How I Spent My Valentine's Day

I'm not a fan of February. It's my least favorite month of the year. Although it's the shortest, it drags on interminably, full of dreary, gray days,  long nights, and cold winds. Ugh, I hate it. February is just the month I use to mark time waiting for spring. 

On Valentine's Day, my sister and I decided to hang out, and take Atleigh with us. While we were leaving the house, Atleigh tripped over my foot and planted into the sidewalk. She scraped her knee, ribs, and palms. And cried and moaned for 40 minutes straight. You would think she'd never taken a tumble in her entire life. 

This excessive drama led to her getting to "choose" where we ate lunch. I use the quotation marks because really it means we give her options and then try to talk her into the one we want. She wanted Olive Garden, we wanted Plaza Azteca. We ended up with a compromise of sorts: we went through the Chick-fil-A drive thru for her, bringing the food along for her to eat at Plaza Azteca, and promising her frozen yogurt afterwards. 

That night, Ashton had basketball ball practice. We went to Jeremy's parents' house for dinner, then dropped Ashton off at practice and returned to their house to wait it out. We had brought both dogs with us. Now, I almost never take Neville with me anywhere. He can't stomach it. The poor boy gets green just looking at the car. It's especially heartbreaking to me, since all I ever wanted was a dog I could bring with me everywhere, with his head hanging out the window, ears blowing in the breeze. But we figured the trip was so short he would be okay. He did fine on the way there. The way back home is a different story. We hadn't gotten 3 minutes down the road before he vomited right into Chloe's lap. We had just pulled up to the middle school to get Ashton from practice, and Jeremy left the car to go get him. With that, all hell broke loose. I won't even try to describe the smell of the vomit to you. It was.... It was bad. I've had three kids, and my stomach is not sensitive. But this had my eyes watering. The girls were screaming and gagging. And Neville turned around in the car and threw up two more times. Chloe started stripping off her pants. Atleigh unbuckled her seatbelt and stood in her seat screaming bloody murder, pressed as far into the door as she could. Oliver, our new puppy, was in the front seat yelping over being left alone up there, jumping in circles and yapping. As I'm finally getting the new piles of puke cleaned up, Neville starts heaving again. "Oh NO you don't!!" I screamed, hauling him out of the car by his collar. He vomited onto the sidewalk (the name of the school we were at shall remain anonymous). Atleigh was still screaming, Chloe was now sans pants. Jeremy and Ashton came out of the school, and I loaded Neville back into the car. The girls immediately launched into a dramatic retelling of the goings on, their voices rising higher and higher in pitch as they strained to be heard over the other, comparing who was worse off. I climbed back in my seat, but Atleigh refused to sit back down. She leaned against the door and screamed and screamed. Neville vomited again in the seat right next to her. She tried to climb up the closed window. At this point, I lost my temper. I flew out of the car and swung her door open, causing her to very nearly fall into the street. I caught her before she hit the ground and told her if she wouldn't ride in the car she could stay in the parking lot. She fought me while I tried to buckle her seatbelt.  Jeremy got out of the driver's seat then, and came around to help me, slamming me between his back and the door- I still have a bruise on my hip. As it turned out, Oliver had peed in the front seat, and Jeremy had sat directly in it. The back of his jeans was soaked. 

We finally, finally got back on the road. Neville puked two more times, and twice more when we finally got him into our front yard. We staggered out of the car in various stages of shell shock, Chloe without pants, Jeremy with the seat of his jeans soaked, Neville shaking and heaving. All I could do was look at Jeremy and shrug and say, "Happy Valentine's Day." At which point he looked at me and said, "I'm going to get some beer."

But all of this, all of these misadventures are eclipsed by what I realized after everyone had calmed down: Atleigh's Geehee was missing. Some of you may have read my post about this a few years ago, when Geehee got left in Target. At that time, my friend saved the day and found it. About a year later, Atleigh left Geehee at the school our church was meeting in, and a janitor threw it away. I remember vividly the day I found out for sure it was gone. It was an icy, rainy day, and I rolled over in my bed to face the wall, like Hezekiah, and wept. Some will say it's silly. It was just a blanket. But it wasn't. I won't rewrite all the feelings attached to Geehee here. If you want to read them, you can refer to the older post. 

The only thing that made that situation bearable, was the fact that I found a blanket just like hers online. I reasoned with myself: she's only three. In three more years, she'll have had this blanket just as long as the first. In ten years it will be like the first Geehee never existed. This is how I let myself sleep at night. 

But on Friday- on Valentine's Day- the "new" Geehee was gone. I drove to Plaza Azteca, the last place we remember her having it, pulling into their parking lot at 10:57, three minutes to closing time. My stomach roiled as they looked for it, digging in boxes of coats, hats, gloves, things that have no value to anyone, things that are replaceable. They let me go look in the booth we'd sat in earlier in the day. It was nowhere. People- humans, if you have a heart for anything at all- if you EVER find what looks like a child's lovey, turn it in. In God's name, do not take it. Do not throw it in the trash. You never know what pieces of a child's life, what pieces of a mother's heart, you are trifling with. I cried myself to sleep Friday night. I cried off and on all day Saturday. To happen once was bad luck, which was mercifully avoided. To happen a second time was heartbreaking, although we were able to find a replacement quickly. This time... This time is inexcusable. I tried to joke with my sister, saying, "I know it's just a blanket. At least I didn't lose the baby." But immediately the tears welled up again. In some part of my mind, I feel like I did. Atleigh is my last baby. My last ever. And this blanket, that she cuddled when she was sick, chewed on when she watched tv, hid her face in when she was shy- to me, it was a part of her. A part I can't ever get back. I said dramatically that I would probably think of that Geehee while lying on my deathbed. I meant it as a joke. But who knows? Maybe I will. Now, a few days later, I can be more pragmatic. Truthfully, Atleigh has been fine. I don't know if that makes it better or worse. And I know, of course I know, that a blanket is just a blanket. This is the least of troubles that could have happened. Life will go on. It's just a blanket. And if I say it enough, I will believe it. 

And this is how I spent my Valentine's Day. In scrapes and booboos, vomit and shrieking, and loss. But I spent it with family. I laughed a lot, and I loved a lot. If there were things that happened that soured it, then Valentine's Day is just what I've always said it is: just another day. It is what we make it, and what we allow it to be. Bring on St. Patrick's Day. 

            {{Weekly Photo Dump}} 

Flagship

A few weeks ago I went to visit my sister at my dad's house after she had minor surgery. I didn't drive home until 2am. I felt a wicked glee in driving home on abandoned roads, acing every light, owning the road. I felt like a rebellious teenager. Only, instead of staying out late from my dad's house with my boyfriend, I was escaping my "boyfriend" to chill at my dad's. The irony was not lost on me. Not that I was ever much of a curfew breaker anyway. When I got home, I speed walked up to my front door (I always get a little creeped out coming home alone at night. It's that thing I have where I always wonder if I'm on a reality show) carrying a cube of Diet Dr. Pepper that was about to rip open. Thankfully I made it onto my front porch before it did, falling away out of my hand and making a cacophony of noise as the cans rolled around on the tile floor. It being 2am, and me being slaphappy, I giggled insanely while I unlocked the door, laughing at myself, sneaking in the house in the middle of the night, making noise like a clutzy teenager. More than anything, I felt happy. Relaxed. There's something about going home and pretending like I don't have an adult's responsibilities. Something about knowing that there's a part of my life I can come back to and fit into comfortably. 
I've heard my dad say before that youth is wasted on the young. There are few things more true than that. As kids and teenagers we're in such a hurry to "grow up" that we miss out on being young. We don't know what we have until we outgrow it. Sitting next to my sister on her bed, watching movies on her laptop and eating lemon lime popsicles, I felt like no time had passed. Has it really been over ten years since I went away? That doesn't seem possible. Where did it all go? How am I not seventeen anymore? And why did I wish all those good years away, counting down until I could escape into adulthood?
In ten, twenty years, I'd love for my kids to be able to come back home and pretend, even if just for a few hours, that they're little again. When their rebellious years are over, when they're done thinking about how uncool or unfair I am, they can come back. They can sneak away from their real life and remember what it was like to have no responsibility. They can curl up on the couch next to me, tuck their feet under their legs and remember. Eat popsicles. Laugh about how ridiculous they were, hurrying to grow up.
And isn't that what we grow up for? To be "base" for our kids when they're done running away? From the minute our children are born, we're raising them to leave us. To be independent, to be strong and brave. To outgrow us, in some ways. To become base for their own families. And I suppose, when I think of it in this light, of myself as being the flagship that they know they came from; that they can always return to when they need a pause from building their own it takes some of the sting out of leaving childhood behind.

{{Past Few Weeks' Photo Dump}}

(I have some catching up to do. Here are a few moments from our flagship.You'll notice we've added another family member- more on him later.)