BFFs and Bomb Pops

So everyone says it goes by fast. And boy, does my heart knows it. I mean, it seems like just yesterday that Ella Bella was teeny tiny peanut. Just yesterday, I was holding her in my hospital bed, feeling the most amazing sense of complete and utter fulfillment...looking down at her tiny blue eyes that were open so wide, at her little mouth shaped in an "Ooooo," as she took in the world around her for the first time.

If that feels like yesterday, it feels like an hour ago that we first took Ella Bella to All Saints Preschool in her purple dress and matching purple headband. She walked in the room so confidently, so comfortable in her own skin, so openly and so capably embracing this new experience, this new part of her life, this new place. Where she'd meet new little people and continue what I hope will be her lifelong love of learning.



And in the blink of an eye, this week was her last day of school.





Surprisingly, I didn't cry. Maybe it's because I know it's not over yet. She has a whole 'nother year at All Saints before she enters the Big Leagues of kindergarten. Maybe I didn't cry because it all seemed too...too perfect. Too dreamy. Too ideal.





Seeing my girls eat bomb pops on the green grass under a bright blue sky.



Watching these darling little girls pose for photos, hands around each others' waists, like they were going to prom or graduating high school. Loving how these little girlies so openly welcomed Kate-Kate into the last-day-of-school love.





Knowing that Ella would see lots of these darling kids in school again next year, and that -- miraculously -- she'd probably get to see her best friend, Lily, almost every day (maybe for the rest of her school-aged life!), because Lily's mom and dad just happened to buy the house right behind us! (This fact brings me so much happiness...I need to dedicate a whole 'nother post just to that!)



Or maybe I didn't cry because I knew that the weekend before us...that always exciting first weekend of summer...was just a day away.



Lots of reasons not to cry, I guess. So I didn't. But sitting her now, at 12:30 a.m. on a Sunday night, just 3 days after Ella's last day of school; and after spending two glorious sunny days at the pool, watching my girls splash and 'swim' and smile ear-to-ear in the sunshine, I'm having one of those moments where I consciously tell myself to remember everything about days like these.

Today, I want to remember packing up the beach bag with PB&J, strawberries (for Ella) and blueberries (for Kate), each with their very own kitty cat, two-level tupperware container.







I want to remember their matching swim suits (green polka dot, blue polka dot, bikini!)...and I want to remember how much fun it is to be able to buy them 4 bathing suits a piece because that wonderful mecca-of-mine called Target sells 'em for $8 a piece. I want to remember that they were the only little girls at the pool who kept big bows in their hair during their entire, 4.5 hour inaugural swimming expeditions.



I want to remember watching Chris hold one girl in each arm, their little elbows wrapped around his neck, as they waded together through the water.



I even want to remember Kate's completely ridiculous temper tantrum, which started the moment we told her it was time to leave and didn't end until well after we drug her out of the pool, fought her into her carseat, drove home and she finally gave into her tearful exhaustion while laying with her Daddy watching TV.

Four years ago, when Ella Bella was born, and a year after that, when Kate was born, I knew wonderful, beautiful things were to come. I guess I didn't realize how these little people would completely and utterly transform the way I feel about even the simplest things in life. Ella's perfect last day of preschool. Our first family trip to our new pool. The way the girls slept so hard, for 4 hours each, when we got home from the pool. Seeing their sweet, sunkissed cheeks and running out to the grocery store at 9 pm to buy the brandname sunscreen (because the cheap stuff clearly didn't work). Letting them have 'brinner' for dinner, even though there's basically no nutritional value in pancakes and syrup, because hey, it's summer!

I didn't realize how completely happy these every day experiences would make my heart feel.

A little bell goes off in my head, several times a day...reminding me that these moments are fleeting. Reminding my brain to please, please hit the video record button that I hope will remember how delicious my girls look, and smell, and sound on perfect summer days like these.

I'm already thinking about 13-or-so years from now. Envisioning my little Ella Bella graduating high school, not preschool...posing for photos in a cap and gown with her BFFs, wondering if Lily will still be there by her side. I can see her walking into her college dorm room as confidently as she walked into her first day of pre-K. And although I shed no tears on her last day of preschool, my throat already tightens, just thinking about the day when she and her baby sister Kate leave our house for real, to go start their own big girl lives.

I hope when that day comes, I can press the 'play' button in my memory and look back at this very post and remember every detail of these sweet summer days with my sweet Ella Bella and Kate the Great.

Gratitude is a gift that heals. Even when life totally sucks.

Today was an interesting day. One for which I am exceptionally grateful. Not because anything particularly remarkable happened. But because, after undergoing what I thought was going to be a run-of-the-mill, outpatient surgery back on April 17, today is the first day I have been able to live any semblance of my regular, old, normal life.

The surgery itself was gross and irrelevant. I hate that I had to undergo it and certainly don't want to talk or write about the surgery itself. (Given that ever since I was in elementary school, the discussion of body parts and bodily functions has made me nauseated and still does to this day. No, I didn't grow out if it after becoming a mama.)

The aftermath of the surgery was a nightmare. More pain than my mind ever had the capacity to even imagine. I have been known to vomit at the SIGHT of other people undergoing serious pain in movies, and to PASS OUT after reading about physical pain written about by brave rape survivors. So it shouldn't have surprised me that if the sight or thought of other people experiencing pain has that strong of an impact on me, actually experiencing pain on my own would be really, really hard.

But, I had reasoned....I gave birth to two babies. I dealt with that recovery. It wasn't fun. But it was bearable. Surely, that's the kind of recovery I'd be going through. Right? I had assumed that the recovery process would suck, a little. But I envisioned laying in bed, having food brought to me, watching endless hours of Judge Judy, sleeping a lot due to pain killers. I had incorrectly assumed that I'd still be able to snuggle with my baby girls and walk around the house when I wanted, read some books, check email, maybe watch some movies.

Instead, my 2+ week recovery was marked by debilitating pain, more medical grossness than my weak stomach can bear to even allow my brain to remember, near constant tears from constant pain, and rambling babbling from a frustrated, tortured mama who was hopped up on painkillers and could barely utter a coherent sentence for two weeks.

The pain was constant and never ending; and if the valium and other strong painkillers I was prescribed did lessen the pain, then I cannot imagine what kind of deeper, more fiery, more awful hell the recovery would have felt like without those medications.

The physical pain was devastating. But not being able to do any of the things that I now realize define me...not being able to brush my daughters' hair, or get them their 12th cup of juice for the day...not being able to read them bedtime stories or scrub the syrup off the floor or referee their nightly fights in the bathtub at ....missing out on all of these things every night...that was more emotionally devastating that I would ever have expected.

Interestingly, in my more lucid moments, I was writing this post in my mind.

I realize it may sound a little Pollyanna-ish, but I have always been most grateful for the blessings in my life, and I have usually felt my relationship with and belief in God are strongest, during the worst of times.

Relatively speaking, I have often said that I am very aware that I have led a very fortunate life. My 'worst of times' have involved things like my divorced parents not getting along, an abusive stepdad, my dad divorcing his second wife, or a sibling going through a very rough time, the loss of my loved ones, or a broken heart over a long-term, self-defining relationship.

Nothing particularly remarkable when it comes to life hardships. But yet, I've still always been the most grateful for all of my blessings during my lowest times. And the past two weeks -- they have now won the ranking as the absolute worst experience of my life. And I can now confirm what my 20-something heart often pondered -- severe physical pain does, in fact, trump even the worst, deepest, most crushing romantic heartbreak. For me, anyway.

As I was laying in my torture chamber (either the bathtub or the guest bedroom, the two places which I did not leave for more than 15 days), in my more lucid moments I would think...as miserable as I was...I was so, so much more fortunate than millions, if not billions, of other people around the world.

I am fortunate to have been born in a country where I have access to medical professionals who can diagnose and 'fix' medical issues. (Even if that care is ridiculously overpriced and even if the medical professionals in this particular case were mean spiritied, rude and void of compassion.) I am fortunate to have health insurance to help make the absurd medical costs a little more paletteable. And although it's not fun to spend thousands of dollars on a 'health care deductible' for a surgery that totally sucked...I can't ignore the reality that I'm fortunate that I can actually pay that deductible without having to sacrifice feeding my family or paying my mortgage.

I'm fortunate to have had access to painkillers -- because without them, I think it's entirely possible that I would have jumped out a window to end the pain.

I'm fortunate that a wonderful, caring, bubbly, vivacious, amazing woman (Sarah, or as Ella and Kate call her, Rah-Rah) takes care of my girls for me on the three days a week I work, and that she worked extra days and extra hours -- even at 8+ months pregnant herself -- to care for my little girls when I couldn't. She brought sunshine to their days and played with them and exercised their imaginations and gave them hugs and kisses. She helped them feel as much normalcy as possible, even as they ran into my bedroom every morning and asked "Hi Mama. I love you. Are you better today?" fourteen consecutive days in a row.

I'm fortunate that Rah-Rah brought me toast in the morning and asked me throughout the day if I needed anything. And my heart hurts as I write these words and think about people who go through physical pain or surgery and have no "Rah Rah" to care for their children or tend to their needs. I can't even allow my mind to ponder how their children get fed, or bathed, or put to bed, or loved.

I'm fortunate to have a husband who tackled bedtime duty by himself every night, sleeping in the middle of Ella and Kate every night because he knew he wouldn't hear them if they cried out for me in the middle of the night in their own rooms. And because I think he kind of just likes the snuggle time with his baby girls. I'm fortunate that he took off work to take me to the doctor to speak on my behalf...when the severe pain I was experiencing had made it difficult for me, a person who has never in her life found it difficult to speak my mind, ask tough questions, or advocate on my own behalf; to utter a sentence, let alone have a reasonable conversation with medical professionals about the torture I was experiencing.

I'm fortunate that on the worst night of the recovery, after an unspeakable experience that left every muscle in my body immobile and nearly unable to move, when I called my mom, who lives 3 hours away, at 7 pm on a week night, and begged her, like a 3 year old child, to please, please come right away to take care of me....she did. She threw two outfits in a suitcase and got in her car and drove 3 hours in the pouring rain, even though she's terrified of night driving and of driving by herself.

The moment she walked into my guest bedroom, at 11 pm that night, sat on my bed, and just hugged 37-year-old me as I cried like a baby...that moment ranks among the most grateful of my life. Right up there with the day I married Chris and the days Ella and Kate were born. I have never been more relieved to see another human being in all my life, and I can never express how much peace her physical presence gave me. I don't think it's a coincidence that I walked out of the house for the first time on only the third day she was here. Her very presence was healing.

I'm fortunate for friends (dear Heidi) who have sent dinners and edible arrangements (sweet Sarah) to brighten this misery. I'm fortunate for Chris's mom who came over to relieve Sarah from her duties -- and make me food that I was too sick to even pretend to eat. I'm fortunate to have had a bath tub and hot water -- two of the only things that made the pain feel bearable. I'm fortunate to have more towels in my house than are probably needed in the entire city of Columbus. Because I took so many baths and showers in that two week period that I used every one of those towels, three times a piece.

And, obviously, as I reminded myself countless times, I am so very fortunate than my condition was 'fixable,' that I am on the mend, that the majority of the pain has subsided, that the whole torturous experience only lasted 2.5 weeks, and that I'm still here. Alive. To live this Very gGrateful Life.

I'm so fortunate in so many more ways than these. And although I would never repeat the past 2 weeks -- for ALL THE MONEY IN THE ENTIRE WORLD -- I can sincerely say that I'm grateful that God has found a way to use all this misery and grossness to remind me once again of just how fortunate a life I live. He has used this experience to help my heart feel even more compasssion for those who live bravely every day with chronic illnesses, those who don't have access to medical care or medicines, those who don't have people love and care for them and for their children in times of trouble.

I have no pictures to punctuate this post (trust me, you're very grateful for that)...but if a visual would help, envision me, this morning, making breakfast for my little girls. Brushing their beautiful hair. Putting adorable dresses on them, with the obligatory matching bows. Buckling them in the car. Driving them to school and Firefly Cafe. Bringing them back home. Even though I did need Rah-Rah to relieve me by noon, because these simple activities made my body feel like it had just run a marathon -- those simple moments are the ones that are running through my head right now; because just 4 days ago, I was convinced that I was surely going to die, and that I'd never experience those blessings again.

It's just all proof that gratitude is, indeed, a gift that heals. Even when life totally, completely sucks.