With Sampsonite In Hand…

We are born without bond, but as we grow we accumulate baggage, and often that baggage is thrust forward and lands squarely in the lap of those around you. In my complaints of my mother in law I forgot that. I forgot that she has a whole history that pre-dates me that even her children aren’t privy too. The other day however the apple cart was over turned, and underneath there was more to see.

 

             When I first met Jacob I found it odd that there were no discussions of seeing Grandma O. Grandma L was often the focal point of visits by my father in law, and was there at the first Thanksgiving that I shared with the L family. She was the one that my MIL called Mom with a soft expression. It was for her whom she weeped when we attended her funeral many years later. When I questioned this I came to find out that my now MIL had at that time not been in contact with her mother in 4 years. Of course given her loathing of me, I felt sure I knew the reasons why. She was a less than forgiving person, and was less than amiable to be around despite my best efforts to change that. So my assumption was that it simply had to be her fault. Years later after I married Jacob and he took me to meet Grandma O for the first and only time I was even more convinced of this. She seemed “normal” enough to me, and after all her son still spoke to her.

 

                   By the time I become the next Mrs. L it seemed that my mother in law loathed me even more. No matter what I tried it wasn’t right. So why bother? In turn gave up on getting the Walton’s and instead resigned myself to a life that more closely resembled Everyone Love’s Raymond. Like Marie and Debra they were nice to each others faces, but the true gist of the relationship more closely resembled gold plating over silver. Eventually the gold rubs away and the silver happens to dull under it. This is how it was until my most recent loss when MIL reached out, and I took it as her being “her” rather than it being her turning point.

 

                  She brought this up again in an email the other day. I was sharing with her my latest blood work. At the end I thanked her for being interested. After all my own mother and I are becoming close acquaintances, but even when she plays the roll of mother she isn’t all that interested. She responded by saying that she has wanted for a long time to be privy to our lives, and to be part of them but that Jacob and I made it difficult. I made it difficult with my wall, and he made it difficult with his standoffishness. Of course it wasn’t all wine and roses because she felt that she needed to add “What ever happened between you and I has WELL been forgotten” My initial response was “what happened is that you hated me, that’s what happened. I wanted another mother and instead got Mommy Dearest, but I didn’t. Instead I pondered this revelation and looked in on how Jacob and I dealt with and continue to deal with both sets of parents.

 

               We have been just as wrong as them. Because of my mother in laws baggage from her own mother she is incapable of showing physical love. Instead it is bestowed through food, money, shelter, and gifts. Jacob however needs to be shown physical love, and the fact that his parent’s didn’t give that to him is just one of the bags that he carries. He also has a great need to please, and since in his mind our early marriage was such a disappointment not only to me, but to them because they had to bail us out several financial situations. The second bag he carries is guilt…

 

                   For my part, I told her that I wanted to love her, wanted her to like me early on but when she didn’t I gave up. I have a bad relationship with my own mother, and when I didn’t get a new one with her I decided to let her girls be “her girls” and I simply played the roll of Jacob’s wife. Yet once she started to reach out, I still didn’t trust it and instead of reaching back I pulled away. After this is when she told me the story of her mother.

                My grandmother in law had 2 children, my MIL and Jacob’s uncle. Uncle P was apparently the golden boy. He grew up became an engineer and married well. MIL on the other hand didn’t go to school, and worked different secretarial positions and in retail because she was TOLD she couldn’t do any better. When she met my father in law, and they decided to marry my grandmother in law told them to their faces “You have a new job as a whore master, and my daughter is the whore” Further, despite my Grandfather in law having a job they were also expected to send them a monthly stipend which the did until Jacob arrived and my in laws cut off the support. She then said “Susan in my heart I know she hated me”

 

              She ended the conversation with “And yes, I can’t wait to be a grandmother”

 

           We all come with baggage, but it is up to us to unpack it. It took my MIL 14 years to unzip hers, but now that she has there is no way to close it. Sure there will be times when I will want to banish her to the island, and even more certain that there will be times when Jacob does…I just hope that I remember we can lug the duffle bags alone, or we can share their contents with another…and hopefully it will help them better understand that what is gold on the outside may have platinum underneath…

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Will You Remember Me?

We without children all seem to have the same thought at one time or another.  “Who will remember us?”  I think of this periodically as I watch my sisters children frolick and play, and was reminded of that very question from this blog.  Yet rather than the sad feelings that sometimes accompany those thoughts,  I am reminded of a very special woman in my life that never married, and never had children, yet her legacy lives on not only through my mother, sisters, and I but also through my sister’s oldest son who was only 6 when she passed on.  Ironically it was he who evoked her name the other day during an otherwise innocuous car ride.  From Alex’s memory, and that blog it is why I will share her story now.  Some knew her simply as Mary.  Others very formally as Mary Katherine, Mary Kay, M.K, and then when Alex started to talk he simply called her K.K a name he still calls her today, a name she relished with a smile.  She is remembered, yet she doesn’t leave a biological legacy behind.

 

M.K came to live next door to my grandparents in the 1950’s.  Her mother had long since been gone from this Earth, and as an only child she felt it was her duty to care for her father and the house hold.  They had originally lived in O’Hara Township, but her father wanted to move to Aspinwall where he could have his own garden in his small back yard.  They also needed to live on a bus or trolley line so that M.K could attend classes at a business school for which she had received a full scholarship too.  The house they chose was perched next to the home my grandparents lived in, and the home that my own family would reside in as well.  They became part of the family shortly after they moved in when  my maternal grandmother began having them over for Sunday dinner.  When M.K’s father died Sunday dinner became birthdays, holiday, and Wednesday’s, or a Tuesday or any other week day just because.  It seemed the only time M.K didn’t dine with the family was when she was traveling abroad as she was promoted from being Mrs. Kaufman’s (of the Kaufman’s Department store Kaufman’s) personal secretary to becoming the head buyer for the Vondome Shop on the 9^th floor, or if tickets to the theater or to watch her beloved Pirates play at Forbes Field or Three Rivers Stadium.  It was her  shop however was her husband, and those buying trips her babies, but she was not without family for she was adopted first by my grandmother, and then my my mother.

 

Her name appears in my baby book next to the gift she bestowed upon me, and her photo is on one of the pages.  There are slides, and 8 mm movies, and photographs of her interacting with each of us.  When my grandmother died, we moved in to care for my ailing grandfather, and KK took over the roll of maternal grandmother.  She didn’t bake cookies, or give us treats just because, but she rushed home from work the day I needed 2 stitches in my head, and winding up with a concusion  after trying to be Tarzan on the monkey bars at school.  As she bent down to kiss my forehead I threw up all over her alligator shoes.

 

Every year on Christmas Eve my Dad would pile we three girls in the car and we would drive in the snow to town.  K.K. always had to work Christmas Eve, but that didn’t mean she had to miss dinner.  We would round the block several times as we waited for her to emerge from the revolving glass door.  In her arms would be bags of wrapped packages, and we knew that at least one of those packages contained our yearly sweater, yet each year we acted surprised.  I still have, and still wear my last Christmas sweater from her.

 

Later, when I was in high school and she developed cancer and needed surgery it was she who moved in with us.  For 8 weeks she stayed, 2 weeks longer than the doctor said she needed too.  It was during this stay that she developed a fondness for the soap opera The Guiding Light.  Every day I would rush home from school and we would sit and watch together.  Then one day she announced matter of factedly “I think its time for me to go home” and she was gone, and while she lived right next door our house seemed a little emptier.

 

When I announced that I was moving to Connecticut it was she who drove me to the Greyhound bus station when no one else knew I was gone.  It was also she who refused to wish me congratulations on my wedding.  Not because she didn’t like Jacob but because “You should have invited US.  You do have a family to think about you know”  It was she who accompanied my parents and sister on two of their trips to visit us in New England, and from one of those trips that I have a photo that I cherish.  It is encased in a frame that says “FAMILY”

 

2002 marked M.K’s last Christmas with us.  The cancer had returned, and we all knew it would be her last.  On July 29, 2003 on my sister Erica’s birthday Mary K slipped the surly bonds of this Earth and touched the face of God.  She left each of us girls a little something, both monetarily and a prized possession for each.  Yet this isn’t why we remember her.  We remember her because she touched our hearts and thus she does go on.

 

I know it’s hard to imagine that any one will care when we are gone, or that someone will remember us.  Yet even if our biological ties aren’t spread like seeds in an orchard we do leave a legacy behind.  Perhaps it will be through a child who shares your name, perhaps like my niece who shares her middle name.  Or maybe there will be someone out there who on a hot summer day will evoke our memory by saying “Do you remember when?”  The only way we will truly be forgotten is if we want to be…

Told You So…

I finally got around to getting my prolactin level drawn today.  Certainly NOT cycle day 3 as I had intended, but close enough for government work I suppose.

4 days post ovulation it was 31.3  “Gee nurse could it be high due to ovulation”  Survery say:  “Oh well I don’t know”

Cycle day something…ok gee if you are going to make me pin it down I am guessing between CD 5-10, sounds about right to me.  Ok I will figure it out…AF started last Monday so that was 8 days ago…so Cycle Day 8 Prolactin is…

17.1

According to Dr. G @ @ gle:

 

The normal values for prolactin are as follows:

• Males: 2 – 18 ng/mL
• Non-pregnant females: 2 – 29 ng/mL
• Pregnant women: 10 – 209 ng/mL

Gee, imagine that…NORMAL

It would seem as if my hypothosis was correct!  Just remember, I’m not a doctor but I play one quite convincingly on my blog!

Houston…There Is No Problem…

Unlike Apollo 13 we do not have a problem.

When AF began, I checked my cervix and it seemed that along the perimeter were still the bumps that I had been feeling.  I checked again on CD 3 since AF seemed to be slowing and sure enough with closing cervix the bumps seemed to have lessened.  I checked again today on what ever cycle day I am on and she is completely NORMAL again sans 1 tiny little lone bump, which I am confident will also be gone come Aug 15th.  So the GYN is going to think I am a complete hypochondriac I am sure.

My diagnosis is that I have developed a reaction of some sort to the Ring.  I have many reactions to the ring to support this hypothesis.   This go around I had terrible itching the final week that the ring was in.  I had much more CM than is normal even while on the ring.  I started spotting both times 4 days before the ring was due to be removed.  Then there were the bumps that disappeared almost as soon as the ring was removed.  My personal thought is that somewhere along the line from when I used the ring regularly until my recent need for it is that they added latex to the product.  I have a dermal reaction to latex, which hasn’t developed into a life threatening allergy yet, but given the reaction none of my doctors take any chances.  This is something I will have to ask Rebecca when I see her on the 15th.

Obviously, we chose not to re-use the ring this cycle.  I didn’t want to take any chances.  After all the ads on the television say “Do not use if you have had certain cancers”  Given that I didn’t know what was going  on the risk seemed to great.  I will ask on the 15th if I can have a script for a P4 test done, along with a new script for the birth control pill.  I am most intrigued by the pill that allows you to only have 4 periods a year.  Hopefully she will grant both requests.  The P4 is not because I think I will ovulate on my own, or that I have any delusions of a miraculous pregnancy, but rather if I haven’t ovulated by the 15th of Aug, I won’t.  So then I can start the pill which means…NO AF for vacation at the beach!

That all seems fairly simplistic given that a week ago I cried for 4 days straight (not constantly but any time I thought about it) thinking that I may  have cancer…and if I have cancer I would likely need a hysterectomy and then any chance of a child would be gone.  So to be able to have the option of going back to attempting conception, or simply having normal predictable periods is nothing short of its own miracle.  Lets just hope that my hypothesis holds more accuracy than Darwin’s theory of evolution…