Adventurous Mom

Archive for the ‘marriage’ Category

I really thought long and hard about writ­ing a post like this. I don’t like to seem vul­ner­a­ble, I def­i­nitely don’t like to seem like I don’t have things under con­trol.  But then I real­ized, hey this is life, and some­times life reminds you that you are not really the one in con­trol.  For a Type A…wanna be Type B, this is some­times a hard con­cept for me to grasp and I begin often by say­ing , “Well…all you gotta do is.…”

Then to no avail, my “All I gotta do is” doesn’t work.  In my sit­u­a­tion, we are con­fronting immi­nent surgery with my hus­band, back surgery.  Quite pos­si­bly the worst surgery that is out there. (Oh I pray he doesn’t read this any­time soon!)  Because I keep telling him that every­thing is going to be awe­some.  And I keep try­ing to be strong.  And then I real­ize that I’m not as strong as I want to be.  I’m not really strong at all. His surgery is out of my hands, literally.

This will be our third surgery in three years.  Note I said “our” because even though he’s the one that gets cut, I get to heal right along with him. I get to endure the sleep­less nights, the doc­tors’ vis­its, the pain, the adverse reactions…etc.…etc…   I remem­ber in sick­ness and in health part, but I don’t remem­ber sign­ing on for the grumpi­ness, the pain, the endur­ing difficulties.

So at these times of my extreme emo­tional weak­ness, I real­ize that I still may have some thing to learn.  Some­thing about myself, some­thing about life.  And as I am try­ing to quell my anx­ious­ness about his upcom­ing pro­ce­dure and hos­pi­tal stay, I am com­forted by the fact that I have made the right choice to cre­ate a loca­tion inde­pen­dent busi­ness.  (Guess where my new office is going to be? Yep — the hos­pi­tal room!) The Uni­verse smiled on me when I needed it to.

In addi­tion, I am real­iz­ing that I am not alone, as alone as I may feel.  An invari­able net­work of sup­port is com­ing out of the wood­work from my neigh­bor who has cre­ated a din­ner rota­tion for our fam­ily for the first few weeks; my mother and sis­ters who are going to help me with the chil­dren; my coach­ing friends who have expe­ri­enced sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions and are help­ing to walk me through the emo­tional cri­sis; my karate friends who are lend­ing us their Lazy Boy chair; my good friends who are going to sit with me and play scrab­ble to keep my mind busy dur­ing the surgery…and the list goes on.

So now, although, I feel like life is com­pletely out of my con­trol, life is show­ing me com­pas­sion.  It is reas­sur­ing me that even though I have lost the per­cep­tion of con­trol, the uni­verse, like a good mother has stepped in to hold my hand and take me step by step through the process.

I never try to ask WHY.  Because Why is such a futile ques­tion.  Instead I ask What…What am I learn­ing?  It has now become appar­ent to me that my gift here is to receive compassion.…so that I may learn what com­pas­sion truly is, and some­day soon rec­i­p­ro­cate that compassion.

Thank you to every­one ahead of time for your pos­i­tive thoughts for our fam­ily dur­ing this chal­leng­ing time!

Often when life doesn’t go your way, it’s not because it’s going against you, it’s just show­ing you another way to look at the world!  ~Makenzie

Many Adven­tures to you!

The Cop

I think one has to either be crazy or have just blind faith to be able to be mar­ried to an Adven­tur­ous woman.  And to be quite truth­ful, I’m not really quite sure how my hus­band puts up with my con­stant adven­ture, or if he’s just as crazy him­self.  He really is a patient man, which I  love but it pisses me off at the same time.  Some­times I inter­pret patient to be apa­thetic, but I’m learn­ing that it’s not.

Our story of adven­ture began when I was only 19, he was 23.  I was deter­mined to become a Fire­fighter, I had just com­pleted EMT school, was on my way to become a sea­sonal fire­fighter for the sum­mer, but not before my friend intro­duced me to this “guy”.  She says: He wants to be a cop…..oh and he has Jet­skiis!!  Nice, Jet­skiis!  At 19, such things like that are super cool, and I was a pretty good jet ski­ier, after all of those sum­mers at the lake on my parent’s boat, we had plenty of oppor­tu­nity to learn how to jet ski.

So I met the Cop, and our first unof­fi­cial date was in the SF Bay Estu­ary, with his Jet skiis.  “Do you want to try?” he asks…”Um sure?!” I meekly respond.  “Have you ever done this before?”  “Um…no, not really.”  “Okay, here is the throt­tle, the steer­ing, go like this, then like that…”  He sits and patiently explains.  “Okay, I think I got it, I’ll give it a shot!”

I start off slowly, then, I stand up….speed up….and start doing jumps and turns.  The Cop is puz­zled stand­ing on shore.  Either she has just pure raw tal­ent, or she’s play­ing me.  “No..I don’t think she’s ever done this before” my friend says.  He’s impressed, and as I get back to shore he asks again if I’ve done this before, and I finally admit­ted I did.  Impres­sive he thought, a chic that can keep up with me.

Our date con­tin­ued with more Jet ski­ing, and that night sev­eral games of pool in which I beat him.  That sum­mer was my first sum­mer together with the Cop , and also my first sum­mer away from home.

It was an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence to have a boyfriend and a new fire­fight­ing job at the same time.  Many women strug­gled in this job, it was phys­i­cally demand­ing, but for some the most demand­ing part for them was the jeal­ousy they had to deal with at home. Many hus­bands and boyfriends were not okay with their woman sleep­ing in a dorm with many other men, get­ting dressed in the mid­dle of the night, and deal­ing with dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions that is really con­sid­ered “man’s work”.  But not the Cop, he was really proud, and would bake brown­ies and cook­ies to send to the fire­house when I started my tour.  The cop became just another face at the fire­house, one of the guys.

These guys are gems, and his adven­ture scale was about as high as mine for life.  He sus­tained a life-threatening gun­shot injury at age 19 (off duty).  He should have died.  I should have died at 4 of acute  epigloti­tis.  There’s a rea­son we’re here, and together.  And I can all but attribute it to the fact that we’re sup­posed to expe­ri­ence this adven­tur­ous life together and share our jour­ney with the world.  Won’t you join us?