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Favorite Posts from 2011

January 2, 2012 By Molly

Oh yes, I know 2011 is already over but I couldn’t resist sharing my personal favorites from last year.

Here are just some posts that were popular and/or my favorite I wrote all year:

I wrote Part III and Part IV of my five part series in 2011. Part I and Part II were written in 2010. You’ll notice Part V never came. I guess it was just too difficult. Sorry about that.

The Evolution of a Smile – About one of Brigham’s first trips to the park!

When One Door Closes – About leaving our first house behind

They Told Me to Open My Eyes – Written on the eve of Brigham’s first birthday

The Extras - About accepting what my life is now instead of what I thought it would be

Chasing Butterflies – About finding happiness while suffering from depression

BlogHer 2011 & Voice of the Year – Announcing that I am a BlogHer Voice of the Year!

He is Three – Landon turned three-years-old

The BlogHer Breakdown – Not my favorite subject but definitely my most popular post of 2011

Communion – About my new journey to bring religion back into my life

Let Him Drink – About a memory from my first job at a nursing home

Snap. - Writing honestly about my struggle with severe anxiety

Yes, I wrote 50,000 words in 30 days – About finishing National Novel Writing Month!

So what do you think? Did you like these posts from me too? Do you have a favorite post from your blog in 2011?

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Part II: The Lost Year

November 17, 2010 By Molly

Please read Part I: On the Edge before continuing.

The same thing happens every year at the beginning of August. I see girls walking around in stores with their moms. Picking out sheet sets and mini fridges and wall decor. The girls always have big smiles on their faces. Eyes wide open, as if a particular coffee pot will mean the difference between success and failure in their first year of college.

Every August I feel that familiar pang of jealousy. I watch these girls with green envy in my eyes. Knowing that I did the same thing to prepare myself for the transition to college. Wondering why it all went so terribly wrong. But there is one fundamental difference between their plans and mine. I never should have gone to college that year.

The summer of 1997 was a blur after I lost my best friends. I found a new roommate for college. I did not know her well but we went to high school together. And I did not want to room with a total stranger. It was too late for us to live in the cool dorm at the university. No, if we wanted to live together we had to be placed in the only dorm left with open rooms. It was the furthest dorm from the center of the campus. A catch all for the students who signed up late, didn’t have any friends or had asked for that specific dorm because it was known as the quiet one. Where you can actually study in peace.

Moving day was a day I’ll never forget. I watched as all the freshmen smiled and laughed and rushed around me. I went up and down the staircase of the dorm carrying accessories that would help to brighten up the barren white walls. I looked around after everything I brought was finally at rest in the room. I tried to envision myself living there for a full year. It was a personal prison cell. I wanted out. To go to the only place I had ever truly felt safe. My parents house. My home that sat a mere 45 minutes away. I wanted to hide from the new. From all this confusion.

Halfway through my senior year of high school I remember sparkling with excitement at the prospect of college. I would be a broadcast journalism major. I would be the next Diane Sawyer. I felt like I held the world in the palm of my hand and I had my best friends at my side. It was a certainty that only a high school student with a fresh start in front of them could feel. That feeling was gone by the time I moved in.

I watched my parents pull out of the parking lot. My eyes filled with tears. I wanted to scream please take me home. I should have said, I can’t do this. Don’t leave me here alone. But I was stubborn. I did not want to disappoint them. I did not want to be the daughter who lived at home after high school and went to community college. I did not want to be the failure that I already believed myself to be.

At the same time I moved into my dorm with my high school acquaintance my former best friends were also moving in across campus. Moving into the room that should have been mine. The life that should have been mine. I didn’t want to think about them. But it was all I could do to keep myself away. I decided to walk over to their room. I knocked on their door and entered to unfriendly faces. In the past they had delighted in my presence but now it was clear I was in enemy territory. I stood trying to make light conversation. It was terribly awkward. I waited for them to turn to me and say, “Molly, we made a mistake. We miss you. We need you as a friend. We can’t make it without you.”

Instead they said nothing.

I walked out just in time to let the tears drop from my eyes. They were not tears of sadness. Those tears were hot lava spewing out of an erupting volcano. I was so angry. There they were, happy, living as if nothing had happened. Living as if I had never existed. I was dead to them. But I would show them what they were missing. I would make new friends. I would make the dean’s list. I did not need them.

As we were walking back to our dorm we ran into a group of frat boys who invited us to a party. A party? Yes, please. I had never been invited to parties in high school. But here I was party-appropriate. I had just been through rush. My first choice sorority chose me and I wore my letters often. We were pretty girls. We were popular on campus. I was proud to be able to call myself a sorority girl.

And what did being a sorority girl mean? It meant instant best friends in my pledge class. It meant getting involved. It meant a place to run on campus when I felt I didn’t fit in anywhere else. These were all the things it was supposed to mean.

What did being a sorority girl mean for me? It meant embarrassing my sisters with raucous and inappropriate behavior. It meant mixers with fraternities where I drank until I blacked out. It meant alienating anyone who could have been a good friend. Here was a sorority with more than 100 girls, all willing to befriend me, all ready to support me. In the beginning I could count all of them as friends. By the end, not a single one would stand by my side.

But it was okay. I did not need them. I don’t know about other college and sorority experiences. But alcohol was aplenty on this campus. On the small main street 19-year-old patrons were allowed into the bars. We weren’t supposed to be able to drink but once you were inside it was easy. Just ask any 21-year-old to buy an extra drink and pass it on over. At first it was fun. Deciding what to wear each night and where we would go. Pre-party would begin around 7:00 p.m., then we would head to the bars or a Greek mixer by 10:00 p.m. Continue to drink until last call. And don’t forget the post-party at the frat houses or a sorority sister’s off-campus apartment. It went on like this until the year folded into one big, long party.

It never took long for the drinks to hit my system. Especially since I still took antidepressants and I would rarely eat enough so my stomach was always empty. I would chug down a glass of whatever and my insecurities were swallowed right along with the last sip. I felt beautiful. Worthy. POWERFUL. I had always wanted someone to take away the pain. And here they were. My saving grace. My new best friend. Alcohol.

I will always remember the morning my mother knocked on my dorm room door. It was homecoming. Already afternoon. I was supposed to have walked next to my sorority’s float in the parade. But I drank too much the night before and didn’t wake up for the celebration. I’ll never know what my mom must have thought when my sorority walked by, all the girls waving and smiling. I picture her scanning the crowd. Looking for her daughter amongst all the young happy girls. The disappointment and worry she must have felt when she realized I wasn’t there.

Little did my mother know I had absolutely no idea what day it was. All the days ran together. Days of the week had no meaning for me. Time ceased to exist. My alarm clock might as well have been flashing 12:00 continuously. It would not have mattered.

And just like my mom searched for me that day so long ago, I search my memory for that year. It is rare that I can clearly remember anything. Everyone loses things. Their keys, their socks, a memory here and there. But what if you lost an entire year? What if you searched your memories for a night or a face and couldn’t find one? This is how it is for me. I refer to it as the lost year.

The lost year included many random parties. Rooms packed so tight you couldn’t move. The push and shove of a drunk crowd. Strangers bumping into me like fist on flesh. I could never remember how I got there. And I never remembered how I got back to my room, if I even did. Some mornings I would wake up in an unfamiliar place. I would wake up to strange smells and people walking around in the next room. And I had no idea who any of them were and it terrified me. I would fall out of the bed, eyes squinting from the blinding sunlight and head pounding as if last night’s party music were still playing. Scramble aimlessly on the floor trying to find my clothes. Don’t ask me why I wasn’t wearing them in the first place. There was no time to ask questions. My brain was begging for a doorway to get out of the situation in which I had mysteriously found myself.

I would get back to my dorm room, close the blinds and pull the covers over my head to try to escape the chaos from the previous night. Then I would sleep. Sleep with no knowledge of what time it was. The room was dark and that was all that mattered. While the rest of the student population moved all around me I slept. To me, it was always night. It was always dark. It was always black. This was the only way I could hold on for another pathetic day.

My schedule rarely included classes. It became a vicious cycle. Drink, sleep. Drink, sleep. Drink, sleep. I did not want to feel anything and these two things took care of that for me. I never saw the danger in drinking so much. I only saw respite. It made me feel like I could do anything. Boys I might never have approached became fair game. I smoked cigarettes. A lot. I drove drunk. A lot.

During this time I also had a boyfriend. He was older and lived out of town. He was verbally abusive. He did heavy drugs. I only watched. Alcohol was enough to take me to the place I wanted to go. Our relationship ended when he broke up with me after finding out I had not been faithful to him. I went to see him to try to talk this addicted, abusive boyfriend into loving me. He put both hands around my neck and choked me until I almost passed out. You might think I was sad that he choked me. That I was glad to be out from under this abusive, good-for-nothing man. But I had such low self-worth that I was only sad he wouldn’t take me back.

After another failed relationship, I fell even further into the abyss of depression. I allowed myself to become so incapacitated that it was easy to take advantage of me. And take advantage, they did. But I never felt it was fair to call it what it was. Because ultimately, it was my fault I ended up in the wrong hands. I would drink so much that I was literally unable to say no. I taught myself how to think of it as a bad nightmare. None of it really happened. That’s the only way I can survive these memories. I pretend they don’t exist.

I barely remember going to a rugby party in a field off-campus where there must have been 500 party-goers. There was a bonfire. And a heavy metal band playing. I only remember waking up the next morning. My body covered in black soot. The smell of something burning but I couldn’t put my finger on it. My entire body aching, I slowly raised out of bed and walked into the bathroom. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The bottom of one side of my hair had been burned off. I was later told that I had thrown myself into the mosh pit and passed out inches from the bonfire. A few sorority sisters pulled me away from the flames just in time. That day I went to the salon and had them give me a short haircut so my family wouldn’t know what had happened. Out of sight. Out of mind.

They didn’t know. My family did not know the truth of what was going on. Had my parents known they would have dragged me home kicking and screaming. Sure, I wanted out of this life but I didn’t want to go home. I was too ashamed of what I had become. Plus, my parents had never allowed drinking or smoking. And I liked doing both. It was the only thing that took the pain away. I was self-medicating. I just didn’t know it as that at the time.

My pain was only amplified when I saw my former best friends on campus. On the rare occasions I went to class I would usually see them in the halls or walk past them on the sidewalks. And as I did, they would put their heads down and pretend not to know me. Out of all the hellish experiences of that year this might have been the worst of them. Seeing them reminded me that I was once happy. I couldn’t understand how I had gone from meaning everything to them. To meaning nothing. Every time I saw them. Every time they ignored me, it erased a little piece of who I was.

And so I would drink to speed up the process. I would drink because I thought I could find a better me in the cup I was holding. I would drink because when I took that shot I became invincible. I was in a world where those friends couldn’t hurt me. Ex-boyfriends couldn’t hurt me. What happened in Hawaii couldn’t hurt me.

A week before second semester finals, and after a night of heavy drinking, I woke up in the hospital. I won’t discuss the details of the night before. When I try to remember that night it runs much like an old VHS tape on fast forward. When I woke up my mom and sister were standing over me. I had to ask a nurse what had happened the night before because I couldn’t recall anything. She told me I had driven myself to the emergency room and told the staff that I would kill myself if they didn’t admit me to a hospital. I was so enraged I had to be given a sedative. I slept until my mom and sister arrived early that morning.

I don’t think I ever really talked to my sister and mom about that morning. Like so many other memories from that time it was put in a vault and locked away. I have no idea what it must have done to my mother and sister to receive that call from the hospital. Or to see me lying helpless and hopeless in that hospital bed. I think they knew I was in bad shape. But they obviously didn’t know how depressed I was. No one did.

I don’t remember a lot of talking. I was too ashamed to talk. My mom drove me home and I fell asleep on the way. After we arrived home some calls were made and I was back in the car again. I gazed out the window. Tears falling softly from my cheeks. I knew where we were going. It was where I had asked to go. But I was terrified. Now there was no where to hide. The party was finally over.

A full year had passed since I sat at that table where my friends pleaded with me to go to a hospital to get help. A full year of my life. Completely wasted. Completely lost.

The glass doors opened and I walked through to the waiting room. There I sat with my parents waiting for someone to come and take me upstairs. Waiting for someone to save my life.

Continued on Part III: A Second Chance

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Filed Under: Damaged Goods, Depression, Favorites, The Lost Years 24 Comments

Part I: On the Edge

November 10, 2010 By Molly

I have thought of how to write out these memories time and again. Gone back and forth about why I should or shouldn’t write them. Why I should or shouldn’t post them for the world to see. Because I have no idea who will read it. And I have no control over what they will think. But I guess, after all these years, I finally feel ready. I’m ready to talk about the most painful memories of my life.

In a way, it’s difficult for me to think of ways to write this out. Because there is so much background I have to leave out on my blog. For one, there isn’t room. For another, much of it has been blocked out or trapped. I’m unable to recall certain details of these years. I think it is my brain’s way of protecting me. And for that, I am eternally grateful.

I try to think of how I can describe the hell that was high school and college. I will form a sentence in my head and think there is no way it would do this story justice or give anyone even a small glimpse of the pain that I went through at the time. But I want to write about it. I need to write about it. I find women every day in the blogosphere that are brave enough to write the posts that they fear the most. And honestly, I’m terrified to press publish. But fear never gets anyone very far.

And so I will begin to tell it. I will attempt to give my readers a glimpse of the dark memories of my past. I will try to write simply. I cannot go into detail. No, the details will be saved for my novel. The novel that I am determined to finish someday. But for now, these few posts will have to do.

I graduated high school in 1997 and shortly after, the friendships that were most dear to me fell apart. At that time I had no idea I suffered from a mood disorder. It would be years before I would receive the correct diagnosis. All I know is I had been diagnosed as clinically depressed and was prescribed Zoloft. I had been taking it from the age of sixteen. With no real idea of what I was putting in my mouth. I was a kid. My parents sent me to a therapist because they were worried. I went. I talked. I cried. I took the medicine I was prescribed hoping it would make me feel like living. Because for most of high school all I wanted to do was die.

I met my first boyfriend during my sophomore year. I was fifteen. I fell in love with him. I fell hard. He was cute, charming. He told me he loved me. And I believed him. What 15-year-old wouldn’t?

Fast forward a few months and the fairy tale was over. He was breaking up with me and charming a new girl right in front of my eyes. My heart shattered into a thousand pieces. I was no longer the happy-go-lucky teenager with a 4.0 GPA. I could barely pull myself out of bed in the morning. I was constantly late for school. I fell asleep in biology class. My grades dropped. I didn’t care about anything except getting the boyfriend back. I told myself I would do anything to make it happen. When I look back now it makes me so sad. The girl that I once was disappeared in an instant. She was replaced by a girl who could not be recognized.

Not only was I experiencing the depths of emotional depression. I was also suffering from extreme physical pain. I began having periods that lasted an entire month. The blood loss was terrifying to a young girl who had no idea what was going on. I was doubled over in pain. Taking bathroom breaks during class only to find myself soaked in blood. I was constantly nauseous. I never felt like eating and while at school, I usually didn’t eat.

My parents thought it was a made-up ailment relating to the break-up with my boyfriend. I don’t blame them. I had become so withdrawn that I barely spoke. It made sense that I would make this up. But I wasn’t. The pain in my side was excruciating. It hurt to sneeze, laugh and at the end it even hurt to breathe. After months of wondering what was wrong my mom took me to the doctor. They found a cyst the size of an orange on my right ovary. Birth control was prescribed to regulate my periods and tame the growth of the cysts. It healed the physical pain but my mental state continued to deteriorate.

I look back now and I can honestly say the only reason I survived high school was because of three friendships that formed in the midst of the worst depression of my life.

I had been best friends with Breanna since we were 12-years-old. We met at a band camp and the rest, as they say, was history. But I believe it was fate when Breanna and I asked two other girls in our band class, Amy and Jessica, if they wanted to go to the mall with us one night. Thankfully they said yes.

The four of us, me, Breanna, Amy and Jessica, instantly became inseparable. I had never laughed so hard in my life than when we were all together. We all clicked, each one of us bringing something to the table. Jessica was so adorable with her quirky teenage wardrobe and dyeing her hair different colors each month. Breanna was shy but determined at everything she did. Amy was hilarious, always making us laugh until we nearly peed our pants. None of us were really in the “popular” crowd. We weren’t really “geeks” either. Labels didn’t matter when we were together. We accepted, supported and loved each other completely. It was exactly what I needed. So many times the depression would suffocate me. I would run to them and I could finally breathe again.

We were all in the marching band together. I, on the dance team, and all three of my friends in the band. The summer of our junior year the marching band took a trip to Hawaii where we were marching in a parade. It was an amazing opportunity. The four of us were ready to make new memories together on the gorgeous island of Oahu. Unfortunately, the only memories I brought home are the memories I wish with all my heart I could forget. Oh, how I wish I could forget.

Ex-boyfriend was on the trip too. After the parade we reconnected. I was shocked that he was even speaking to me, let alone flirting. But I soaked it up. I don’t know what it was about him that always sucked me in. I was desperate for him to relieve the loneliness I felt.

He held out his hand for me that night. Heart pounding, I accepted it and let him lead me to an unfamiliar location far from the hotel.

There I stood in a dark alleyway behind a stranger’s house. There, in the dark, he asked me to do something I never wanted to do. I was so young but I buckled under the pressure. And I went to my knees for him. Because I trusted him. I trusted that if I wanted to stop he would understand. But that trust was broken. I feel I was forced to continue on even though I wanted to stop. Even though I said no. My innocence ripped and manipulated from me by his hands and his words.

It was not intercourse. It didn’t have to be. The fact remains that I didn’t want to do what he wanted me to do. At one point I was very obviously no longer a willing participant. Afterward, we walked silently back to the hotel. I was hurt and confused. Shaken to my core. Oh, how naive I was. I wanted to sit and talk with him. I wanted to make sense of what had just happened. I wanted to hear him say he loved me. Because if he told me he loved me than maybe, just maybe, what had happened in that alley wouldn’t be the nightmare that I knew it was.

The next day he ignored me. He would not speak to me and pretended not to know me. I begged and pleaded to see him. But my pleas went unanswered. The shame and guilt burned a hole in me until there was no air left to breathe. I remember running the stairs of the hotel until I reached the very top. The seventeenth floor. I very carefully pulled myself up onto the ledge. I looked down at the pool’s blue water beneath me. I was going to do it. I was going to jump. I wanted to release myself from the shame. Release myself from what I knew would be a lifetime of trying to get over what had just happened. There I was, sixteen-years-old, two seconds from ending my life with a thud on the cold concrete beneath me.

And then I heard a voice. I felt a pair of arms around my sides. One of my sister’s friends pulled me from the ledge. We both sat on the balcony crying. She smoked a cigarette and gave me a puff. She hugged me and didn’t let go for a very long time. Because of her I survived. I didn’t tell my three best friends. I didn’t tell my parents. I didn’t tell my sisters. I have lived alone with these moments for more than fifteen years. Carried the burden of what happened on that island in the crevices of my body and soul.

I am so far from that moment now. That moment where I contemplated death. That moment where my life flashed before my eyes. That moment where I knew with a stinging certainty that there was not a future for me without pain.

When we returned from the island I suffered even more. I had to see him nearly every day. It was torture. I withdrew from my family. I couldn’t stand to be touched. People would try to hug me and I would pull away. A hand on my skin felt like fire. I begged my parents to let me go to another school. Each day was worse than before. I daydreamed of ways to make the pain end.

Finally, a reprieve. My senior year meant freedom for me. Freedom from the one person who could send me spiraling to hell in an instant. The ex-boyfriend was one year older, which meant he was gone and I never had to see him again. I could finally have one year of high school that wasn’t tainted with terrible memories every time I saw him.

It was supposed to be perfect. But it wasn’t. As the year went on my friends and I talked less about what we were doing together that night and more about college. Breanna decided to go to a different college in a different city. Whereas, Amy, Jessica and I decided to go to the same college and be “roomies.” Not only that but we let another girl join our group. We’ll call her the fifth girl. Breanna kept insisting that it remain only us four. That the fifth girl was not a good person. But we did not heed her warnings. The fifth girl became my future roommate for college. After all, I needed a roommate if Breanna was going somewhere else.

As the year came to an end we were all arguing more and decided to take a break from one another. Jessica had a new boyfriend and was spending more time with him and less with us. I had a new boyfriend too. One who would prove to be poison just like all who came before him and many who would come after.

And then Amy’s parents went out of town one night. She decided to have a party at her house. We had never been girls who went to parties and drank alcohol. No, we found fun in going to Fazoli’s and stuffing our faces with free bread sticks. We laughed until our sides hurt. We didn’t need parties and alcohol.

But my sister’s boyfriend was older and offered to buy alcohol for Amy’s party. And this is where the story takes an awful turn. It was one of the first times I had ever drank. I was still taking antidepressants and had no knowledge of the dangerous side-effects that could happen when antidepressants combine with alcohol. The night is still a blur. The details are not very clear.

I do remember trying to jump out of a moving car. I remember cops being called. I remember running when I heard the sirens and hiding under a parked boat in someone’s driveway. I remember grabbing a knife and threatening to kill myself. I remember my parents coming to pick me up. I remember blacking out.

The next day would change my life forever. I knew I had made a mistake in drinking so much. But I had no grasp on reality at the time. Especially since I couldn’t truly remember the facts of what happened that night.

The doorbell rang at my parents’ house. There stood Breanna, Jessica and Amy. Naively I thought they were there for a hug session and to give support. And in a way, they were. But I was too sick and stubborn to see it at the time.

We sat down at the kitchen table. And they laid out an ultimatum. They wanted me to get help in the form of inpatient therapy at a hospital. If I chose not to they would no longer be a part of my life. They were not going to go down with me. They couldn’t stand by and watch me self-destruct.

I sat, mouth wide open, shocked and offended. I could not believe our friendship had come to this point. There were many tears shed by all of us. I yelled, cursed, told them how unfair it was that they sit there and judge me. Who were they to tell me I needed help? And besides, I was already taking the medicine and going to therapy. Never mind that neither was helping me heal. Never mind that I was still a tortured soul. Unknowingly suffering from a mood disorder as well as post traumatic stress disorder. I thought I was doing what I should to rid myself of the web I had been stuck in for so long. How could they not see that?

They left my house and my temperature began to rise. Through my legs, to my stomach, to my mouth. And suddenly I found myself calling Amy’s house where they had all gone afterward. I told Amy that if they truly felt the way they did then I no longer wanted to room with them at college.

She started crying. Asked me not to do this. But I did do it. I will regret that phone call for the rest of my life. Because without a doubt, that phone call changed the course of life.

What came next was the beginning of college. The beginning of the lost year.

Continued on Part II: The Lost Year

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Filed Under: Damaged Goods, Depression, Favorites, Friends, The Lost Years 27 Comments

The Random Placement of People

September 29, 2010 By Molly

Monday was not a good day. Honestly, we’ve been having more bad days than good lately. Monday afternoon I was feeling downright sorry for myself.

Probably because we spent Monday afternoon at the children’s hospital. Brigham is still grabbing his ears and screaming and also has a wet cough that won’t quit. Considering I just got over pneumonia I was concerned that he got it from yours truly.

As if that weren’t enough, Landon was bitten by an insect on his foot. At first it was just a little red spot. But after a few days it was clearly infected. The redness spread and he developed a little whitehead with a black dot in the center. He kept saying, “Boo boo hurt bad, mama.” He was in a lot of pain and had been crying off and on.

With the help of grandma, I corraled both unhappy boys into the car and headed over to the children’s hospital.

The nurse practitioner was great. Landon screams and cries if you so much as look in the direction of his foot so the assessment was not pretty. She diagnosed it as cellulitis but said antibiotics would clear it up. That is, until I told her that both my husband and I have had MRSA infections. She scrunched up her face and told us in that case she was going with a different antibiotic. She drew a circle to show where the redness was and said if it passed the line we were to come back immediately. She also gave him a prescription for the most foul-smelling liquid antibiotic. I knew it would be good times getting him to take it.

Next up was my poor, unsuspecting 5-month-old. I gave her the short history of his ear infections up to this point. She looked into his ears and said both of them seemed to be healing. But she didn’t like the sound of his cough and he would need a lung x-ray. My 5-month-old. A lung x-ray. I can’t even tell you the guilt that washed over me. I thought sure he had pneumonia.

We put him in the most tiny, depressingly adorable hospital gown you’ve ever seen and walked to radiology. Everyone was oohing and awwing over my smashing baby boy. Because while he chooses to scream his little head off at home he was, of course, happy as a clam at the hospital. Didn’t even appear to be sick. I made sure to let the doctors and nurses know I wasn’t just a hypochondriac-crazy mama.

I steadied him as they took pictures of his chest. The radiology tech commented on what a shallow breather he was. That was the first time I took notice too. When we were done we went back to our hospital room and waited. And waited. And waited some more. As each minute ticked by my anxiety got increasingly worse. I suppose Landon trying to eat the crayons in the room didn’t help. Finally, the nurse practitioner peeked her head in the door.

“Has the respiratory therapist been in to see you yet?”

Oh.crap. Those were my exact thoughts.

“No? Oh well, they’ll be by shortly I’m sure.”

Panic sets in. Oh my God. What is wrong with my baby’s lungs?

“Is there something wrong?” I asked.

She goes on to tell me that he has brochiolitis and what could appear to be reactive airway disease. I guess that’s a fancy way of saying asthma but they don’t want to say it because that’s all based on history and his history is obviously very short. She tells me that because he is still so young only time will tell.

Double crap. They prescribed him albuterol {same stuff I have been puffing on} and he has to inhale it through a tube and mask. He screamed when we put the mask on him at the hospital.

We were there for three hours. I dropped off Landon’s prescription at the pharmacy and went home to try to throw together something barely resembling a dinner. Then I quickly drove back to the pharmacy to pick up what would hopefully get rid of Landon’s cellulitis before it became an MRSA-filled abscess.

The pharmacy doesn’t have his prescription ready. Big surprise. So I sit down and impatiently tap my foot whilst staring down the pharmacist who promised it would be ready in thirty minutes. As I was sitting there an old man approached the chairs and sat down one seat away. I quickly pulled my phone out so as to appear busy. Because damn. I didn’t feel like talking. To anyone. About anything. To make matters worse, he had one of those portable oxygen tanks that pushes out air every few seconds. My nerves were shot so the noise was totally annoying. He also smelled strongly of medicine. My internal voice was smartass-ing him as I read my work email.

Then, there it was. His voice. “Winter’s right around the corner, eh?”

Ugh. Weather talk. You’ve got to be kidding me. I give him a glimpse of eye contact and nod my head praying that I would hear my name called over the store speakers.

A young dad rolls up to the counter with a cute baby in a jogging stroller. He picks up his prescription, turns around and leaves.

The old man talks again, “That was a fancy looking stroller. They didn’t make them like that back when my wife and I had kids.”

I glance his way and politely nod again.

“Do you have kids?” he asks.

“Yes, I have two boys. They’re both sick and I’m just waiting for their medicine. It was supposed to be ready.” I quipped with a sharp tongue.

He nodded politely in response. “You know my wife and I had three kids.”

Seriously, what is taking them so long. . .

He interrupted my impatience, “But there was a fire years ago and two of them didn’t make it. We lost our 10-week-old.”

I had no idea what to say. I have no idea what possessed him to open up like this. I can only guess it’s because he is lonely and talking about the children he lost is the only way to remind himself that they did exist. I felt as if I’d been punched hard in the stomach. The lump rose in my throat and the tears welled in my eyes. Time didn’t really matter anymore. The sound of the machine puffing became background music to his heartbreaking story.

He continued and I was captivated. He told me that even though it was over sixty years ago every time he sees a stroller it reminds him of one particular day. Not the day of the fire. But a day shortly after. He and his wife were walking in downtown Kansas City. He thought it might take their mind off of the devastation. As they window-shopped a young woman walked by with a stroller. Without a word, his wife took off running after the woman. She followed her into a store and tried to rip the baby from the young mom’s arms. He remembered that she was screaming it was her baby. It was her baby. But they couldn’t get through to her.

Prescription ready for Molly. Prescription ready for Molly.

The pharmacist’s voice finally pulled me out of the man’s tragedy and back to my reality. A random man sitting one seat away from me in the pharmacy. A man whose eyes I was so reluctant to look into. A man whose story ended up changing my heart.

Still caught in the utter chaos of this stranger’s story I clumsily told him how sorry I was that it happened to him. He told me not to worry. It was a long time ago.

And then I said, “But it still happened. Your kids still matter.”

“You never forget,” he said.

I stopped complaining when I got home. I was overwhelmed with gratitude.

The three hours that we spent in the hospital didn’t seem so long. The infant hospital gown didn’t seem so depressing when looking at my peacefully sleeping baby in his monkey pajamas. The swelling in Landon’s foot didn’t seem like the end of the world.

All because a stranger who sat one seat away from me at the pharmacy down the street told me his story. It got me thinking about the random placement of people in our lives.

Maybe that store associate who told you you look fabulous in that outfit was telling the truth.

Maybe that asshole who cut you off in morning traffic was actually an angel telling you to slow down.

Maybe the old and lonely man in the pharmacy has a story to tell that will make your awful day seem like a walk in the park.

Maybe. Just maybe. The placement of people in our lives isn’t random at all.

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Filed Under: Brigham, Double Trouble, Favorites, Landon, Mommy Moments, Sickies 15 Comments

Mama Bird

June 15, 2010 By Molly

We have only one tree in our backyard. It’s a short, awkward-looking tree. We’ve lived here for over three years now and there have always been a lot of birds making comfortable nests in our neighbors’ trees. But never in our tree.

But the other day, out of the corner of my eye, I sensed something move in the green umbrella of leaves. And there she was . . . sitting so still and blending in so well to the brown branch that you hardly notice her in this photo . . .

She stared straight at me. It was the strangest feeling. And then I realized why she watched me so intently. She’s a mama bird. There are tiny little eggs under her feathered breast. Eggs with such potential. Eggs that will soon be baby birds. Birds that grow and spread their wings to fly from the nest. Mama bird is making sure that will happen by protecting her young. As it has been and always will be in nature. And I realized, I feel much the same way as the mama bird perched in our tree. I will always protect my nest too . . .

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Filed Under: Adventures in Parenting, Family, Favorites, Stuff I Love 7 Comments

Boy or Girl? Let’s Find Out!

December 8, 2009 By Molly

Is it a boy or a girl? Watch the video and let Landon tell you! And yes . . . we are over the moon, can’t wipe the smile off of our faces happy!

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Filed Under: Favorites, Landon, Pregnancy #2, Videos 9 Comments

The Night Before . . .

August 7, 2009 By Molly

An hour ago I was holding my son in his room. It was dark with the exception of a tiny bit of street light shining through the curtain. His head rested right in between that place. You know . . . the place where your shoulder meets your neck. His head fits perfectly there. It made me think of when he first came into this world and his head rested perfectly on my bosom with his ear against my chest as if to search for that familiar heartbeat he had heard for nine months before.

I stood in his room for a long time and I’m not going to lie. I was weeping. The tears came and they didn’t stop. I sang my usual nursery rhyme to him rocking him back and forth, back and forth. Naaman came into the room because he knows me better than anyone. He knew I would cry tonight. We just stood there talking about the last twelve months. We were both hesitating. I didn’t want to put him in his crib for some reason. It was as if putting him down tonight meant saying goodbye to the first year. And I just don’t know how any year could be better than this one. How could that happen? Nothing has ever been so perfect as Landon’s first year.

I am overcome with emotion tonight just as I was exactly one year ago on this night. It was the night before we would meet our son face to face. I stood in his cute little nursery. Tiny newborn clothes stacked perfectly in the dresser. Pacifiers untouched by a baby’s mouth. Diaper rash cream and baby lotions unopened. Creaseless children’s books in the corner with stories yet to be told.

I peered into an empty crib as I had done so many times during my pregnancy. I tried to picture in my head what my baby boy would look like, sound like, smell like. Would he fill our hearts as much as we had filled his toy box? There was no way of knowing the amount of love about to enter our lives. Mostly because this kind of love is indescribable.

I laid my head down on my pillow one year ago and prayed that the induction would go smoothly and that our baby would be beautiful and healthy. I kept thinking that I would never be able to fall asleep on such a night. But all at once I was peaceful and fell into a deep sleep. I think my body must have known that I would need the rest.

So tonight I cried. I cried for so many reasons. I cried because I just can’t seem to find the words to describe our first year with Landon. I am so overwhelmed at the thought that I get to be this little boy’s mom . . . forever. He is everything I never knew I wanted. He is more than I ever dreamed.

Last year on this night I said goodbye to my big belly. This year on this night I said goodbye to my tiny baby. And when I wake up tomorrow morning I will go into his room and be so happy I get to say hello to my little 1-year-old boy. Oh, how blessed we are. How blessed we are.

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Filed Under: Birth, Favorites, Landon, Milestones, Pregnancy 3 Comments