Nieces and nephews

I posted yesterday about some thoughts on the child-free/childless blog. But there was something else that bothered me about that post. She dismissed the joys some of us get from our nieces and nephews.

Logically I know of course that my love for my nieces and nephews is not that same as the love my sisters have for them. But that does not diminish the joy they bring to my life. And they do bring real joy. Take just my oldest niece, for example. I remember being at work the day my sister started having labor pains. I called home every 20 minutes to see if it was time to drive to the hospital. I remember reading to her for the first time. I remember feeling lonely while studying abroad halfway across the world and hearing her say my name for the first time. It was a misprounounced toddlerized version of my name, but it still made my heart soar. And it brought even more joy when I learned she remembered those phone calls and started saying my name every time her mother was on the phone.

I laughed when she was three and clomped around in my way too big for her tennis shoes. We laughed together when she was 11 and gave me a pair of too-small-for-her-but-just-right-for-me tennis shoes. (yes, her mother has really big feet as well)

There are moments of sadness, though, when I think of my nieces and nephews. Not because of what they do, but because they remind me of the joy that children bring and that I wish dearly could be in our house all the time. I get sad when I think that any kids we do eventually have won't have same age cousins to play with. I enjoy seeing my youngest niece and hearing her updates, but I also remember the despair I felt when my little sister gave birth to her after we had our IF diagnosis.

My sister called me a few days ago and asked me to babysit her kids overnight. She works at Starbucks and when my BIL is out of town, it makes more sense for them to spend the night at our house rather than have her try to find a babysitter who is willing to show up at 4:30am so she can open the store. Usually that is fine, although this particular weekend I have a big event on Saturday and she also needed me to take my nephew to his soccer game so I wasn't sure the logistics would work out. We each needed to double check some times, so we agreed to talk again the next day. In the meantime, I started thinking of the fun I could have with the kids: playing games, making blueberry pancakes. When she called the next day and said it might too much work and she would find a babysitter, I was disappointed. I want to spend this time with them. I don't want to miss out on this fun. So we worked it out and the kids will be here in a few hours.

And then I read the blog about how nieces and nephews just don't cut it in terms of providing joy in our lives. That is something I won't accept.

Kennedy

I woke up this morning with DH telling me Ted Kennedy had passed away. It's a sad day. His work has made our country better. I only wish he had lived long enough to see his dream come true that we finally recognize health care as a right guaranteed for all rather than a privilege.

I don't live in Massachusetts and I've never met any of the Kennedy family. I'm not old enough to remember what the Kennedy brothers really meant other than how that period is now portrayed in history. I do think I had a glimpse of what it was like through working on Obama's campaign and the sense that we are headed in a new direction.

But I do have a personal connection to the Kennedy family. I'm actually distantly related to them. It's not like I have my own room in the Kennedy compound (or any of their money or influence). But when I was in middle school and asked my Nana about our family history, she filled me in on this relationship. Terminator 2 had just come out and I quickly worked out that Arnold's kids and I were 5th cousins (Arnold is married to one of Ted Kennedy's nieces). A few years later as I became interested in politics, the relationship to the former president and current senator took on more of a prominence as I tell this story now.


This picture is from the only time I was ever in the same room with Kennedy. He visited my university to campaign for John Kerry in 2004.

Back from vacation

We are back from our family vacation. Tahoe was fantastic and very relaxing (well, I did have to do a little work, but it didn't really impede the relaxing). Hubby did lose his luggage which was stressful and it's still not found. But I think it actually worked out b/c he had to borrow clothes from my relatives and had an easy excuse for not going into the hot tub.

I spent the week forgetting about TTC. I enjoyed some good wine and went horseback riding. I left my BBT at home and slept in. I almost made it through the whole week without talking about it (I still thought about it, of course, at times). But then my mom insisted on talking about it on my last day there and I had to talk to my aunt who also had IF difficulties (more about that tomorrow).

Now I'm busy catching up on work and blogs. So much has happened while I was gone. I'm just happy this week is cut short due to July 4th.

Speaking

Thank you all for your nice words and kind thoughts during this hard time for my family. I guess it was good that I wrote these memories of my Nana since now I've been asked to speak at her memorial service to represent the grandkids. I'm not sure why my dad and uncle asked me, maybe because I have lots of public speaking experience. But, well, I'm not one who is very good at holding back emotion. I cry during cotton commericals (it is the fabric of our lives after all).

Nana

On this Memorial Day I am remembering my grandmother, Nana. I'm not sure exactly what her role was, but she was in the Merchant Marines during WWII.

As far as my grandmothers go, she was never the "fun" one, but she showed her love in her own way. For example, one day when I was about 15 I was dropped off to help her around her house. After I was finished, I had to wait for my ride to pick me up again. Not being much else to do, I read one of the many Reader's Digest laying around. She was so impressed that I read the entire thing that the next time I talked to her, she had a bag full of Reader's Digests ready for me to take home. She thought I enjoyed them and saved them all up for me.

She had two children, my dad and uncle. My grandfather passed away when my dad was about 10, so I never knew him, and my dad didn't really either. Both of her sons had their first kids at the same time, two girls born one month apart. I came along 2 years later. For 6 years we were the only grandkids. We each had our own special cup that we used at her house. Each had an animal on it and the tail curled around for the handle. Mine was a cat.

She is very short. Very very short. We called her Nana Smurf. She actually shrank as she got older. It was a point of honor when we kids got tall enough where we could rest our elbow on her head. That was a lot of fun.

My parents were divorced and she lived just a few minutes from where we lived with my mom. She would take me and my sister and mom out to eat every month. At the Spaghetti Factory. That was our special place.

She was also a remarkable woman. She volunteered for JFK campaign when he first ran for the senate. She met every president from JFK through Clinton. Her battle with Alzheimer's precluded her from meeting GWB or Obama. She was a teacher and education was important. She wrote curriculum books called "Amanda Panda". Although teaching has long relied on women, schools used to not allow married women to be teachers. Once women married, they were supposed to be home taking care of the house. Rather than fire her, her position was turned into a long-term substitute position so she could still teach but not be a teacher. Eventually this situation no longer made sense and Boston Public Schools changed their policy about married women teaching. Because she was a vet, they made her one of the first married women hired as a regular teacher.

I was the first of her children/grandchildren to graduate from college. Probably the only one she is aware of who graduated. One sad thing about her disease is that she lost awareness of what was happening. And she forgot who we were or what we were doing. First it was gradual. She knew I was in college, but couldn't remember where. She was so proud and told all her relatives and friends that her granddaughter went to Harvard. I actually went to Stanford, but the sentiment was the same. She was from Boston, so Harvard was the best to her. Later, as the disease progressed, she stopped recognizing us completely.

She's been living with my uncle for the past several years. My dad called last night and said she had respiratory distress and probably wouldn't last through the night.

**Update: Nana passed away this afternoon. Fortunately my dad was able to fly out there to see her before she passed. She will be missed. I hope she has finally found some peace.

Weekend roundup

It's been a busy weekend. Friday night we went to my sister's as my mom arrived and is staying there. I didn't tell them about our IF problems then b/c my sister actually threw together a last minute slightly late 2nd birthday party for my nephew and there were lots of people there. It was a good night.

Although I still can't escape IF discussion. During the night, my sister was telling a story about my BIL's cousin and his wife. We've never met this cousin before, but my sister is always mentioning them b/c she thinks we have a lot in common with them. After her story, she mentioned that they just adopted a baby b/c they couldn't have one on their own. On the way home, DH was like "yeah, we have in common with them then she knows."

Saturday we painted one wall of our kitchen red. The others are yellow and the red wall is the one you see from down the hall and it makes our long hallway look shorter, which is great. I decided a few months ago that if I can't have a baby when I want, at least I can have a pretty house. So each month after AF I'm going to paint some part of our house. And since we already had the paint from when we painted our fireplace the same color, it was a no-cost makeover! I'll post pictures once I get the kitchen back in order today.

Saturday night we bought tickets to a play. Now, I didn't know the topic of the play before we bought the tickets, I just read that it won the 2006 Pulitizer, so I figured it must be good. Turns out, the topic was about a couple that lost their 4 year old child. Yeah, just what we needed to hear about. I realize of course that as bad as seeing month after month of BFN is, losing your child is even worse, but still. And then to make it even worse, the second major plot point in the play was that the mother's irresponsible younger sister was pregnant! So it had all the feelings of sadness, jealousy, etc that I'm feeling now anyway. Despite the subject matter, I still enjoyed the play and the acting was superb. And I cried my eyes out, although the good news is that it was mostly feeling the actor's pain rather than my own. That was actually quite refreshing, as it turns out.