Day 317
Nine thousand, one hundred and thirty two days …
That is how old my “baby” turned today. How can that be? Every holiday letter I’ve sent out in the last 20 some years has said the same thing … Sam will be x in a few days – how can that be?
And in the blink of an eye she is 25 … HOW CAN THAT BE?
Twenty five big ones. A quarter of a century. Nine thousand one hundred and thirty two days!
I got married two days after I turned 25. That would be like Sam getting married on Thursday! Weird to think about my life in comparison with those of my kids. I look back and think I was so young to be getting married. We were babies! What did we know?
Twenty five years … on one hand it seems like a long time. But, in reality, it’s just a blink of the eye. Where did these past twenty five years go?
It was JUST yesterday that we were bringing her home. Our beautiful pink bundle. The picture of us bringing her home, with Ted looking SO disappointed with that (does she really have to come with us) look on his face, is priceless (and also one of my favorites)!
In any case … where did those twenty five years go?
Sam was our Native American baby. Not really, but she could have passed for a baby of that heritage or a baby of Inuit culture or maybe Polynesian or Hawaiian … she had such a round face and a head full of coal-black hair.
I had her without anesthetic. I also had her via C-section … so that was one nasty delivery. She came out absolutely perfect, though … so all was good. (Not that I’d want to do that again, though!)
Early on she wouldn’t smile for me. All day long I’d be home with her … caring for her, feeding and changing her, singing to her, playing with her … and nary a smile from her beautiful little face. Baby Grumpus.
And then Daddy Tim would walk through the door and she’d be so happy to see him that sunbeams would shoot out of her fingertips and she’d smile like the Cheshire Cat and be lit up like a Christmas tree with joy!
(The little sh*t!)
She was a roly-poly little thing … women in the grocery stores would stop us and comment on her being a “healthy” baby. Yeah, I’d think … What made you think that, lady? The double chin or the 7 rolls of fat per leg? She was our own baby chub-worm!
She walked earlier than Ted did … talked earlier too. But for a while she communicated with her own style of hand/body language. I am practically hysterical now as I remember it!
The summer Sam was pre-verbal she fell in love with Otter Pops. Those fake juice sticks that you freeze … she loved them! And because I was such a wonderful mother, I fed them to my children … morning, noon and night! And since she wasn’t speaking, and wanted them, she would pound on her chest (twice) with one fist and then point to the freezer while saying, “Ot!” and repeat this little scenario until we “got” what she was trying to tell us. It was almost like having a trained chimpanzee in the house. But Sam was far cuter and I didn’t have to buy as many bananas!
Pre-school and elementary days whirled past … full of parties and soccer, girl scouts and sleepovers, friends and animals. Middle school came and went and then it was high school … cross country and friends and more parties, driving and vacations, clothes, make-up, boys and more parties.
Tim died the summer after graduation and before Sam left for Oregon for college. The house was VERY empty that fall. But she came back at break and we developed a nice adult relationship.
And here I am five years later in Chicago, missing her terribly, and there she is in Littleton … 1000 miles apart … which makes it really hard to share a dinner of french dip sandwiches and wine at our favorite little downtown Main Street restaurant.
Twenty five years … it all happened in a blink of an eye. And if I could do it all over again and watch her transform into the beautiful creature she is today … I’d do it in a heartbeat … as she is lovely and fun and smart and grounded and fabulous.
Happy birthday, Lamby.