life. I have many reasons why I love this number and now, I will share with you why Eleven is so important to me today. For it was eleven years ago tomorrow, that I birthed my beautiful, vivacious redhead minutes before the clock ticked it's way to ten o'clock that night. I am dedicating this post to the little girl who forever changed me, and the world we live in. Words will forever be inadequate when describing what Macady means to me.

In March of 1999, I wrote a letter to my child. In it, I described how I couldn't wait to meet her, how excited I was to be her mother, how I was preparing for her arrival. She was not conceived until September of that year. I knew my little one was ready to come to earth, long before she arrived. Although we had dated for four years, I still did not feel were not ready nor financially prepared to have a child. But I embraced my pregnancy, thumbing my nose at society, not caring about any factors that attribute to a proper, earthly birth. I grew, I expanded, the morning/nightly sickness lasted for six months and I endured it happily. I lost a lot of weight at first, but gradually began to blossom. During the seventh month, I suffered from toxemia, bloating, rapid weight gain, water retention, and despite voicing my concerns, I was never heard by my doctor. I worried about my baby and every night, I would slowly pat my abdomen to the rhythm of my heartbeat, and sing the Cedar Smoke song to her. I didn't know all the words, they were lost to me from my time in the Gros Ventre sweat lodge, but the music remained firm in my bosom and so I sang to her. Patting and soothing, I told Macady how much I loved her and how grateful I was that she would choose me to be her mother.

Barely 21 years old, three weeks earlier than expected, I delivered my tiny little fairy on Memorial Day Monday. I will always treasure the feeling as she slipped from between my legs, and I wanted that moment to last forever. It was the only thing I felt during the actual delivery, as I had labored for twelve hours and finally asked for an epidural. I wish I could go back in time and take that wish away :) Born at 9:57 pm, my five pound, premature Fae child was placed in my arms after an hour of being checked, checked, and checked again. I begged for her, and they just picked her up for a glance before wheeling her away. The delivery was forced. Encouraged even, as my water breaking had "ruined" everyone's Memorial Day. Nurses argued with the doctor, who later joked that we should've all stayed in Island Park to save the travel back to EIRMC. Forceps were used to pull her from me, stretching and misshaping her head, tearing me open and then the dreadful expectation to stand on legless limbs mere minutes later and the disgusted looks I got for not being able to. I remember saying that oxygen made me ill, it was so sickeningly sweet. I remember saying, No! I don't want to see it! As the doctor pulled up the bloody placenta to show me where my baby had been living in. I remember nearly passing out at the sight of all that blood, and wondering why, oh why, hadn't they brought her to me?

Finally, after an eternity, they brought my pink-cheeked, peach-fuzzy headed, utterly perfect child to me and I wept tears of gratitude as earthly words escaped me and a spiritual feeling indescribable to anything else encompassed us as we held our daughter. Her name is Macady, from one of my favorite books from teenagehood. In my own interpretation from Mac meaning mine, and Cady from Catherine and Cadence; to me, her name means My Pure Rhythm.

The picture below is one I've kept hidden for many years, because it truly shows how exhausted and washed out I was...Unhappy because she'd been away from me for too long, I hadn't so much as washed my face and 15 hours later, I looked like this. I do not have another hospital picture, although another wish is that I could've made myself up a little and had a nice picture to show. Hence, it's been hidden at the bottom of the picture box until now. Now I'm okay with it.

And with her daddy, who remained speechless most of that night :)

I never listened as they told me how fast time would fly. I wish among all other things, that I could've truly appreciated and treasured her babyhood and toddler years. She was a perfect child. She never screamed, only cried infrequently and only then if she was poorly, wet or hungry. Since I didn't allow those things to happen, she was rarely sick or wet and never hungry.

I would sing to her every Summer morning as she woke: Good morning, good morning, can you hear the birds? A beautiful song, without any words. Good morning, good morning, a song sweet and true. Good morning, good morning, a song just for you.

I will always maintain that by telling her how excited I was to be up all night feeding her, telling her it was okay to wake up to be fed, it was okay to sleep, loving her whilst in utero, it truly effected how she spent her first years. She came home sleeping through the night. I remember telling her the opposite of whatever naysayers would tell me and I really believe it worked.
Here she is on her first birthday.

Macady didn't go through her terrible twos, or threes. She had one major tantrum when she was about five and that's all. We bought the horse movie Spirit for her third Christmas. We subsequently went through three more DVD's as it was watched over and over and over. It was the first movie that she cried watching. It was an amazing experience to witness her *feel* how the horse was. Her little soul embodied the moral of that movie. She was, and still is my Spirit, that could never be broken. I was extremely lucky and most certainly blessed to have such a patient and caring child. I wish I could go back to those beautiful days, for just a moment.

Like her mother, she was born with the gift of discernment. She is able to foresee events before they happen and recites conversations nearly verbatim that have occurred while she was in a completely different location. I remember driving one day and she told me that Heavenly Father sent her our kitten, Stripes, to us because we were chosen to be her mother. Out of the blue, another driving day, she told me she was a Rainbow Child, because that's what Heavenly Father called her. She tells me often that I am more of a big sister to her, rather than a mother...that her Nanny is more like her mother, but she is okay with that, because "It works". She has seen her brother McKay, since she was two years old. As our families' Scottish surname, correctly pronounced, it sounds like Mc-Eye, not a hard 'a' sound. She called him My Guy then, and when I asked her if it was an angel or her brother, she squealed in delight and my scriptures fell from the shelf, where they had been secured, onto the floor and I was chilled. She sees him often and always inquires to when he will be here. Years later, I still have no answer for her, but will fully embrace that time should it come again.

So here we are, on the eve of her eleventh year. She has been gone all day, riding her bike, playing with friends, packing a picnic lunch in her backpack, headed back to the park on her bike. I have spent all afternoon wrapping her presents in her favorite colors, turquoise and pink. I cannot wait to watch her open them all tomorrow! I will always indulge my biggest blessing, as if there is no tomorrow. I treat every celebration as if I won't have another chance to do so. Morbid, some may think. But when you only have one, you learn quickly to take advantage of every moment possible, to cherish and spoil, as it were. I am lucky to be able to do this, and still have a gracious, sweet child who says thank you for everything and never expects anything. She truly shines in her humility and in so many other ways. I dedicate this to my precious darling. May this Eleventh Year be as special to you as it is to me. May you stay as sweet as you are and may the Lord bless and keep you always.
All my love,
Mummy xxxxxx

Yikes

Who knew a year could pass so fast? Thanks to facebook, I can update my status a heck of a lot faster than this route and obviously have neglected this poor page. So now I'm not sure whether I should just do a quick update or jump into what's new....Let's see, Macady will be 11 next Sunday, she's nearly taller than me (and is with shoes). My shoes. And my clothes. Yep, she's officially growing up and I'm still in denial over the whole thing. I'm simply not old enough to have a preteen and that's all there is to it. As expected, there have been a lot of changes this year. Between Church, work, marriage and family, not necessarily in that order, many things have 180'ed. So glad things are better with the whole death-do-us-part deal though, because it went beyond rough and I was so done last year. I've found that whenever I'm doing what I know I'm supposed to be doing, doing what the Lord wants, the adversary takes a giant toothpick and starts in at the chinks in my armor. And digs until I bleed.


Church is church. I'm still in Primary, 7 years now but I've graduated to the 7 year olds. I've taught every single child in the Jr. and one class in the Sr. so far. Church is better, since Scott was ordained an Elder on Easter Sunday. That was simply amazing and I could dedicate an entire post to how much I wanted to shout it from the rooftops and he didn't tell a soul until the night before. Humility. It's an awesome trait that I so don't possess. 


We are (thinking) about going through the temple, but I have so.many.questions. I don't even know where to start, who to ask, and the fear of embarrassment and ignorance is so real. I just keep in mind the one time we got to go through as a family before the Rexburg temple was dedicated. I remember every detail, what was happening around me, the words I had heard, and how I was told that it wouldn't feel the same as it should, because of the iniquitous feet that had traveled the same path bruising the sacredness that is there. I remember what the Celestial room looked like, how it felt and how I couldn't stop staring at myself in the eternal mirrors as one temple worker discussed the plan of salvation and eternal families. As someone who doesn't look often in the mirror, for I am embarrassed at what I see, (unless it's to check if I have something in my teeth), I simply don't look. But that afternoon as I walked into that room, I could not stop staring at my reflection. I smile when I think of the explanation of how the mirrored effect worked, that you can't see the eternal significance if you only look at yourself, but that you must look at the person next to you to get the full effect of the eternal family. And I laugh because the only thought that crossed my mind when I heard that, was "Great! My eternity will be spent alone!" I cry when I think of the words I heard so clearly, as if someone was standing right next to me: "Anna. This is how your Heavenly Father sees you. This is your true reflection. The mirrors of the world are simply of the world, meant to destroy the beauty that is within you." Until that day, I'd never even thought of how a worldly mirror can effect the way you see yourself. But to me, it rang true and for just a moment, I felt beautiful, loved, whole. And as I processed all this, we crossed the threshold of the Celestial room and I thought to myself that at least I had this moment in a temple, with my little family and that the spirit there was so unexpectedly strong, regardless of the naysayers. And then I heard the only words Scott spoke the entire tour. In a hushed whisper, a promise that we would return as a family one day. A blessed, blessed day.


Since that came out of nowhere, I'll go on. I still want another baby. Definitely at home or a birthing center, non-medicated, with a certain soul sister at my side coaching me through it. I want to nurse until my baby is ready to wean. I want to enjoy postpartum and not feel like dying. I want to heal quickly, without waiting for drugs to eradicate out of my system. I want to be able to freely move my body, lay my baby down without hurting, feel free to get chiropractic work, align our bodies and our spirits, to feel beautiful and not hate my body for 11 years. I can totally envision it and think about it a lot. Macady still asks me when her brother is coming. I tell her hopefully before she leaves for college. Holy schnikeys....can you even freaking imagine? Happy Graduation, dolly. You're going to be a big sister. Oy vey.


I couldn't leave this story without mentioning one of the biggest life-changing events I'll ever experience and one day, I'll share my writings about losing Pard. I call them the Pard Letters. I miss my beloved sweet friend every day and four months later, every time I think of him, my throat swells closed and tears spring to my eyes once again. For now, I'll just say that Pard was much more than just a dog, he was everything to us. He still comes to me in spirit and I know he will always be close to me. He is buried in the backyard under the lilac trees and we will never move from this home. Because since his passing, this house that we have lived in for nearly 9 years has become a home and I am just realizing how much living we've done here, how we've raised a child here and filled it full of love and memories. This is the house that built us and I hope we never have to leave.


That was this year in a nutshell. I was simply done and didn't have much left to give in many areas. But, like all good stories, things turned around and I learned way more than I expected to. I've grown up a little bit, and it really wasn't that bad. And I've learned how to improvise when it rains and you need a match to light your way.

Speak no evil

When do you say out loud the things that hurt you most? Do you suck it up and sit down, afraid to hurt someone's feelings? Or do you tell them that what they've done really hurt you, hurt your feel-bads? I didn't say anything, because I was afraid to hurt her feelings, so I said Thank you so much for helping me, and I walked away. And then I got in my car and cried all the way home about it. I hate that deep-down belief that it's okay for me to be hurt, as long as the other party walks away un-wounded. I mean, I really, really don't like that about myself. Now I know that we all have choices, etc. That's part of daily American verbage: You always have a choice. So I get that, and I get that the only way to stop the hurt would be to put on my big girl knickers and state my problem, air it out, let 'em know how I really feel, yada, yada, yada. But I didn't, I can't and I won't. And it's that part of me that I can't change, because of that damned deep rooted belief that I need to turn the other cheek and not say one word.

PDA

I watched a special on Nightline tonight about the "Hugging Saint" known as Amma. She's hugged more than 30 million people worldwide and has this huge mission to show the world what Unconditional Love is, in its' most simplistic form. (She was totally in Theta and IMO looked just like an Indian version of Vianna). It was the way that she looked at every person she hugged. And the way she hugged them, like my mum hugs me. And so I cried. Like a baby.
          I miss her hugging me. I miss her cuddling me. And so what if I'm over 30?  I can still snuggle my mum when I crave that feeling of being wanted, cherished and loved. Ladies, be grateful if your husband hugs you or ever holds you close, when or if your mom can't, or won't. Men, get on it if you haven't already. I say this only because although I married a great man, he is, in essence, the Marlboro Man. Tough, gritty and distant. He doesn't talk about his feelings, doesn't act like he cares about yours and laughs when you're in a pissy mood because he thinks that helps. He shouldn't think, it'd be easier on all of us :) So go hug somebody. Let them know you love them, you care about them, you kinda like them, you're sorry, just because, whatever works. Just  get it done already and know that if you think they need it...they probably do.