I can’t believe it’s been two weeks since I last wrote here. I’m so grateful for the comments and emails of congratulations. And equally grateful to be turning the page to a second trimester without persistent nausea and (mostly) without fatigue. There are good times ahead, I know.
October went so much faster than I expected seeing as though I was alone with my toddler for much of it. I don’t like to say much here or anywhere else online or publicly when the husband is away for business. In all reality, the likelihood of some scary crazyperson reading a mommy blog, determining where I live, and coming to kill me is probably pretty low, but it just feels weird to announce to All of The Internet that I am alone here. Now that he’s back though, I can tell you that he was across the world (literally!) in South Africa for two full weeks as I courageously fought the battle of parenting a toddler while alone and pregnant.
It really isn’t as scary as it sounds, and I just fall in to a rhythm similar to when I have a co-parent, but there is a lot of stuff here that gets lost or left behind in the process. Like the mounds of clean laundry that are folded in my master bedroom and reaching unchartered heights in stacks that need to be put away, and now they have collected dust so long I wonder if they need to be washed again. Or the action of repeatedly squishing the trash to the bottom of the can so I don’t have to walk it out. Or thinking I really should vacuum the stairs or mop the floor but somehow everything takes longer when you can’t say, “Go play with your dad for a minute” and get half an hour of catch up every night before dinner. There are a hundred tasks like that I somehow leave behind when I am going it alone. He’s usually not gone for more than one week at a time, but I found that two weeks and two weekends definitely wore me out a lot more than what I m used to. I’m happy to have some balance restored around here now.
My dogs escaped somehow last week, and they found my neighbor’s pet ducks. I don’t have to tell you the rest of that story to know how it ends. Then the next day, I went for my end-of-first-trimester appointment with my midwife, and there was a long five minutes of searching for the little one’s heartbeat with no results. They sent me for an ultrasound to follow up immediately, and it turns out all is well. Someone didn’t want to be heard on the doptone monitor but looks just fine on the screen. This looks a lot more like a baby now, and I saw that little pitter-patter on the screen with beating heart and lots of movement that eased my worried self. Crisis averted, but it made for a draining day and some really scary moments. My friend Eileen says the baby is in “that Teddy Graham stage,” and I have to agree with that description.
But I got an enormous reward for two weeks of solo hard work. On Saturday, I celebrated the one hundreth anniversary of my sorority chapter with an all-day event that reconnected me with some faces I haven’t seen in ages.
Sororities are different things to different people, and I can confidently say I would not have joined a Greek organization had I attended a large state school. I went to a small, private women’s college, and most are surprised to find that many sororities were founded at women’s colleges or other smaller institutions. And though they find their way off-track at moments, the whole idea was to support and enrich the lives of young women when they weren’t often met with such support in the land of higher education.
And my tiny little chapter turns one hundred years old this fall, so we threw a big ol’ party! My Saturday was full of catching up with old friends and seeing familiar faces and listening to stories from eight different decades of women who were present there to share a common bond. Eight decades. To think of what that means is pretty astounding. Rewind from internet, from cell phones, from the days when it was socially acceptable for women to drive cars or wear pants. It’s fascinating to think of how much has changed and what stays the same. I’m always proud to be women’s college educated, but on certain days like this, I am especially honored to be in this group. It was a day and night that recharged my batteries for a long time.
Returning home is nice too, but it was met with Halloween madness, a stubborn head cold, and mounds of catch-up from my extended stint as a single parent and my night away with girlfriends. Much too much to do this week, but my tank feels full, and that’s such a rare and valued thing for a mother. Happy November, reader!
Mama the Reader 