May Through The iPhone
The lilacs are gone, and so is May.
I got my wish in that it was better than April, but April didn’t really put up a fight.
Forgive me for starting out on a sour note, but I can’t escape it. Has it really been two months since Dad passed away? How weird is time? On the one hand it’s so constant that we build our lives around it. On the other hand it’s so unpredictable that during the same stretch of seasons I can say I feel like I’ve been a mommy for way longer than five months, but I feel like dad left just last week.
Still, May has been good to us (which is bittersweet).
Spring has finally arrived in the Chicagoland area. We’re soaking up long, warm evenings, and digging shorts out of drawers. Picnics with friends and road-trips with family and miniature Avengers have all created good afternoons and good memories.
This was also my first Mother’s Day post-partum, and we got to laugh as we remembered Mother’s Day 2012.
We announced our pregnancy – after three and a half years of prayer – to our families a week before Mother’s Day, by delivering cards that said, “Grandma,” and, “Nana.” I’ll never forget the confusion-turned-elation on my mother’s face as she read from, “Nana,” on the front to, “Love Timothy, Lex and Baby” on the inside. I will tell Meatball the story every year, about how she bounced in the kitchen squealing in revelation, “It’s a Nana card! It’s a Nana card!” and how my dad (tough guy) got teary-eyed as he shook Husband’s hand.
I guess May, in a lot of ways, was about circles for us. Cycles, and the restoration they often bring.
After a month of endless rain, the sun is out and the river is receding. New friends come, and old friends move to Colorado. The baby we finally got to announce is here, and very happy to be so.
‘Round and ’round we go – like the evening sun, like the plastic balls on the saucer chair, like the wheels on the minivan.
The flowers don’t erase the memories of the rains, but they make the gray worth enduring. (Unless the squirrels come by and bite the heads off of all the tulips. Cuss.) Some heartaches, I think, never fully heal, but we know there is a spring still coming that will restore all things and so we take comfort in the unfailing change of the season.
Spits and Wiggles 