Keeping These Things In My Heart

I've got to admit that that little leg looks an awful lot like mine.  As inconceivable (get it, inconceivable) as it sounds, it sure looks like mine.  Maybe because this baby is mine.  I can't even describe the total and utter shock I felt at discovering that once again I was carrying a baby.  Just imagine me standing in our room looking at Clint with eyes the size of saucers exclaiming the first thought that came to my reeling mind, "I'm 35!"   For seven years we had believed that we couldn't have any more children.  I had consigned myself to knowing that I would never again feel the movements marking the growth of life within me again, not with bitterness, but looking forward with faith that God knows all and unspeakably grateful for the children I do have.  How could I find reason to complain when I have already been so blessed?!?  There has always been the feeling of someone missing, so I just assumed that adoption was the answer, and that once again God would bring whatever baby into our lives that belongs to us, just like he did with Jackson.  Thyroid surgery not quite two months past, mid-renovation on the building we bought to open the studio, adoption papers in and literally 2 days away from publishing, learning I was pregnant was literally the LAST thing in the world I expected.  How could I thinking it was no longer possible?  Days of walking around in a complete stupor ensued.  Days that turned to weeks and still I could not fathom the possibility.  12 weeks we hear the heartbeat and I cried at the sound I never expected to hear again. And still the shock remained, the surrealness overwhelming.  But amid the daze of those first few months was an incredible pervading sense of absolute wonder that permeated our home.  Telling the kids was unimaginable, especially when they had all three been begging me for a couple of years to have another one even though I kept telling them I couldn't.  Sometimes kids just know things we don't.  I'll never forget as long as I live sitting around the kitchen table that evening after we told them talking about "If it's a girl, what would we name her?, "If it's a boy, what would we name him?"  Leave it to Kail to come up with the most perfect name ever.  In fact, his exact words as he threw his hands up in the air to stop our conversation were, "Wait! Wait!  I've got it!  If it's a boy we should name him Shipper Glunky Blaine.  It's perfect!"  Is it any wonder that after that moment we called the baby nothing but "Shipper" until the ultrasound revealed that they all three got their wish of having a baby sister?  Remarkably we asked the kids not to tell anyone and they didn't.  Not a soul.  We made it five months before anyone besides family and a few very close friends knew a thing.  Even six months in some cases. Clint would've shouted it from the rooftops from day one, but me, I couldn't say a word.  I had the hardest time finding a way to put into words the reason why I just couldn't share it, but I couldn't.  As odd as it sounds, the joy was just too much.   The wonder so thick it was palpable.  I understood on a level I never comprehended before the words in Luke 2:19 where it talks about how Mary "kept all these things and pondered them in her heart".  When you're living part of a miracle talking about it to any and everyone is just too much.  So for those who didn't know, I didn't share our joy as soon as usual not out of selfishness, or out of fear, but out of deep marvel and respect for another literal miracle in my life.  I was simply just keeping all these things and pondering them in my heart. 

(Me and McKinley at six months)

The Pinball

Some of my very best memories throughout my life are those where MawMaw has come for a visit.  I remember after we moved to Arkansas J and I could hardly bear the anticipation of waiting for her and PawPaw to arrive when we knew they were on their way.  I remember one year not long after we moved there she was playing "Come Closer" with us in the back yard and she fell.  It made Honey mad, and it made me and MawMaw die laughing.  I believe that incident was a couple of years after the visit when we went shopping in Fort Smith, she stepped off the curb, and the next thing we know she was laying on the ground.  She didn't even fall, she just sort of rolled gracefully down.  I was six at the time.  No matter how much Honey threatened me, I COULD NOT stop laughing.  MawMaw was laughing too.  She seriously looked exactly like a roly poly wollering around on the ground in my six-year-old eyes.  I nearly stopped breathing I was laughing so hard.  I don't know if it was her laughter or her legs that wouldn't let her get up from there, maybe a combination of both, but somehow I know she eventually did or she'd still be layin' there to this day I guess as much help as I was.  Let me reiterate...she was laughing too.  I remember that I wouldn't let Honey wash my sheets for at least a week after they left because they smelled like her. 

In September 2007, I got to go on a grand adventure with her in Colorado and New Mexico for Uncle Bud's wedding.  Driving Ms. Lail around in the Jeep Liberty I had rented on those New Mexico dirt back roads was nothing short of awesome.  There had been a rare rain storm the day before the wedding, so there were some really nice mud puddles I made sure to hit going about 30 just to hear her holler when the water would go up over the vehicle.  There just so happens to be a tie between the best moment of that trip though, both involving her and her control-top pantyhose. We pulled, and we pulled, and we pulled trying to get them things on.  However it wasn't until AFTER she got sick from dehydration (Ms. Lail is notoriously stubborn and REFUSED to drink water) and we got her back to the room that we discovered that she had a girdle on too.  (Apparently at 81 years old she had decided unbeknownst to us that she needed to not only wear support hose, but a girdle as well).  We pulled, and we pulled, and we pulled gettin' them suckers off.  At one point I had one leg of the hose stretched pert near all the way across the room.  I think any human being that had squeezed themselves into a girdle AND a pair of control-top panty hose on a typical hot-in-the-desert-day would be woozy.  Imagine the consternation of feeing terrible for her because she was so sick, and recognizing the hilarity of the circumstances surrounding the situation all at the same time.  That's one of those memories that is forever burned into my brain.

At 83 years and 11 months, I am so happy that she is still wants to, and is still able to come spend time with me.  So, last week I took off to North Carolina to get her and bring her back home with me for a two week visit.

                                                (Me and MawMaw 3/8/2011)

Now when it comes to MawMaw, we have discovered a few tricks to keeping her happy.  It is widely known that MawMaw is almost always affable as long as you stick to these "tricks".   First, is the "feed and water" method.   You do not EVER let her get hungry.  She gets ill as a hornet if she is hungry, and if you let her go too long without taking care of her dietary needs you WILL get stung.  Chinese food will get you bonus points.  Second, as long as you take her on some kind of little "field trip" almost every day she will be as content as can be.  This can be as simple as a trip to Dollar General, Dollar Tree, etc.  It is this second trick, combined with the third (do not get between her and candy if you don't want to get run over) that has earned her her latest name, "The Pinball".  This trip I have discovered what I should have seen for years, but never seemed to be enlightened enough to grasp.  I don't know, maybe it's the hormones from carrying this baby that have helped me gain it, but I have come to the conclusion that alas, MawMaw is a pinball.  She moves as slow as molasses (which at practically 84 she has earned the right to do), but take her to a store and she can move as quick as lightnin'!  It's just like drawing back the spring on a pinball machine...getting her to the store is the draw back, walking through the front door is letting the spring go.  I say pinball, because when Ms. Lail shops there is no rhyme or reason to her scurrying.  She goes from the back left of the store to the front right, from the front right to the middle, from the middle back to the back left, to the front, to the back right, to the middle, to the front left.  And you know how on a pinball machine up at the top there are usually two or three bumpers that if your pinball gets between those it bounces back and forth really really fast and gets all kinds of points, well that's the candy and cookie isle in the store.  DO NOT get in her way or you will be peeling yourself off the floor.  Ding! Da-da-ding! D-d-d-d-d-d-Ding!  Da-Ding! Da-Ding!  Mr. Goodbar!  SCORE!

(MawMaw checkin' out the shams to the new bedspread she bought...she'll chatter all the way home now.  I love it!)

Now, just for clarification, I am in no way making fun of or picking on my MawMaw.  I couldn't ask for a better one, and can't imagine why in the world I would want to!  I have always appreciated her sense of humor and how fun she can be, and treasure the adventures I have had with her.  All these years I have looked forward to our visits together, knowing that we will always find something to die laughing about.  And first thing tomorrow morning I expect to be woken by the sound of her little scuffles on her way to make her coffee, I expect to find her sneaking cookies for breakfast, and I expect to watch her doze most of the afternoon in the chair next to me.  Maybe I'll be fortunate enough to get some of her good tales about working at the "asylum", or tying PawPaw's big toe to the bed post while he was asleep and laughing about him falling on the floor when he tried to get up, or about the time she put a baby mouse down her older sister's dress, etc.  Needless to say, she has always been a mischevious one, and that's one of the things I love the most about her.  My little Pinball MawMaw.  Spit-doing!  Watch her go!

(Contents from her cart today.... 1 box of moon pies, 1 pack of mini hershey chocolate bars, oreos, apple fritter bread, dentyne fire, and a prescription of Actose for her blood sugar....Ha ha ha ha)