I’m not sure when it happened, but I am suddenly very happy in a place I used to dream of putting in my rearview mirror.

I grew up in Missouri. Not the big cities of St. Louis or Kansas City, but the very center, in farmlands full of crops and livestock. Schools and church and shopping were ‘in town’, a winding 25-minute drive away. For most of my growing up years my bedroom window looked out over a field inhabited by an assortment of farm animals. As my mom would describe it we had ‘a little bit of everything but not much of anything.’ A cow and sometimes her latest calf, who provided every drop of milk I poured over my generic cereal in the morning.  A horse, then two, both ridden without saddles or halters. Enough chickens to make a good breakfast every day and the once a year a butchering party that kept our freezer full of hefty chicken breasts and legs. The goats were mainly for the 4-H project that made the county fair fun every year, as we walked them in circles, collected our ribbons, and spent the night in the smelly stalls.

The animals, combined with the acre sized hand planted garden in our backyard set us up on what to many would qualify to be called a farm. A lot of daily chores, performed in worn out rubber farm boots that were lined up by the basement door. It kept us fed and entertained in the days of no internet and no real channels on the small color television that sat mostly undisturbed in the living room.

But I was not a farm girl. I tried to enjoy the old brown horse who lived in our field out back, knowing so many girls in my school classroom would love to have a horse to walk and brush and ride in circles. But I just didn’t get it. Horses smell and are big and unpredictable. I didn’t see the draw.

I knew that once I had the chance, I’d be out of that environment. I wasn’t necessarily drawn to the big city, or fancy places, I just didn’t feel like I fit in the farmland.

When life finally gave me the opportunity, I took it. I moved three hours south of my livestock rich home to attend a college in the other major city in Missouri, Springfield. Still not glamourous, I found a bit more fun and opportunities as I worked through the motions to acquire an elementary education degree. I met people from all walks of life, and many different hometowns. I learned about foreign countries from exchange student friends who shared my dorm room hallway. My freshman year was the historic ‘I-70 series’, a World Series in baseball that pitted two teams from the same state against each other. Even those of us who were not necessarily baseball fans caught the excitement as Kansas City rallied up to take down St. Louis. The rivalries were exciting and felt very far away from the quiet farmland life I’d left behind.

After college I knew I wanted to see more of the world. Or at least more of the states that make up our vast and diverse country. Fate was my friend and I found a great friend in my dorm, who had come to college from the exotic place called New England. To a Midwest girl from the middle of Missouri, the draw was immediate. By the end of our college days, we were engaged and I was on a plane bound for New Hampshire to meet my future family-in-laws.

The life of exploration had begun. He showed me all of his favorite spots in four different states, all a few hours away from each other. I was happy to leave the rolling hills full of cows behind.

After the wedding on Thanksgiving weekend, where we hired a square dance caller for the reception, to give all of the out-of-town guests a true taste of rural Missouri, we packed up our little Subaru with all of our worldly possessions, and moved to New Hampshire to begin our new life. 

A few years later we’d move back to MO, so hubby could work on his Masters Degree. This time we lived near the Capital and he started working as an archaeologist for the Highway Department.

Ten years went by quickly and then we made some radical changes. He was hired by the Federal Highway Department and our first location would be Washington D.C. Considering it was just nine months after the 9/11 attacks, you couldn’t get more exciting than that.

I took every opportunity to drag our now full family of four little ones all over that city. Every week I’d scour the newspaper for the latest festival or exhibit that might be just a metro ride away. It was the kind of life I’d dreamed of, all those years stuck in the quiet farmlands of MO.

Next came a move to Utah. It was a state I’d never been to, and since we had very little internet in those days, I didn’t know what to expect. I was blown away by its beauty. Not just the gorgeous snowy peaks in the northern part of the state, but the fascinating characteristics of the Great Salt Lake, and the incredible red rock formations to the south. Again, we did all we could to see more of this beautiful state. The kids learned to ski and we enjoyed the slopes nearly every winter weekend. We explored Moab and beautiful canyons in the Navaho nation, where hubby traveled for work.

Our next move brought us back East, to New York. We settled in a quiet area of Upstate, just a couple of hours from the big city. That meant having a peaceful life of school events and local festivals mixed with frequent trips down to NYC to explore. I paid close attention to exhibits and festivals and opportunities to be in TV audiences. It was just another great exploration of what lies beyond the farmlands of the Midwest.

Our final move was to Colorado. We missed the consistent snow and beautiful climate of the West, so we headed back. For over ten years, as the last of our babies graduated high school, we lived in the mountains. There were often herds of elk in our yard. The skiing was once again consistent. My boys even worked at the local ski resort, something I could have never dreamed of as a wishful little girl.

We knew Colorado would be our forever state. And I assumed we’d always be in the mountains. But then something epic happened. Our oldest son got married and was expecting our first grandbaby. And they lived in a town two hours from us, in the farmlands of Colorado.

There was a huge choice to make. We knew we wanted to be involved in this baby’s life as much as possible, and living two hours away didn’t seem like a good way to do it. At the most, we’d see him every weekend, and we didn’t want to monopolize their family time by visiting on their only days off.

So we made the leap. We moved out of the mountains, and down to the valley. To the farmland.  Back to where I’d started.

It was an easy decision, knowing that if we moved, I could watch this baby every day, while mom and dad worked, and we’d get to see him grow up in a very personal way.  But I did have reservations.

We’d lived so many exciting places. Could we be happy, just riding on the joy of grandparenthood alone? Could I find my joy back in an area where several weeks out of the year, when the manure is being spread on the fields, the air smells like a dirty diaper and the flies invade my normally bug free home?

I didn’t have long to ponder the decision; a baby was on the way.

By a stroke of luck, a house went up for sale just three houses down the street from my son’s family. With their blessing, we bought it and moved into our new farmland CO home.  

That was five years ago. My little buddy, who I have been with nearly every day of his life, has now headed off to kindergarten. We soaked up days, and weeks, and months, then years of memories and special moments. I got to rock him when he was sick and make race cars out of toilet paper rolls. We built forts under my kitchen table and he took nearly every weekday nap in my big bed, after watching Ms. Rachel together.  It was totally worth the loss, of moving out of my dream mountain home.

And I slowly came to love my new small-town home. We live in an area twenty minutes from a bigger city. We pass by endless fields, full of crops and cattle, every time we ‘go to town’. It’s much like my childhood, once again. But for some reason I’ve fallen in love with it.

I’ve learned to appreciate watching those fields change over the months. Today they are mostly half tilled dirt, since most of the crops have just been harvested. They will lay quietly under snow for a few months, then in the spring we will once again see the big tractors driving up and down in long rows, tilling and planting, and fertilizing. We watch as the tiny baby plants peek through the soil, then grow into whatever new crop they might be. The corn is the most fun to watch, since it grows tall and is easy to identify. My grandson loves going to our little local grocery store and picking out that same ear of corn he watched grow. We put it in his little cart, take them home, shuck them, and talk about how yummy our local corn is as the butter runs down his chin.

We know which fields have horses and which have cows and rejoice when we see their babies suddenly appear in the spring. We drive past huge sheep farms, and play the game of looking for the pen that has the llamas mixed in. One day a pen will be full of white fluffy bodies and the next it will be empty. We talk about what that means, and it leads into conversations about where our food and fabrics come from.

We love going to the one Chinese restaurant in our closest little town. And our main Mexican spot. We feel good, supporting the local families who own them. When I’m shopping in our one local grocery store, I see the high schoolers in line, on their lunch hour, dressed in chaps and wearing cowboy hats. Almost all of them will go outside and crawl into a truck to get back to school. They are not being fashionable. I’m sure they get full use out of their attire when they get home after school and do real farm kid things.

I’ve learned to love living in the farmland, for the first time in my life. It took getting a chance to explore other places and getting new perspective. It helped that there was a little person in my back seat who also loved counting the cows and pointing out which tractor was red and which was green. But I finally learned the draw of life in the farmlands.

Ironically, we recently bought a cabin back in the mountains. For now, it’s our weekend cabin, but soon we’ll leave this farmland and retire up there. Far away from manure covered fields and irrigation pipes stretched far over crops. I’m excited to get back to the land of the moose and elk, but I’ll always carry the happy memories of our time in the valley. It’s where I learned to appreciate the beauty of every kind of life experience. I learned the value of being surrounded by fields instead of mountains or monuments.

It’s been a blessing I never saw coming. 

The Dream of a Mountain Cabin

 

So today a bunch of dreams came true. It was years in the making and it all came together today.

As of 10am this morning we officially own a mountain cabin. After living all over the country, this is the last house we will ever buy. For now, it’s going to be our get away, weekend hang out. For the next few years, we will gradually modify it and turn it into our retirement home.

Jeff has been hunting for this cabin for years. Basically, since we first moved to Colorado, fifteen years ago, and we knew it was our forever state, he has known we needed to find a cabin to spend our old people years. He’s looked at land, and done research on building. He’s found properties that were barely a shell of a house but could be turned into one. He’s studied local zoning laws and the millions of different rules about building and modifying land in the mountains.

It’s pricey, to find a good candidate. One property can have a thousand dollars in annual property tax and the property next to it, because it crosses a county line, can literally have eight times the tax bill. Good plots are limited and when they become available, they go quickly, and to the person with the most cash (it feels like!).

But this little cabin snuck up on us. It had been in Jeff’s sights for a while. He knew all the properties around it. He had it on his mind for a long time, and finally started pursuing it seriously about six months ago. Everything got put on hold for a bit, when my dad suddenly got sick, then died soon after. But when we were ready to be serious about it again, the cabin was still there, waiting for us. It is between Black Hawk and Nederland, for those of you familiar with the area. It happens to be about 10 minutes from Isaac and Marci’s cabin too.

The original part of the cabin is 100 years old. Then there was an add on a few years ago. It’s in excellent structural condition. It just was never finished, to make it officially a four-season cabin. The family has used it for a vacation cabin and taken excellent care of it.

One thing I like about it is that it’s what I’d consider ¾ of the way done. We just have to come in and add our touches and make it our own. There is very little to ‘rip out’ and renovate. We just add what we want.

Every step of the process has been positive. When we worried that the radon report may come in high, instead it came in low, way under the danger limits. The appraisal was way over the offer we made. The inspection had no major issues, and the minor ones are all things that my gang have fixed before and have no problem making right.

One of Jeff’s dreams was to have what I call scrambling rocks on our property. It’s common in the mountains to have rock outcroppings that are fun to scramble around on. Jeff is drawn to those rocks. And our cabin sits right next to a beautiful pile of those very rocks. He and Eli will be scrambling up and down them for years to come.

Then came the extra surprise today. Every house we have ever purchased came empty. No furniture left behind. The cabin had furniture, which the family had been using for years, that we assumed would be cleared out before we closed. Today we showed up for the walk through and all of the furniture is still there. We were not expecting that.

But this is the first house we’ve ever bought that we won’t be moving into immediately. The plan had been that we would acquire the basics as far as furniture goes, until we officially move in, two or three years from now. But I had a big job ahead of me this winter, finding some inexpensive beds, chairs, a table, deck chairs, and dressers. I needed to stock the cabin as inexpensively as possible, so we weren’t duplicating everything we own.

With this new development, my job was done. We double checked with the realtor at closing, and confirmed that the family had no interest in the furnishings. When we went back to the cabin after closing documents were signed, we realized the jackpot we’d been given.

We not only have beds, including a nice set of bunk beds, but we have a few dressers, in a style I would have picked myself. And the beds are all made. Whoever stayed at the cabin last, left it in pristine condition, ready to move in. There are full sets of dishes in the kitchen cabinets. Including silverware and utensils. There are pots and pans. There is one small and one large cast iron skillets, in excellent condition.

In the bathroom there are towels, bath sized and hand sized. There are soaps. There are EIGHT rolls of toilet paper. This house is ready to be lived in. And I didn’t spend an extra dime.

On top of that, there are two different tables, surrounded by chairs. Our dream of hosting Thanksgiving in the cabin this year will easily come true. There are nice lounge chairs, and two beautiful Adirondack chairs on the deck. Every cabinet we open we find more treasures. There are several boxes of trash bags and many rolls of paper towels. There is fresh fire wood (and kindling) in the wood box by the fireplace. And there are tools.

In a large storage area, there are scraps of wood leftover from projects, but there are also tools. Basic tools like screwdrivers and hammers, but also a few power tools. And four, yes four, ladders. Large metal heavy duty ladders that allowed Jeff to climb up on our roof and take in the amazing view of the mountain range. You can see the view from the back porch, sitting in my new Adirondack chairs, but there is something fun about seeing it from the rooftop.

This weekend is Halloween, but for most of our family, it’s explore-the-cabin weekend. We’re cleaning out cabinets and dressers and figuring out what we have and what we need to give away still. Jeff and Michael have already headed back up to the cabin tonight, to start in on the master list of things that need to be done. We are set for weekend projects for many months to come.

And for the next couple of years, I’ll be cleaning out all our storage and possessions in our current house, preparing to move some day to this perfect little cabin.

I’ll need the time to also get used to a new schedule for checking in with my best little guy. I see him less these days, since he’s been in school, but as much as his daddy loves being outdoors, and loves a good house project, I have a feeling we’ll be seeing him quite a bit even when it’s not in our current house.

The feral part of Eli is going to love roaming the rough and rugged four acres of Papa’s land, and scrambling up Papa’s rocks.

Watching him grow up in the mountains and doing sleepovers in Nana’s cabin, is just another dream come true.

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Eli's Season

 

There’s a cowbell by my toilet. It’s a free trinket that my son got from his work then gave to his thrilled nephew. It’s how I know when Eli needs my help in the bathroom. He latched onto the new toy and gave it a job. It’s how he calls out for me without having to yell.

There are applesauce cups and chocolate milk syrup in my fridge. Because every day, after I pick him up from preschool, Eli asks for the same lunch. Peanut butter sandwich with extra honey, four maraschino cherries, applesauce, and chocolate milk. His daddy isn’t thrilled about the cherries, but it’s kind of our thing. Once I introduced them to him, he was hooked, like I am. So we compromised. Since he’s four, he gets four. But don’t tell his dad. He thinks he gets one each day.

There are dirty dump trucks by my back door. They have spent their time in the sandbox and have been brought inside to eventually go through the ‘car wash’. About once a week I give him a big bowl of water and all the fun utensils from my silverware drawer, and he plays car wash. He splashes around. And we mop the water off the floor, knowing it will be worth the extra load of towels I’ll wash because of this adventure.

There are always popsicles in my freezer. Because once a day, after the peanut butter sandwich has settled into his belly, Eli will announce, “It’s popsicle time!” And he’ll go pull out my heavy freezer drawer, pick out two cold wrappers, and then offer to let me pick which one I want, before we excitedly open them together to see which colors we got. He doesn’t know I only buy sugar free popsicles. He only knows he loves it when he gets orange.

In my bathroom closet there is a shelf filled with tiny clothes. Size four shirts and pants and cartoon covered underpants. Because on those rare days when he has an accident, or the weather changes, he knows Nana’s got him covered. They’re on a lower shelf for a reason. Because sometimes he decides he needs a change and he likes to choose for himself.

Half of the bookshelves in my living room (and bedroom) do not contain books. They are stacked with boxes of puzzles, and tubs of Hot  Wheels, plastic animals, toy food, construction kits, wooden tools, and assorted loose toys acquired from Happy Meals and the neighborhood kid’s Bingo games. My treasured books, the ones I love so much I’ve hauled them from house to house, through many states, live down in tubs in the basement. Someday they will take back their rightful place on a shelf, but not today. Not when Eli needs a place to gather his toys.

I recently bought a new shelving unit for my small office nook. Not for my office supplies. Because we needed a place to hold all of Eli’s art supplies. With one big order from Temu, we had a dozen little plastic storage boxes to hold his tiny scissors, tapes, string, pipe cleaners, feathers, glue sticks, paints, and beads. Bigger containers hold his markers, paints, slime, and colored paper. And whenever he feels the urge, he knows where to go, to find a way to tame his creative urges. Just this afternoon we made baby turtles out of cut up egg cartons. We got green paint everywhere. We stapled tiny snips of green pipe cleaners on for legs, and drew happy faces on with a sharpie. He marched out my house an hour ago, proudly cuddling his new pets.

There are tubs of treasures under my kitchen table. Because it is more often used as a roof for a four year olds house/tent than it is for family meals these days. When I try to tidy up under there, he protests and tells me the importance of every item in his possession. I always back down, and leave his things where they are. Because they mean something to him.

But in eleven days he finishes preschool. He’ll walk across a stage in a tiny graduation gown and sing the song we’ve been practicing every afternoon. Then, as he describes it, the best part comes. A pizza party with his classmates. And from that moment on, my afternoon buddy will officially be a kindergartener.

Our afternoons together will end, and a new schedule and routine will begin. And I’m not sure I’m ready.

It’s not like I haven’t seen this coming. I’ve been blessed to have him during the day since he was a few months old and mama went back to teaching. I got the precious days of snuggles as he grew and changed and mesmerized us constantly. I have the external hard drive full of pictures to prove it. Then he turned into a toddler, then preschooler. We felt it was finally safe to take down the gate to the stairs. We gave him kid friendly knives and let him help chop vegetables. We saw him growing, but it was so deceiving. We were so tickled with his daily antics that we failed to notice the babyhood had evaporated.

When he started preschool we were so excited for him. He is an only child, who is great with adults, and neighborhood friends, but we knew school friends would be important. He’s thrived. He loves Miss Sarah and playing with his friends on the playground. He has religiously memorized all the letter sounds and their hand motions as they tackled a letter each week. He has hit all the milestones you’d want before big kid school. And suddenly the calendar is betraying me. And stealing away my little buddy.

Because he lives just down the street from me, I will still see him often. He doesn’t hesitate to fly through my front door just to say hi or grab a snack, when he’s outside playing with the neighborhood gang.

But the guaranteed times are over. And he’s still growing so fast. I cant imagine him at five and six, but those days are flying my way. I hope he continues to draw Jeeps on every paper that is put in front of him, for Nana. And I hope he still collects special sticks and rocks for me when he’s playing outside. Because there will always be maraschino cherries in my fridge for him. And there will always be a cow bell right next to my toilet.

 

 

Thankful For What It's Not

 

I'll start with a sincere apology for the picture above. For several decades now I've written parenting columns and blog posts and I think everyone enjoys a picture at the top. Even if it doesnt *directly* relate to the post. 

After writing the post yesterday, about my big new medical adventure, I realized I left a few things out. Time to fill in the gaps.

First of all, yes, it's a pretty big mental leap to be okay with having a hole cut into your throat for an undetermined amount of time. It's going to be an adjustment, physically and mentally. But it is SO much less worrisome than so many other things.

Let's start with cancers. There are thousands of terrible cancers I could be fighting right now. I love a good memoir and have read many through the years about people, mostly women, braving life through scary and sometimes deadly cancers. Losing their ability to mother their children for the decades to come. Being sick and in pain and suffering front of their children for months, and years, and remissions and reoccurances. I'm not facing that.  

I had about a six hour scare of that two years ago. Just months after losing my second leg I was wheeling around the house and first my daughter, then my husband, said, "Why are you yellow?" 

My skin and eyes had, within hours, turned yellow. Off to Urgent Care. Preliminary tests. No other pain anywhere. It was troubling. For reasons we didnt realize at first. 

I guess when you have yellowing and no kidney or liver issues, and no gallbladder pain, it's a big sign pointing toward Pancreatic Cancer. I had just seen something about how this is one of the bad ones, the ones that are hard to cure. 

Fortunately we only held that scare for a few hours, until more testing revealed it was indeed my gallbladder, which I had never had a moments trouble with my whole life. They went in, took it out, and after a quick set back to the ICU with sepsis, I finally healed and have not had an issue since. It was the closest I've come to that scare. And it just lasted a Friday night.

Then, while being in bed sick all week, I've watched way too many documentaries and Crime Mysteries. One of the most fascinating was called Six Schizophrenic Brothers. A family with 10 boys and two girls has six of it's boys become dangerous and debilitated by Schizophrenia. It's a horrible, family destroying mental illness. And there are many others out there that are just as scary for families to deal with. 

I'm not facing a terrible mental illness. I can still take care of my family. I can be the lucid, always encouraging, cheerleader to my babies (who are now full grown adults), even with no legs and a hole in my neck. I'm still who I am. 

I dont have the energy I once had. I dont have the drive I once had. But I feel strongly that once I get my breath back, and my muscles back, I will get those back too. There's no reason I shouldnt. This surgery is purely to help me be better, not worse. 

And another thing I have to add is that I somehow lucked into the most amazing, attentive doctor I've ever had. And I've had some amazing docs through the years. Several of them I even wrote about in my book. They were professional and helped me heal my body and get back to life. But Dr. G has become the exception.

He is my ENT, just a referral out of my primary doc's office. I liked his calm demeanor from the first visit. He took his time looking over my notes, tests results, and history. Nothing rushed. Then he always took the time to explain everything to me and Jeff, until every last question was answered. 

But the surprise came after surgery. As things didnt heal as they should. He didnt run away. He was available, any time, for an appointment, and then for a text. He literally gave me his personal text number and would check in on me periodically. 

It got to the point where he would call in meds within an hour of a text saying I was having problems. He would call the pharmacist on his own to make sure I was covered. He was cautious with meds, but always worked with me to keep me comfortable and seen. 

This week when I was sick, and struggling extra, he was there, a text away. The antibiotics he called in turned the corner for me. We talked about getting in to see him ASAP - me, him, and Jeff, for a pow wow about the trach surgery. I told him about the extensive research I'd been doing and he gave me his expert opinions, over text. 

Then yesterday I said, "I'm ready. When can we get this done?"

And he replied, within 15 mins, "I'm on it." 

We have our pow wow next week.

I trust this man who removed that huge invasive thyroid out of my neck and didnt abandon me when I was the one in a million with rare complications. He listens to me. He believes me. He understands my body is not wired correctly. He's the man to have on my side. The game is set. The coach is ready. 

And this is how I am with big medical decisions. I research and plan and think, and discuss with Jeff and my wise kids, and reach out to friends I trust. Then once my mind is made up, I'm 100% there. Lets do it. Immediately. I'm ready for the change.

And I'm there. From today until the day I walk into the hospital in a couple of weeks, I'll constantly be thinking, "I cant wait to be done with this life! Give me my air, voice, and energy back!"

That's just now I do it. I did it with both of my legs being amputated. And I'm doing it again. I'm ready. Let's get going. 

Starting Again

 

I've thought about returning to this page so many times. It's hard to believe it's been ten years since my last  post. Ten years of drastic life changes. Ten years that have turned our family upside down. But we are still here, better than ever. Always moving forward. 

Ten years ago I could not have imagined this silly boy in the Bluey glasses. He's my four year old grandson, who has lived three houses down from me from the time he was six weeks old. And spent almost every work day with me since then too. He's my right hand man. A blessing I never saw coming. 

More on where our family has ended up in later posts. So much to write on that topic. But the reason for this post is different. 

I'm facing yet another major medical challenge and this one has side tracked me. 

If you dont know my story, I electively had my left leg cut off in 2004. One of the first elective amputees that I know of. Fortunately  for many, it's becoming more common, and giving new mobility to people who were losing hope. I learned to finally ski on the first anniversary of my surgery. I loved going to the gym. I traveled on adventures with my husband and our four kids, as we moved around the country for his job. Life clipped on, for many years. 

We landed in CO. Our perfect state. We loved almost everything about it. But a few years ago my body started falling apart again. I started noticing my right foot deteriorating badly. Repeated infections. Repeated hospitalizations. A round of sepsis, sent home on IV through a port in my chest. Then my foot just fell apart. I think the pictures are too graphic to share online. 

I had to make the decision. A familiar one. Spend the rest of my days in and out of hospitals, on crutches, risking more sepsis, or just getting rid of it. It wasn't a hard choice. I wanted to live. 

So in 2023 I had my second leg amputated below the knee. As you can imagine, having two missing legs is a bit more complicated than having one, especially after being mostly bed ridden with infection for a few months. I had to slowly start to learn a new life, that now included a wheelchair. 

A few months after that huge change I had a serious spell involving my gallbladder, that put me in the ICU with sepsis once again. It just seemed to be one medical event after another. 

Once all of that settled down I felt I had to address a medical concern that had been haunting me for over 15 years. My thyroid. It had been growing and growing, showing no signs of cancer, for many years. It was finally making my voice gravelly and making me choke, so it was time to come out. 

Of course my ENT said it was the biggest one he'd ever seen. That's me. The one in a million. He had to include a thoracic surgeon in the surgery in case they had to break my sternum to get it out. Fortunately they didn't, but it came with complications I never dreamed possible.

My thyroid had invaded my vocal cords so much that after my surgery they were paralyzed. They ARE paralyzed. It's now 9 months past my surgery and since that day, on July 10, 2025, I have had no voice and severe shortness of breath. You cant imagine how much this affects your life. 

First of all, my learning to walk had to stop. I get winded just wheeling to the bathroom. Not using my leg muscles is making them wither away. I refuse to be confined to a wheelchair the rest of my life when I have muscles I could be using. 

Second of all, I lost so many precious interactions with my sweet grandson. He is four. He is a chatterbox. He's soaking in ABCs and nursery rhymes and books being read to him. All things I cannot do. We missed a whole season of singing Christmas songs he loved so much last year. I have stacks of fun books I want to share with him while he'll still let me. Every day is flying by as he grows older. 

I miss my long discussions about life, and kids, and memories, with my husband. We didnt get to 36 years of marriage without some pretty deep discussions, and I miss them. So many thoughts I want to share that are stuck in my brain.

I thoroughly enjoyed sharing my legs with people in public. Especially children. I used to go into schools and Boy Scout troops and share my leg with them. Being in a wheelchair for a couple of years put me at their eye level so in the stores I wanted to strike up  conversations with them, to make them realize my bionic legs were cool. But the little 'voice' I have is whispery, and scary. I dont want to scare them more.

And last but not least, I cannot make phone calls or use drive thrus. Not a five minute phone call to make a doctors appointment, or to check on a bill. I have to rely on Jeff to do all the calls, around his already chaotic work schedule. 

So at the last visit to my ENT, he mentioned the next step might be a tracheostomy. Yeah. A hole in my throat. To open up my airway and allow me to breathe more easily, and talk again.

I never in my wildest dreams thought I would ever be considering living with a hole in my throat. Somehow having both legs cut off didnt really alarm me, but having a hole in my throat felt like a punch in the stomach. 

I was very against it at first. And I really couldnt figure out why. After some soul searching, and discussions with Jeff, I realized part of it. I am comfortable entering a room with artificial legs. People understand it. 'Oh, she has legs amputated'. In fact, I sense I get points for it, since most of the ways you lose legs are pretty scary, and I seem to have overcome it. 

But you enter a room with a hole in your neck and it's confusing. It's creepy to many. I grew up in an age of non-smoking campaigns where people smoked cigarettes out of their hole, and talked like robots. People are going to assume I did this to myself, when I've never smoked a day in my life. 

I was afraid of finally being a medical freak. 

Then last week Jeff and I drove to MO to check on my dad. I was surprised how much better I felt. With the lower elevation and the warmer moist air, I had a bit more energy, more projection of my little voice, and not as much windedness. It was a peek into 'better'. 

As soon as we got home I came down with the family cold, with lots of mucous, which is terrible for my condition. I could barely get to the bathroom several times a day without becoming severely winded. Remember, every trip out of bed meant putting on two prosthetic legs and getting into my wheelchair. I was on my supplemental bedside oxygen almost full time and my oxygen levels still wanted to hit the mid 80s (they are supposed to be above 95). 

I felt like a true invalid. And it made me MAD. 

While in bed I had been doing deep dives into what life with a trach really looked like. Not the kind hooked to a ventilator. Just a trach. It's not as well understood. 

But I found many videos, on TikTok and YouTube, about what everyday life looked like, from young people. In their 20s, just living their lives with it, talking normally, breathing normally, and sharing their stories for people like me. 

Just like for so many years I've shared my stories about how living with prosthetic legs isnt so bad. Ironic. I'm the one who needs the help now.

I realized that it's time to move on. To do what I've always done. Do the next thing to get the life I want. Many years ago I wrote a book about my elective amputation. It's all about doing what it takes to get the life you want. Why cant I take my own advice? 

Maybe this is part of my purpose on this planet. My life motto, after I deconstructed from the Baptist Church, has been "We're all just here to help each other". And I really believe that. And maybe by getting this surgery, and getting my life back, I can help someone else, once again. 

Now that the cold in subsiding, and I have the energy to be at the laptop again, I wanted to get all of this out. To start this journey. I hope to remain faithful, to document this process. The days up to surgery. The days after, the days of finding my voice again. I might have to add to my TikTok videos, for voice samples. I have a couple of videos on TT of my voice before I lost it, and I barely recognize it anymore. 

But by summer I want to READ to Eli. I want to SING with Eli. I want to TALK to my husband and kids. I want to have enough breath to start walking up and down the sidewalk in front of my house, with my walker of course, and get my muscles back. 

I want to make my own phone calls. 

If you've made it this far, thank you. This is a lot for me. For my accountability. If it helps you, as my MO roots say, "that's gravy". 

More to come. Here we go......

Judy

Where We Got the Bowls

                Way back when Sam was still a diaper wearing person who toddled more than walked, he was a quiet kid. Then he stopped toddling and picked up a big boy gait, and we realized he was still quiet. Too quiet. One intense evaluation by a speech therapist later and we had our confirmation.  Sam had serious speech delays.

                I should have seen it coming. We were very familiar with speech therapists already. His older brother has a metabolic disorder that left in its wake a pretty nasty case of low muscle tone.  Having weak muscles in your jaw, lips and tongue make it difficult  to form words correctly. We spent years hanging out in the speech therapist's office, working on strengthening the muscles around his mouth.

                By the time Sam was born his big brother was speaking well and on the fast track to normal speech.

                I assumed I knew what to look for in Sam's speech development, since his brother's  speech therapist had become one of my best friends in Missouri. (We did spend a lot of time together, more than I spent with any 'regular' friends and we were both passionate about my sweet boy. There's nothing more bonding than someone loving your kid almost as much as you do)

                So when we made the big move to D.C. and Sam continued to be an easy going toddler, I was not concerned. I was watching for 'mushy speech' and I was not hearing it. I was watching for mispronounced words and I was not hearing any.

                That was the problem. I wasn't hearing anything. My baby was mute. Not exactly mute. He made sounds. But nothing close to language.

                It was when he had passed his second birthday and I realized he had never said the word 'NO!" that I became alarmed. What two year old (or eighteen month old, for that matter?) has not pounded his fist on the highchair tray and yelled NO! in the middle of dinner?

                I should have noticed it earlier. But I was watching for zebras, and antelopes showed up. Plus we had just packed up our four young children, all born in Missouri, and moved them from the only city they had ever lived in, plunking them down in the middle of the metropolis of Washington D.C. (just months after 9/11, mind you.)

                There was a lot of unpacking and signing up for schools, and figuring out the metro lines stuff going on. The fact that Sam was quiet was not noticed because he was...well...quiet. The squeaky wheel thing and all that.

                So suddenly I noticed and found the box with the address book in it so I could call best friend speech therapist back in Missouri. She confirmed my concerns and advised I get on the case immediately.

                Thus began Sam's journey with speech therapists. But this time we were not working on blowing bubbles and cotton balls to get stronger lips. We were working on finding sounds to make into words.

                We had been doing baby signs with him and they became his life saver. He could express, through basic signs, what he wanted. I was introduced to the amazing Signing Time videos. They helped our whole family, including grandparents, understand how to communicate with our youngest child.

                But part of the problem with having no speech as a one, then two, then three year old, is not being able to express how you feel. He didn't bombard me with constant questions through the grocery store, like his siblings had done. There was no discussing his favorite desires for Christmas that year. He didn't have the opportunity to question how the sky was made or why fruit loops don’t grow on trees. The basic needs were communicated but I missed knowing what my boy was thinking.

                Then one day, after months and months of speech therapy, the language started to come. Slowly, slowly we built up words into sentences and Sam started to realize he could talk. He could ask questions and state his feelings. And it was fun to see what he had been carrying around inside that head all those quiet months.

                One of my favorite moments came when he had become a  tall, confident three-year-old. He sidled up to the counter and asked for a bowl of breakfast cereal. "Me want cee-yal, mama".

                And as I poured out the frosted flakes and slopped on the milk my sweet boy looked up to me and said, oh so seriously, "Where we get dees bowls, mama?"

                All those months of silence and my boy had been wondering where I'd gotten the bowls.

                It makes me wonder what else he had been wondering, that he never got to ask.

                I met with his school speech therapist today and he is right on track. He will still receive services through the summer and then into second grade, but most people who meet him would never know he ever struggled with finding language. We feel blessed to have been able to shower him with the best specialists in every city we've lived in.

                Sometimes I think back to Sam's preschool days and wonder what treasures we missed. Sam is a very creative kid and I wonder what questions he had about the world around him that he could never ask because language was foreign to him. What magical profound thoughts circled through his preschooler brain and had no way of getting out? I will never know the answers to these questions but I am thankful anyway. So thankful that he finally did master our language and is able to fit right in to his second-grade class today. Thankful that he had great teachers along the way who brought out the best in him.

And also thankful that he made peace finally, with where we got the bowls.

Changing in the Years

In two weeks I will fill my Jeep with a few of my young adult children and we will drive to Texas for a wedding and a reunion. The bride is my niece, and the reunion was an obvious extension of her well-planned nuptials. Of course there have been the usual preparations for this trip. The haircuts, the shopping for appropriate clothes, the formalities of getting off work. But I've been doing unexpected mental preparations too.

As the weeks have flown by I've found myself thinking a lot about who I am. Who I am in relation to these people, these 4 siblings I will go spend time with and make new memories with. 

We all live in different states now. We are all in our late 40s and early 50s. We've become the adults we are going to be. We've made life choices and landed in the place life has designed for us. We are no longer 'young', with a landscape of years ahead of us to navigate. The people we were when we last shared a house together, and bedrooms in common, is on a far off horizon.

We grew up in a foster home. As in, our parents were foster parents. I mention this because, as is true with many decisions your parents make, this fact changed us as we navigated those waters. It changed us as a family, and it changed us as individuals. Sharing our home, and our parents, made us see life a bit differently than our peers who went home to regular families. I can't speak for my siblings, but after years of pondering, I know how that heritage affected me.

Another fact of our childhood is that we grew up in the Baptist church. As in, we were always in church - Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. Then youth group activities as they appeared throughout the week. Some of us (raising my hand) clung tightly to those teachings and some of us strayed a bit in our teen and college years, before circling back. But it shaped us, nonetheless.

College years hit and we scattered. The foster siblings were long gone. Mom and Dad were figuring out how to do the empty nest thing on a large scale, and how to save their strained marriage. Each of us picked a path that fit who we were, whether that be college close to home, college far away, or a short stint in the military.

In the early 1990s, we gathered when we could. We felt a common bond, having survived growing up in an unusual household dynamic. We liked beginning to know each other as grown-ups, with all the childhood baggage left behind. We still tended to follow birth order rules but it was generally comforting to see each other making our way in the world of adulthood.

We lost our mom in the middle of that decade. Way too early. It changed the balance. The hub of the wheel was gone. We scrambled to figure out who we were as a family without her. Dad worked hard to keep us connected, but the equilibrium of our unit was off kilter for a while. He remarried, with blessings from all of us, and things settled into a new normal. A less connected normal.

Decades passed too quickly. Those toddlers in the home movies graduated from elementary school and then suddenly were of driving age. We had all found paths in different directions and lives in different states. Phone calls were made from land lines until texting arrived to help us stay connected. But with the chaos of life with older kids and the complication of some major health issues in my own family, I was suddenly only seeing my siblings every few years, calling occasionally in between.

We all knew we loved and respected each other. Even if reality said we really didn't know each other that well anymore. I like to think my nieces and nephews know Aunt Judy loves them and thinks of them often, but there are no backyard barbecues to prove that anymore. I had to come to peace with the fact that I don't know how many times they've had a broken arm, or who they consider their best friend. Facebook helps, but it's not a substitute for really knowing a young person.

The past ten years I've changed a lot. Who I am, who I have become, what I believe in, have all been refined. 

I hit my early forties and realized I needed to start being true to myself. I re-thought some of the beliefs I'd held for much of my life. I mixed in the memories of the suffering I saw and heard about from foster siblings. I weighed the life stories of many people I've met in adulthood, who struggled in their own ways. Many of my childhood beliefs didn't line up anymore.

I purged some, and re-established others. I really took the time to ponder every belief I held and weigh it carefully before I added it back into the pile. My beliefs were no longer sprouted from ideals, but from real life experiences with real life citizens of the earth.

I stopped being the quiet one who just agreed so I wouldn't be forced to disagree. After feeling very pigeon-holed in high school I deliberately went to college three hours away and found my voice. I started to become the more outgoing person I had always wanted to be. I married my best friend and, with his encouragement, I have, year after year, found my stride. I've taken chances and pursued opportunities. I've chipped away at that old me, the one who silently grew up behind two older sisters with strong personalities and perfect Farrah Fawcett hair.

The hard part has been how many of those beliefs no longer line up with the beliefs I had as a 20 something.  Or with the beliefs of some of my family members. We all came from the same pot. But we all grew into individual beings. 

Formed from our adult life experiences, that were continually mixed with our childhood teachings, and sprinkled with our adult interactions.

I'm perfectly okay that all five of us might now have distinctly different beliefs. In fact, I cherish it. 

I can only hope that my siblings have also examined their lives and become the people they truly want to be. It will make them the most at peace with their future and the most content in their everyday lives. As we are all considering what an empty nest looks and feels like, knowing who we are inside is the first step in understanding where we should wander next.

I look forward to being in the same room as my Dad, stepmom, and 4 siblings. The joking and camaraderie come easily. We were purposefully raised to be kind and respectful. We practice those skills on each other. I think we all appreciate the fact that being together is so rare that it's not useful to spend our time disagreeing about things. Having lost our mother so early we are very in tune with how fragile and unpredictable life can be. It's important to make every memory count.

But I go to this reunion, and this well anticipated gathering feeling a bit fragile. I fear that I will be pigeon holed right back into that shy, quiet fifteen-year-old my siblings knew so long ago. Or that not yet refined 25 year old I see in the old home movies. 

As siblings we had our balance, and it's easy to go back there. Oldest one in charge. Youngest one still thought of as the baby, even if he'll soon be leaving his forties. But I'm ready to be seen as me. The almost 50 year old me. The one I've worked hard to become.

Until then, every sad song will bring tears, touching a nostalgic place deep inside me, as I anticipate finally spending time with my core family. My mom's presence will be felt and maybe acknowledged a few times, bringing mist to our eyes. We will all be thinking of how she would have loved seeing how well we've all turned out. She had some amazing grandchildren she never got to see.

But we'll all walk into the room with happy hearts in two weeks. My oldest sister might be a bit more exhausted than the rest of us, as she's spent a very long time getting ready for this magical wedding that will take place for her oldest daughter. But we'll all be happy to be there.

We'll spend an afternoon making an old traditional Polish dish our Grandma Johnson raised our dad on, and we'll rejoice when it turns out pretty close to the way she used to make it. Cousins will mingle and play games, being reminded that they are related to some pretty cool people. And my Dad will take it all in with a full heart.

Vows will be traded, toasts will be given, and a new member will be added to our large family. Then we'll all make our way back home. Back home to be the people we've been working so many decades to become.