4 Year Old Cookie

I found this today, as I was going through the hard drive of my old computer. It was written almost exactly four years ago, two months after we moved into our house, and just days before my niece, Maddie was born. Sometimes there's nothing better than seeing what can change over the years, especially when your hopes have become reality.

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June 17, 2008

I am sitting upstairs in my very own tree house of an attic, a bit too warm and still cluttered with stacks of papers and boxes of glitter pens and wrapped wires. Hannah the cat is calling out to find out where I am; Chad is on the train back home to Salem, where we have decided to plant our roots.

 

It hasn’t been easy to find myself lately. I haven’t had time to figure out how not to be scared. Or angry. I’ve been angry. I am stifled by my health. I am frustrated by my health. I am petrified of my health. I ask myself constantly if I have a future with children, if I have a future with my husband, if I have a future at all—or if my TN pain will take all of that away from me. And then I get scared and I cry. And then I get mad and determined. And I make phone calls and doctor’s appointments and I talk to Chad. And then I’m okay for another few weeks and then it happens all over again. I so hoped to have a summer off—to not have to think about pain or be scared of pain or feel paralyzed by pain. But it’s not looking like that is going to happen as the nerve pain has settled in my teeth. And honestly, it’s not as bad as the Trigeminal pain, so maybe I should just take it. But it scares me that there is some large wormy brown slime lurking under the gums—ready to take over my whole body. And it scares me that I can’t find anyone who has answers for this brown slime. No one wants to claim it or name it or kill it.

I love that this is our house. I love that I get to sit up here and watch Hannah skulk around the boxes, ready to pounce on anything that blinks. I love that there is a yellow peach rose out front, bright and fat. It is our first rose. Our first one. We will have so many roses, Chad and I. So many roses that we will forget what it was like to not have roses. So many roses that we will take them for granted. We will be able to fill our vases with them and smell them wafting in from the open windows. We will put the petals in our baths and we will sink into the water and sigh. 

Bubbles is coming soon. I can’t wait to meet her. I can’t wait to show her my roses.