Sunday, May 1
It's been a long weekend here with events both nights and the WalkAmerica yesterday morning. It was unseasonably cold and probably not the best for me. After a steroid pack and a round of antibiotics, I'd like to be feeling better than this.This is the last writing exercise in the focus group I enrolled in, and I'm not going to do it exactly as instructed. The assignment was to imagine the perfect mama support system and to write about it as if it was actually taking place. For me, in so many ways, it already is.
While neither Mike nor I have blood family here in town, we have this amazing network of friends and chosen family, as I like to call them. We live two doors down from some of our dearest friends who would do anything for us or our children. The two of them stayed with Griff - and unfortunately had to answer his questions about where I was and how I was - when I had to go into the hospital with Eliza. In all of the craziness of that day, I never once wondered what I would do with Griff. In my head, though we had never discussed it with them - with seven weeks left, that seemed premature - I assumed they would be with him. It was the only way that seemed right.
We have amazing caregivers at Eliza's daycare who not only care for her but love her. She is in capable and caring hands. Working at a college, we have an unlimited supply of babysitters, and we have been blessed to take more than one of them into our home and our hearts. They have become family and are kind and generous to help us. I've called on them more than once in a pinch.
Mike and I both work with people who care for us and our families, people who have before and will again helped us to pick up the slack, both at work and at home when the need arose. I was on maternity leave far longer than anticipated because of Eliza's early arrival, and my boss was amazing. Mike's department helped cover his classes during the time. My boss and I have picked up one another's kids and dropped them off places; we've gotten meds at the doctor's office for various kids; we've babysat.
While it would be nice, certainly, to be closer to family, we are blessed to have this amazing group of individuals around us who love us and care for us in so many ways. So much about this life that we live is stressful and hectic and difficult, but so much more is truly blessed.
[ posted by Chel on Sunday, May 01, 2005 ]
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