Weekend

 My brain is ricocheting between many things:  

I am looking forward to school starting.  I am thinking about reading centers and my classroom and back to school night and the first week of school.  

I am coming to terms with this being my last week of summer vacation and I didn't do all the things on my lofty to do list.  (Maybe this week?)  

I am remembering last year at this time and the pull-the-rug-out-from-under-you cancer diagnosis.  Sometimes I successfully don't think about it.  Sometimes I successfully think about it with a degree of equanimity.  Sometimes when I think about the future, I wonder if the future I think I have planned will be a reality.  I try to stop myself from freaking out too much.

I felt pretty well on Friday--mostly just tired.  Saturday and Sunday, I felt worse.  It is hard to come to terms with.  It is hard to keep myself from thinking that life as I've known it is over and I'm just going to be sick or worse.  Adam helps me.  He is ever and always my ballast.

I am missing my mom.  I turned the calendar page to August, the calendar she made for all of us.  August is a picture of our family at the Elko Temple open house.  My mom was there.  My mom loved the temple and loved us.  How is she not here with us?  I want to talk to her.  Olivia does talk to her, but I cry too much.  I guess the best that I can do is try to be like her.  

I have a fat package of pictures from my mom.  This picture stopped me in my tracks.

My mom and both grandmas are working on my wedding quilt.  In this picture I see three women who loved each other.  I see three women with vast and varied talents who served whenever and wherever they were asked.  I see three incredibly hard working women who made a difference and a contribution in the world.  I think what matters most to me about all of that though, is how they made me feel.  They loved me and I never once doubted that.  They were always on my side.  I see this picture and I have so many aspirations.

The influx of new photographs started me on a whole plan for a big project.  Adam said, "You have one week of summer left.  Why are you starting a big project now?"

Hello, have we met?

I told Emma about the project, which was to digitize every picture in the house, get rid of photo albums and make Snapfish books.  Get organized once and for all and really mean it this time.

She said, "But I want photo albums.  I want real photos."

I asked Mark and he said he didn't really care either way.

I asked Adam and he said, "You have one week of summer left.  Why are you starting a big project now?"

I asked Braeden and he liked my idea of Snapfish books.

I called Marianne, sure that she had all of this figured out.  She was hiking to Boulder Lake, but still took my call.  She told me she didn't have it all figured out.  The nerve of some big sisters....

My children are going to be the ones to inherit the hot mess that is my photos, so if Emma wants photos, I'll keep photos.  For now, I am sorting through the photos I have and I will make decisions later about each category (some of them are duplicates because they are pictures I mailed my parents from Connecticut).  Probably what will happen is that I will get busy with school and abandon ship and leave the disheveled photos to flounder.

Adam has in fact met me.

Speaking of Adam, he was looking for something in his office on Saturday and came across some letters (written on Denny's order tickets because I worked there that summer) that I wrote to him the week before we got married 31 years ago.

He started reading them aloud to me and we both got a little teary.  He said, "I feel like we should be sitting next to each other."  We moved to the couch and he kept reading and we both cried.

What an enormous blessing it is in my life to have Adam.  I wrote in my letters how much I loved him and I didn't even know all the things about him yet.  I didn't know how he would be as a father or how he would take care of me when I was sick or how he would be patient with me when I am 1) dreaming up unreasonable projects or 2) spinning out of control.  He's a gem and I am lucky.  That is all.

Going through photos led to a line of questioning on WhatsApp that never did get any answers.  This photo of a mystery baby was in my stack of photos.

Tabor thought it was Enoch, but he couldn't be sure without the beard.  Enoch thought it was Tabor, but he couldn't be sure without the handlebar mustache.  Ammon said we would know better than he would how he looked at that age.

Olivia rightfully pointed out that Enoch was a December baby and there was no way he would be wearing short sleeves with our mother at the helm.  

I think it's Ammon, born in July although still wearing socks (again, my mom).

My dad had no idea.  

I'll leave it for Emma (the one who likes photos).

Besides all of that, I was mostly down and out during the weekend.  Friday was an easier day than Saturday and Sunday.  I'm ready for the uphill climb though.  On to better things!