memory lane

I'm in a retro kind of mood today. This morning, with the pretense of cleaning out my closet, I ended up on the closet floor looking through a big rubbermaid container that has moved from house to apartment to house again without examination. Faced with the choice between sorting the clean clothes from the dirty and rehanging all the articles George pulled off their hangers OR digging through this container- reminiscing seemed the much better option. Aaah...procrastination. My second middle name. Opening it up, I was amazed at how many neat things it contained that I'd totally forgotten I ever had. The last letter I received from Grandma Rita was especially touching- it contained a photo of my dad and his grandpa Leon, a note about their busy weekend, and an afterthought mention of her chemo starting the 21st. There were piles of cards and pictures collected in college, assorted memorabilia from the hockey cheer team, love letters from J during his time in Quantico, and the most time consuming- a stack of photos from my childhood. The following picture is a testament to my inherent classiness:

My shopping problem started very early on. That shopping cart was a key part of my child play. I'd use it to play grocery store, to play Pamida (yes, Pamida), and to push an assorted collection of baby farm animals (kittens, bunnies, chicks, you name it) around in. I look wasted, or perhaps the FruitLoop buzz was just wearing off. I swear I made that same face just a few weeks ago when faced with the challenge of figuring the tip on our bar tab. And, may I add- that is some funky ass linoleum. No wonder I looked so tripped out.

Today was also National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. Last year the House of Representatives passed a resolution to declare October 15 a designated day to remember those lives lost far too soon. There's something comforting about the official, governmental acknowledgement that our losses are real, and that at least some of our nation remembers that.

(an excerpt from the passing of the resolution)

Mr. Speaker, I think the importance of this resolution is to let people know that when couples have a miscarriage, it is a child. It might be for some people, well, it is just a miscarriage. They were only 6 weeks or they were only 9 weeks, and they did not even know whether it was a boy or girl. But in the minds of that couple in many instances it is their very first pregnancy, and they are already thinking about that little boy or the little girl and what the name is going to be and the clothes that they are going to pick out and the joys they are going to have sending that child to school and raising it and seeing it play sports and become an adult some day and contribute to our great society. We tend to forget that. And this was brought home to me pretty vividly recently when my daughter-in-law, pregnant with their first child, found out at 10 weeks that the baby did not have a heartbeat. And so that baby was lost. And she went on, of course, and miscarried. And that loss will be with them forever. And so I think it is just so important for us all to realize that when somebody, when you hear about somebody having a miscarriage, do not think, well, it was just a miscarriage, it is not like losing a child or an older child, which of course I do not know that anything compares to that. But this is a significant loss. And that is why this resolution today is so important. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank Congressman LATHAM for bringing it forward and Congressman DAVIS as well.

I hope that G and Baby F, wherever they are, knew that this day was theirs, and that as always, they are loved.

I'll close with something that makes me wonder if I ever stood a chance at being normal, with parents (or possiblity an auntie) who allowed me to be photographed like this. I look like I'm just bored to death with my own fantasticness. "Yeah, so, I'm wearing these majorly awesome shades. And I'm up past my bedtime, yo. I'm just cool like that. Take a picture, grandma, it will last longer."