Chapter 1 - motherhood

I am a planner. I make lists, lots and lots of lists. Ever since elementary school I have been planning what I wanted my life to be like…someday. I wasn't decisive enough to have all the exact details figured out, but I had the big picture. I never expected to have all of my dreams come true, but it was nice to have something to work towards. My senior year of high school, one of my teachers asked us to write about what we hoped our life would be like in 5 to 10 years. For me, this was easy. As a result of all of my studying and my stellar GPA, I will have earned a full-ride scholarship to the college of my choice, and will have graduated with my bachelor’s degree. Then, I was going to get married, to a successful and of course very handsome man. Hopefully I would have at least one child, maybe two, and would be spending my days as a stay at home mom raising them.


Four years and 11 months after I graduated from high school I am sitting in my living room in our two bedroom apartment holding my three week old baby girl, Rachel. I am a mom. Everything I had always wanted has come true. I had earned a full-ride scholarship to a four year university. I decided to go to ASU since it was nearby. I got my own apartment, (even if it was only 30 minutes away, and I shared it with 3 other roommates.) I had a job (as a bank teller) that paid all my expenses, went to parties, made lots of friends, went on lots of dates. Then a year later I met Sam, a super smart chemistry major, and of course tall dark and handsome.   I had earned my Bachelor's degree, married the man of my dreams: handsome, smart, driven, and someone who would ‘make fun of me’ (ie-had a sense off humor). I even graduated early, in just three and a half years. A year and a half later Sam and I both graduated, and a couple weeks after that we were married.

As I sit here and look at Rachel in my arms, there are so many thoughts going through my head. She is so beautiful, and tiny. I am so happy to finally be a mom…and yet, at the same time, it isn't what I imagined it would be. 

I even got lucky enough to get the chance to move to the east coast, something I had always dreamed about but never had enough courage to follow through with on my own. It took my husband getting accepted to dental school there to make it happen. Then Rachel was born, and it was like the final cherry on top, she made me a mom—the capstone of all I thought I ever wanted in life. I should have been suspicious when at the ripe old age of 20, I thought that all of my dreams had come true, but at the time I felt like I had reached my very own 'happily ever after.'

It’s funny how I had this perfect vision of my dream life, and then when I am blessed enough to have it all come true all I can think is … ‘this is it?’ All my dreams have come true, shouldn’t that mean that I am happy beyond belief? Somehow, I'm not. I am just, confused. How come I never envisioned this part of my life. All that planning, and the whole time I had skipped the part between holding an infant in the hospital and being a soccer mom with a minivan.


I feel like I have been deceived, duped even, and to the extreme that there must have been a conspiracy. I have been around kids a lot, I grew up with four kids in my family, and my older sister had just had a baby about a year ago, and yet I feel like I know NOTHING about what a baby is really like, and all the different ways it changes your life.


I try really hard to think about what it was that I had expected. I see moms who are trading carpools, and spending their time carting kids to soccer practice, piano lessons, and dance classes. I also see moms who are at home when their kids get home from school, and have a snack all ready for them on the table. Nowhere in these thoughts is there anything about being sleep deprived, or trying to nurse a baby, who doesn’t appear to have inherited the ‘knowing how to eat’ gene.

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I look back at pictures of me holding my little girl, and I am sure I was mistaken by some for a teenage mom. I may have been young, but at the time I didn't feel like it. I felt mature, responsible, and ready to take the next step. Blame it on being newlyweds, or living in a post-9/11 world where you wanted to focus on the important things in life, but we were excited to start a family, and yes I did say "we."

I turned 21 a week after she was born. Not the typical 21st birthday. While it is a memorable birthday for most, since I didn't drink or gamble it didn't seem any different than other birthdays. I actually forgot it was my birthday, in the post-returning-from-the-hospital-and-trying-to figure-out-how-to-take-care-of-a-newborn fog. I definitely didn't feel up to partying. When I realized it was my birthday I remember thinking that my little girl was the best present I could ever have.
I don't remember my parents ever once saying anything to me directly when I got engaged at such a young age, at least not that I recall, but I am sure they had their doubts. They, like other parents, knew there was just nothing they could do to stop it, and protesting it would only drive a rift between us. So they were happy for us, invited Sam on our upcoming famliy vacation and happily helped plan and pay for our wedding.
I do, however, remember there was a little hesitation when I told them I was pregnant (only 6 months after being married). Their main concern, the only one they voiced, was missing out on all the things you can't do after you have kids, which included worrying that I wouldn't finish my college education. I was suprised that they doubted my dedication to pretty much my only major life-goal and assured them that this wasn't an option. From then on they were happy grandparents.

The only small regret I had about the way everything turned out (and it was really only a half-regret) was that I didn't go to college on the east coast. In my mind -there was something magical, about the east coast. Going to school out there seemed like the easy way to move out there for a little while, and get to experience it. Those are the schools you hear about growing up, Harvard, Yale, NYU, Cambridge. But going to one of those schools was never my dream, my dream was just to get to wear the cute hats and scarves, ice skate outside, and walk through the cobblestone streets of the city. But I never followed through, never even applied to schools on the east coast, because I am too practical. And choosing to go to super expensive school, really far away, when you don't even know what you want to study, just so you can wear a hat and a scarf, just isn't practical. Of course the reason I can only half regret my choice to play it safe and go to school at ASU--is because that is where I met Sam.
This is where the story gets even better. Sam decided to apply to dental school and was accepted into Boston University. So the final icing on the cake was that after never being east of Denver, Colorado, and thanks to my wonderful husband, I was able to get a second chance and move 3,000 miles away to Boston, Massachusetts. Live by the ocean, live in a city that had character, that had seasons, to wear sweaters, jackets, scarves, and cute winter hats. And someday after we moved from there I would have the privilege of getting to say "I lived in Boston." That alone sounded exciting enough.