a letter to my nephew

Dear Kid,

As I write this, your mother has been in the hospital for ten hours. Ten hours, and nothing. What’s with you?

Look, I know it’s warm and cozy in there, and technically you’ve still got three weeks left on your lease. But your little nature provided airbag (amniotic sac) is gone now, and that’s kind of the point of no return. You don’t want to get an infection, do you? Of course you don’t. You’re a good boy, and I know you want to do the right thing. So come on out, already.

It’s not so bad out here, really. Sure it’s noisy, and bright, and you’ll have to wear clothes (and that’s a drag, really), but there’s a lot of good stuff too. Your mom is really anxious to meet you, and so is your dad. They’ve been waiting a long time for you. Someone who’s been waiting even longer is your Grandma - she’s crazy about you already, and I bet if you play your cards right, she’ll spoil you rotten.

I want to meet you too, of course, and I can teach you all kinds of neat stuff. How to play baseball, all about hockey (you WILL be a Red Wings fan, of course), and most useful of all, how to REALLY get on your mom’s nerves. I’ve been doing it for a long time, and I know all the tricks. Anytime you want to get one over on her, you just call Auntie Hannah and we’ll get it done.

If you come out you’ll get to meet King, too. He’s your doggie, and he’s very sweet. When you’re old enough he’ll snuggle up on your bed with you, even though Mom will tell him not to.

Best of all, Kid? Everybody – I mean EVERYBODY, from the nurses to the doctors to Mom & Dad, Grandma & Grandpa and all their friends – are going to be at your beck and call for the foreseeable future. They’ll do everything for you, day or night – you won’t have to lift a finger. Which let me tell you, is a pretty sweet deal.

So come on out, okay Kid? We’re ready to meet you.

tis the season

Well, it’s the 14th of December and I’m finished with my Christmas shopping.

The reason I know I’m finished is because I’m out of money.

I’m very happy with the gifts I was able to get for my loved ones this year. I still have three packages to ship to my long distance family and friends, but everything for the local loved ones is wrapped and under the tree already. Which leaves me with a lovely sense of accomplishment, and no further excuses for putting off my manuscript.

I started this project out with a big bang, but my attention has been wavering since just before Thanksgiving. I traveled to visit my sister the week before Turkey Day, and it’s been difficult to get back on my five to ten pages a day track. But I have a nice chunk of time ahead of me (I’m on vacation from Christmas Eve until January 4th) and very little in the way of obligations, save a party on New Year’s Eve, to get in my way. My boyfriend will be spending the holidays with me, but he’s really great about not only entertaining himself so I can work, but reminding me that I said I wanted to work.

Sometimes I need to be reminded.

It’ll be good to both get back to work and have a nice stretch of time to spend with my fella. Living two hours away from each other tends to take its toll, even though we do a great deal of traveling to make sure we see each other regularly, and we’re both looking forward to several uninterrupted days to spend together. The sum total of our plans is to maybe, possibly, meet some friends for dinner one night.

I can get behind that kind of holiday.

it's never too early for family drama

I’m typing this at four o’clock in the morning, and I am awake and mobile at this insane hour to catch an early flight to Houston. It’s my first trip back there since my move west a year and a half ago. I’m going to have dinner with some friends, catch up with an old colleague over lunch, and visit the shops I miss most. I’m also going to be attending not one but two baby showers, celebrating my sister’s birthday (yesterday), celebrating MY birthday (Monday), and doing some mother/daughter/sister bonding.

It’s a lot to cram into five days.

But it’ll be fine. I’ve gotten to a point with my family where I am able to just be who I am, let them be who they are, and not get my knickers in a twist (too much) about any of it. It didn’t used to be that way; spending time with my family, with my mother especially, has been historically difficult. Don’t get me wrong – I love my mother. But we have, in the grand tradition of mothers and daughters the world over, butted heads. A lot.

Mostly because we share a lot of personality traits. We’re both stubborn, we’re both in possession of explosive tempers, and we’re both convinced that we’re right and the rest of the world is full of shit. The trouble is, the way we view the world and our priorities have always been vastly different. The result has been a mother/daughter relationship that has been at times rocky, acrimonious, and during the summer of 1994 (what my mother calls the Summer from Hell), downright hostile.

But something changed in the last few years. Maybe it was because I’ve grown more comfortable and secure in who I am as a person, so I’m less inclined to take offense when someone questions me. Maybe it’s because I finally realized that no matter how misguided she seems to be to me, her words and actions come from love, and a genuine desire to see me happy (just because she has no idea what makes me happy doesn’t negate the good intentions). Maybe it’s because she went through a bout of colon cancer last year, and I realized that I only have one mother. And no matter how crazy I think she is, or how out of touch or annoying I find the things she does, she’s still my mother and I want her around for a long time.

Whatever it was, spending time with Mom is a lot easier these days. Comments or questions that used to piss me off now mostly amuse me. If I do get irritated or frustrated, I’ve learned to step back for a second, remind myself that her opinions or needs don’t have to have an effect on my choices, and it’s fine. Plus my sister is there, and we can meet in the kitchen for a midnight beer (water for her) and kvetch about our crazy mom.

I’m looking forward to it.

Too many choices!!

My younger sister is expecting her first child in January, an event which has caused a great deal of excitement in my family. Mainly in my mother, who has been subtly hinting that she would like to become a grandmother for at least fifteen years, not so subtly hinting for ten, and outright begging for the last five. She is beside herself with excitement, and I credit my sister’s pregnancy for helping my mom get past her recent bout with colon cancer. Not that the baby gave her “something to live for” or anything dramatic like that; my mother has plenty to live for, and knows it. But it did give her something to look forward to, and to focus on, while she was dealing with her disease.

For myself, I’m not quite as ecstatic as Mom, but I’m excited. My sister’s wanted children for a few years, and seeing her joy makes me really happy. I’m looking forward to being Auntie Hannah, and let’s face it, shopping for baby clothes and baby toys is just fun!

To that end, I’m getting ready to give my first gift to my nephew – a baby quilt. No, I’m not making it myself. My craftiness runs to counted cross stitch and mending the occasional hem; quilting is beyond my ken. But I have a co-worker, Bonnie, who is an avid quilter. Bonnie has made quilts for a lot of the folks around the office, so she’s putting one together for me. I’m charged with picking out the fabric and the pattern, and she’ll do the rest. Sounds like a cake walk, right? Wrong.

First, I had to pick the pattern. Bonnie had shown me a few of the finished baby quilts she’d done, and I picked a circle pattern that I thought was great because it was a departure from the traditional square pattern you usually see. Then I gave her some direction on the fabric, which I wanted to match my sister’s nursery colors of chocolate brown and Tiffany blue. We picked out some fabrics, and I figured I was done.

Nope. Bonnie put the pieces together and brought it to me for approval. I hated it – the colors that looked so great in the swatches were hideous put together in the pattern, and lucky for me Bonnie agreed. So back to the drawing board. And in the meantime, my sister changed her nursery decorating plans, so the brown and blue went out the window. Now there is a world of colors and patterns for me to choose from….and it’s too much!

Do I go with pastels? Primary colors? What fabric pattern? Should I stick with the circles or go with squares? An animal theme, or maybe cowboy? Aliens or spacemen? Prints or solids? I'm not kidding when I say my head spins with all the possibilities and the decisions I have to make.

I might just buy the kid a drum kit instead.

and away we go!

Today I am packing. Why am I packing? Because in advance of next week's RWA National Convention (which I am attending, and will be signing copies of Secrets 27 - if you're there, come say hi!), I have decided to do something that in all of my thirty something years I have never, ever done.

I am taking the man I'm dating home to meet my parents.

It occurs to me that maybe I should have done this once or twice before. Because the fact that I'm doing it now, when I have never ever done it before, has created an air of significance around the event. Especially for my mother.

My mother has been nagging me for fifteen years to give her grandbabies, although the nagging has abated considerably over the last couple of years. I think she'd finally given up hope that I would follow the example of my many cousins into marriage and motherhood, and I was happy to let her keep that impression since it made my life - and my relationship with Mom - much less complicated.

But now I'm bringing a man home. Across approximately fourteen states. On purpose. And the nagging, it has begun anew.

Thank goodness my boyfriend doesn't scare easy!