Life Pre-Planned

As word has been spreading about the little surprise Jeff and I unexpectedly cooked up, people keep asking how on Earth I am able to manage with such shocking news. Most of the time, I just laugh it off and shrug my shoulders as I just say some cliched expression like "that's life" or "I just roll with the punches". But, in all brutal honesty, my shock has had deep resonance: I went from being a 44-year-old young mother of two sons fresh out of college with plans of now traveling the world with my husband to instantly becoming a 44-year-old old "is-that-your-grandma" mother with my travel budget now turning into the "baby" savings after my clips slipped on my now failed tubal ligation. It's a drastic change, to put it lightly, and it's still a journey to accept the changes. But, to better answer everyone's nagging questions, I can at least share a bit of my feelings the day that I found out that a life pre-planned is not life as you will know it.


From my personal journal entry on September 20, 2010:


So, here I am, at 2:00 AM in front of my laptop, the light glaring into my watering eyes as I sit in the dark listening to Jeff snore in the bed beside me. Where do I even begin? How can I even explain myself on this one? 


I took a pregnancy test today. Yes, at 44-years-old with a tubal ligation in my past and two college graduates for sons, I found myself in Walgreens buying a pregnancy test. I even ran into one of Jeff's associates and had to dart into the next aisle just to cover my tracks. I didn't want anyone to think I was an idiot, because the odds really did seem against my little inkling of a feeling. It had been 22 years since last having that inkling, back when I was first pregnant with Hyde, but once you experience that sensation it is impossible to forget it. So, hoping to just shut my mind up, I grabbed a First Response test the moment Jeff's co-worker walked out of the store and darted to the register. 


Jeff wasn't home today. He had left me alone to go visit a few downtown art galleries with a travel agent buddy of his. While I was peeing on a stick, Jeff was talking to his buddy about a once-in-a-lifetime French Polynesian adventure for the summer to the tune of a bargain $12,000. The ritziest hotel, with the biggest over-the-water bungalow the place had to offer, spa-days every day....Jeff and I had talked about it the day before. It was going to be a celebration, for finally having raised our boys to be out on their own with full time jobs and diplomas to boot. And, it was going to be the first real vacation that we had ever had. It wouldn't be a family vacation to go see my parents in Texas, or a two-day trip to Branson: It was going to be the first time Jeff and I would travel the world. We had been building at saving for it all year long. When I'd sell a painting, the full wad of cash would go into the vacation savings. Every month, Jeff would take $500 of his salary to set aside for the trip. We stopped going out to eat as often. And, Jeff even canceled our cable television just to cut costs that we could add to our vacation fund! Yesterday, we had been daydreaming about how this vacation would be like what we had originally dreamed of back when we first started dating in my Freshman year of college--just before we conceived Jasper and had to rearrange our plans.


It's amazing how life repeats itself.

Finished with my business, I put the tab on the end of the pee stick and set the test on the bathroom counter. Scoffing at my own pathetic idiocy, I left the room to go sit in front of the television: I was trying to ignore the mind game I was trying to put myself through. There was NO WAY that test could be positive! My tubal ligation from ten years ago had kept, time and time again proving me not pregnant month after month. Why now? What on Earth was I so jittery about? To think that a single feeling, a minor inkling, could steer me to such drastic and improbable conclusions made me almost ashamed of myself. So, I sat in front of the television in utter denial: I had not just taken a pregnancy test, I was not going to play mind games, and I was just being overly sensitive.


The television clicked on with A Baby Story playing on TLC. I almost screamed.


Having had enough, I turned off the t.v. and marched myself into the bathroom. I'd just have to PROVE to myself that I was being stupid. So, after minutes of fretting, I picked up the pee stick.


Two pink lines changed my life.


The rest is a blur. I cried, a lot. The test ended up on the floor, me with it. And, that is where Jeff found me when he came home that afternoon. Soon, he too was on the floor in tears.

What happened? I just don't understand. I've raised my sons. What are they going to say?! "OH great, the moment we leave, Mom and Dad replace us with Edwin Baby 2.0?"  And, mercy, most of our income is going toward retirement now, but what is going to happen to that? This just ruins Jeff's shot at retiring! He's already been counting the days until he can leave the Art Department at UCA to come home and do his own art full time!!


How could I have let this happen?


P.S. I lied. Jeff isn't snoring, but he sure is trying to fake it for me.