Wanting something I never thought I wanted

As a little girl growing up, I never dreamed of a wedding or of being married and having a family. I guess I just assumed I would? but I never had all those kinds of fantasies. It wasn’t that I had a bad experience...I grew up in a stable two parent Brady bunch type family. I loved kids and babies...I was always the one who wanted to hold any new baby I saw. I started babysitting early, and had tons of experience with children of all ages.

I never imagined having my own child, though. Not really ever. And then once in highschool it was definitely the thing you did not want to end up having. I can remember that some girls talked about wanting to have a baby right after graduation, and I remember thinking it was nuts. I thought it was nuts when we saw teenage girls we knew pregnant, and then all around town toting a baby in a stroller. I couldn’t even picture my life like that. I tried to imagine once what it would be like if I got pregnant, and man...it just didn’t even seem like the thing to do, maybe ever. I remember when the first of our small circle of girls from my highschool got married right after we graduated and had a baby right away...when we met at one friends house all dressed to go out one night, the girl who had the baby stopped by to see us and we all sat in a circle around her with the baby in the middle of the floor. She was about 6 months old at the time. We all stayed at her like she was an alien, and ooohed and ahhhed over her for a few minutes and then we had nothing to talk about, and sort of rolled out and left her with the baby, because as Resse Witherspoon said “You can’t bring a baby to a BAR”...lol

I remember another time in highschool during some complete joke of a life skills class (even we could tell back then how much of a joke it really was) we had to plan a wedding, so the vision board and everything. I remember all these girls getting so into it, and I was so...not. I remember making up a small portion of it and otherwise creating a very hippie wedding held in the mountains on my older brothers property (that part is true, this place does exist and my brother does live there) and spending like $2K... HA. The hippie part still tracks today, fyi.

So yeah. Never on my radar, these motherly things. When it came to my own wedding, after trying in several different styles of a wedding, we eloped to Reno, NV at Silver Bells wedding chapel. I still don’t regret it. And I’ve seen friends and coworkers plan these crazy weddings and it’s all so much...so I’ve always joking told my girls they should just elope one day. But in all seriousness, I highly recommend it, and it doesn’t have to be a secret...we told everyone in advance. (Don’t worry, we had a teeny tiny (not an exaggeration) Church ceremony in the chapel a couple years later to appease my dad, but we wanted to anyway, that was always the plan.)

But I had the instinct, I always have. I was a nanny for my sister all
through middle and highschool.  I took care of them when there was one, then 2, then 3, and then one day all four of them. And I loved them and treated them like they were my own kids. (I still do.) My niece, the second oldest, is the most like me and the one who I understand because she’s so misunderstood just like I am. She’s now almost 27, and going to be married this year (hopefully everything can happen as tentatively planned but I’ve offered to get a certification and marry them if it comes down to it)

She was able to drive to her parents state where the wedding will be to do wedding planning stuff. Today they Said Yes to a Dress and sampled all the food. She (and my sister) we’re sending me pictures throughout the day, and the first one that popped up was the one of my beautiful niece in THE dress...and I cried so many tears. I am so happy for her. I can’t believe my baby niece is going to be a wife soon...and it made me so wistful. And then the pictures of the food and the people during the tasting...first, I was WAY jealous because catering food always looks SO amazing with surprises in the flavors and textures...but what really got me was imagining them all sitting there together at the table, and how my goofball brother in law would be telling corny dad jokes and “critiquing” the food like some sort of food network expert, and I could picture the dumb faces he was making and I could hear the laughter of everyone and all the silly loving barbs going back and forth.

And I realize that I want that with my kids. That I want them help to plan a ceremony to join them together with the love of their life, their soul pate, their forever person. I thought about cool it would be, knowing the kind of crazy family we are and how we laugh and joke together, how that would be so much fun to do. And I surprised myself by telling everyone as I showed them pictures how I would be down with planning a wedding, a small intimate one, not some crazy 300 person waste of money party.

And I realized how I’ve always been so preoccupied with wanting another baby and grieving my lost babies and trying for more babies...how I have these babies here that aren’t babies. I’m being dramatic here, of course I notice they are growing older and up. But I guess through this pandemic where time has seemingly stood still, I’ve been able to breathe in and take a look around me, and really study hard, like a sculptor would, at the beings in front of me. To memorize every part of them, to freeze their voices in time in my mind. To freeze their faces exactly as they are today, to burn and etch them into my memory. And it’s also reminding me to be present, all the time. To not miss a beat, a single drop in tone of voice, to all of it. To check in even more (so, like all the time) because this is a challenging time for them to, mentally, physically, emotionally. Only they don’t always know where to put it or how to handle it. Neither to most of us, right?

So back to that food tasting? I really hope I get lucky enough to sit around a table sampling food and making jokes with my kids one day.