Leaving Oz

My Son Broke My Mom's Nose

Our much anticipated visit to my parents' home at the end of September was fraught with one challenge after another.  About ten days before I was to leave for Ohio, I had arguably the biggest fight with my mom that I've had since living outside of her house.  Raised voices, locked doors, hanging up on one another... it was bad.  I almost cancelled the trip, but I knew that would be a mistake made in the heat of my emotion. 

Then, after my mother and I reconciled which was a small miracle (thank you, Lord!), the power went out in my parents' home for seven days.  Every day, I would call, as the date for our departure drew nearer, and ask, "Is it on yet?" 

And she would reply, "Not yet.  Maybe tomorrow." 

My Speechless Ultrasound

I wanted to send an update about my latest prayer request.  For months, I've been dreading what I had to go through being over 35 years old and pregnant.  I've been asking for peace of mind to get through the genetic ultrasound done that is done at 18 weeks. 

When the test was done for my first pregnancy, there were multiple "markers" that indicated brain damage, down syndrome, and trisonomy 18 defects. We forewent doing the amnio, since we were committed to have the baby, defect or no defect.  We had to undergo regular testing to monitor the status.  Needless to say, we endured months of tears, agony for months, waiting to see something change.  It wasn't until testing was done later in the pregnancy showed that everything was fine.  The results had been false negative.

So going into the test this second time, Hubby and I were very stressed.  We braced ourselves for a set of "markers" and a pregnancy frought with worry once again.

My Seventh Grade Son and...Sex?

“Mom, we saw the video today.”

“What video?”

“You know.  THE video.  Human reproduction!”

Whaaaa?  How come I wasn’t told about this?  My son Erik is in 7th grade at a public middle school.  I thought they saved the Sex Unit until 8th grade.  I really did.

“Mom, you signed my weekly science form, remember?”

The teacher sends home a weekly science form with a description of what the kids are learning and the homework for the week – and I have been faithfully signing it since last September.   In the beginning of the year, I read it carefully.  Then I started quickly perusing it.  Then, I admit, I kind of stopped reading it – especially if I was in the middle of doing something, like cooking dinner, when my son would ask me to sign it.  I dug back into the recesses of my mind. Ah, I then remembered actually being asleep on the living room couch one afternoon when he thrust a pencil into my hand and asked me to sign his weekly science form.  My bad.

My son went into great detail about what they saw in the film.   “Yeah, Mom, they showed, like, the male and female parts together inside, and things were moving and stuff.”  He told me another kid whispered to him, “Whoa, I can’t believe they’re showing the yin-yang in the wha-hoo!”  For once, I was speechless.