Hidden Treasure

In December 1993 I was a senior in college. My application to law school sat on the kitchen counter and I was preparing for the LSAT. I was going to put my outspoken personality to use and become an attorney.

All those dreams vanished in an instant when I went in the bathroom and watched a pink plus sign appear on a little plastic stick.

I was pregnant.

And just like that.

My life changed forever.

I married a stranger and my life became a surreal dream. Or more like a nightmare. I woke up every morning wishing none of this was so. But soon I didn’t even have time to wish for anything more than one day to go by when I was not throwing up.

But I didn’t quit getting sick. Instead I vomited every day for the next eight months. I couldn’t win the lottery but I was one of the “lucky” 2% of pregnant women whose body treats the baby like an unwelcome parasite. I think my cells had a meeting and decided if they just made me barf constantly I could expel the baby that way.

It didn’t work.

So while my friends went on with college, parties and part time jobs I stayed home with my new husband in our meager apartment and stumbled through married life while trying to finish college and wondering if I was really ready to be a mother.

And?

I barfed endlessly.

But on August 4, 1994, I finally stopped throwing up when a black haired blue eyed cherub arrived in my life after 24 hours of labor. My daughter was born. And again.

My life changed in one day.

But this change was different.

While my friends graduated from college, got their first jobs and bought new cars I graduated not only from school but to motherhood, nursed my first born child and bought tiny pink dresses and ribbons for this sweet little angel.

That baby became a toddler who loved Barney and then a little girl who liked to play princess and Barbies. Her waist length long hair blows in the wind and her blue eyes sparkle forever in my memories of her childhood: pushing her swing and flying kites in endless expanses of green.

And somehow? Impossibly?

She is 16 years old. She wears eyeliner (some days too much), borrows my clothes (did you take my strapless bra again?!?!) and her bedroom looks like the aftermath of a natural disaster (what smells up there?!?!).

And in two short years this closet raiding slob with too much eye make-up will be off to college. And it is just surreal.

But I’m not sad. And I have no regrets. For life is flowing the way it always does and I have no control over time and transition. I learned long ago that when the winds of life change, sometimes the only thing you have the power to adjust?

Are your sails.

I had a beautiful baby all those years ago. Who grew into a beautiful braided girl and is now blossoming into a self-assured creative woman.

Sometimes our greatest gifts are plans we never would have made ourselves but unexpected detours in the road we’d so meticulously plotted and planned. I am glad I didn’t become an attorney. It would not have been the career for me. And I am glad I spent my 20’s playing dolls with my daughter. I’ve watched countless friends wish desperately for children who never appeared.

I’m lucky.

And blessed.

By experiences in places I would never have sailed into on purpose.

For it is there that I have discovered hidden treasure.

In the uncharted waters.

Of this life.

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Happy 16th Birthday, Booga Wooga Bear. Thank you for coming into my life. Love you to pieces baby girl!!

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The picture is of my daughter at age four enjoying the garden of a friend...this is one of my favorite pictures of her. And even though that little girl is no longer in my life, in her place is a young woman, tall, confident and full of hope and potential. I hope I have helped her cultivate the garden of her dreams as best I could.

Law school would never have held a candle to this journey....love you always and forever.

Love,

Mom