Old Home Week

This week has brought a couple of interesting coincidences. Now that I'm on blogger, I went searching for people I might know, and I found one: g8s. G8s and I went to college together. He was actually the first person I met there; we were on the same KCollege tour as high school seniors, and as it turned out, he already knew my roommate, Juice. In his blog he writes about a friend of ours, Blake, and his desire to get back in touch. I've been cleaning out my house preparing for the adoption homestudy, and I just went through a box of papers I haven't opened since college. I found a letter Blake had written me while he was on foreign study in Sierra Leone. I started thinking about the way we leave our marks on each other, how our lives often split, then intersect again later. My biggest regret, my greatest embarassment is my failure to keep in touch with the people I love. I think about them often, but have let them slip through my fingers, like sand. Each have left their mark on me, changed me, bettered me, and I love them for no other reason than that they are who they are. G8s, Blake, Juice, Key, Ilana, Kate, Stephanie, thank you for everything, and I will do better. Katee would be in that list too, except she just tracked me down after many years. I am so happy for her, and proud of her for the changes she's made. We all grow up, some times grow apart, but we were always meant to be a part of each other's lives. I like to imagine how we'll meet in our next lives as well. Will Juice always help me be true to myself? Will Key always talk politics, history, and film with me? Will he always call me Tycho Brahe (that would be in reference to my hard nosed positions, folks, not the lack of a nose, yo)? Will Ilana always be my first love? Will Katee always make me laugh? I really hope so.

Moms

I've been doing a lot of thinking about Moms lately. Not surprising, with the adoption home study, and all, but still. I never thought I'd be one, and I never thought I wouldn't have one. I really liked my mother. Not just because she was my mom, and you're supposed to love your mother, but because she was a neat human being. She was funny, thoughtful, honest, respectful. I appreciate that she encouraged me to be my own person, make my own mistakes, make my own experiences. She always seemed to know when to treat me like an adult, and when I needed my mommy. I could walk around in this world confidently, because I knew she was right behind me. I didn't have to look. It makes me sad that my kids will never know their grandma.

I was thinking about how much time work will take away from me seeing my kids each week. It was kind of bothering me. They'll have time with their other mum, so it's not like they'll be in day care 45 hours a week, but I'll be working full time. I never believed I'd say this in a million zillion years, but I'd be a stay at home mom if I could. For someone who's identity is so wrapped up in science and profession, that's pretty woah. But then I realized: my mom worked my whole growing up too. She even had to work every other weekend, so I might have only seen her for a handful of hours a day, and yet she left her mark on my life every day we spent on this earth together.

I was always a person with an odd dichotomy: I am adventurous in the outside world, I'll jump off of things, climb things, travel without itineraries, try anything; on the inside world, I need routines, same foods (yes, Lady Jane, shut up), same tv or movies, and this: when I was a little girl, from the time I was about 6 to about 12ish I called down the following to my mom after being sent to bed:
Mom,
Don't forget to tuck me in,
If you do, I'll bite your shoe,
And that won't tickle.

The fact that I'm a dork is already well established. I wonder though, what kinds of silly routines my boys and I will have.

Sorry, Florida, but better you than me...

So, Tom Monaghan, the freaky founder of Domino's Pizza, and subsequent ruiner of the Detroit Tigers has finally decided that Ann Arbor simply will not change it's liberal, heathen ways and is headed to Florida to build his religious utopia. Please note: the town will contain a 65' crucifix. Really, they're getting ripped off. He tried to build a 250' crucifix essentially in my back yard. Thank God (hee!) he was turned down, or else Jesus would have had much to see through my bedroom window.

Although, it would have given a whole new meaning to the "OH MY GOD" thing.