Category: Expressive

  • twenty years ago today jared asked me to marry him

    twenty years ago today jared asked me to marry him

    Twenty years ago today, my husband Jared asked me to marry him.

    I didn’t say yes when he asked me. I took the ring to show my boss, who was standing, watching what was happening. Jared had to remind me that I hadn’t actually said yes.

    I’d given up on Jared; I remember a heavy, resigned feeling when I called him the morning of Saturday, October 2, 2004, and got his answering machine instead of him when I called him before work that day. I didn’t know that he was on the way to get on a plane to come see me.

    We lived in different states; Jared lived in Iowa and I lived in Georgia. We’d had a long distance relationship for a little over a year at that point. 

    I was impatient, which is why I was giving up on the relationship; I would have been engaged to him months earlier. It was important to him to date at least a year before he proposed. 

    So, Jared ordered a planter of irises from a local florist in McDonough, and had my Dad go pick them up for him to meet him at my parents’ house. Over lunch at Pizza Hut, Jared told my parents about his plans and asked specifically for their blessing, not their permission. My Mother asked to see the ring, but Jared told her he thought I should see it first. 

    Then, Mapquest maps in hand with his rental car, Jared found his way to the Museum where I was working at the time, in Atlanta. My friend Amy met him and they delivered the irises to the administrative offices for me to come pick up, then Amy escorted Jared down to the basement where my desk was. Jared hid in an office down the hallway while me and a guy friend passed by, because the irises were too heavy for me to carry. 

    The card on the irises had said “Soon, Sweetheart, Very Soon,” and I knew exactly what that meant. And I remember looking with a sort of bewildered terror in my boss’s eyes, as I explained that I was pretty sure Jared was about to propose. Jared had already been in the office, though, because he was going to hide in an adjacent cubicle but there was none. I had been describing my desk area as my “cubie,” but it was really just a desk in an open room with two half wall dividers on either side. Zero privacy and no place to hide.

    So, Jared made his way to hide behind another door down the hall to wait for me. I sat back down at my desk, and here comes Jared around the corner, dressed in a suit with a single rose in his hand, and he got down on his knee to ask me to marry him and present me with a ring. 

    I knew we had an audience and that made me very nervous. I said yes once my attention had been redirected, of course. 

    The problem was that there was a fundraiser gala that night, that I had responsibilities for, and so we had limited time because it was nearly time for me to get ready. Jared was in a suit, but he says now that was for me, not because he expected to be able to stay at work for the function with me. So, I took a dinner break and Jared and I went down the street to Panera for a quick dinner. Then, I sent him on his way to report back to my parents that I had indeed said yes. 

    So I spent most of the evening of Saturday, October 2, 2004, doing whatever little duties I had for the Museum, but mostly ogling over my new jewelry and showing it off. 

    It was a life-transforming decision, saying yes to Jared’s proposal.

    For a long, long time I dreaded the anniversary of this day every year. It was not my dream proposal: we weren’t alone, and it wasn’t an environment we can really ever re-visit now that I am no longer employed there. Worse, it was witnessed by a person who went on to be not a very nice person to me later. And I long lamented the fact that there were no photos of us from that night, and the fact that I’d had to work, and had to send him away for the evening. Jared had to hear about that for a lot of years. I’m not proud of it, but it is what it is. I have mostly made my peace. And I do still like to mark the day. 

    Twenty years. It has been wonderful and hard and painful and unexpected and exquisite and beautiful and all the things that a marriage is. Jared spoils me in attention, love, and things. He teaches me more about patience and simplicity every day. He helps teach me to not take things for granted. Jared takes care of me both when I am well and when I am unwell, and he is my protector. He holds my hand both at home when it’s just us and when we’re out and about doing simple things like shopping for groceries. He forms his life and priorities around our life together, around my desires. 

    Jared calls me “Doodles,” a nickname he gave me about the time I got unexpectedly pregnant with Oliver, our youngest. 

    And so today, twenty years after that proposal, Jared took the day off. We started our day by taking the photo above. We went on a drive to Newnan, we bought a book Liam needed for school, we looked unsuccessfully for shoes for Jared, and we had lunch at Panera. Then we came a long way home, went out and got Burger King ice cream cones, and did find shoes for me while we waited to pick the boys up from school. We renewed our library cards and found new reads, and did some grocery shopping. And now we are watching The 100, the show we are currently bingeing. 

    Jared teaches me something new every day. Today’s lesson was to find joy every day in the small things. It’s something I struggle with. 

    I don’t quite know what I did to snag this wonderful man’s attention so long ago, but I will be forever grateful that I did. And there may not be a photo of us from that night twenty years ago, but there is a pretty darn good photo of us from today. Standing in front of our beautiful home, my dream home.

  • helene reminds me of another time

    This type of weather always scares me. 

    One February morning when I was 10 years old, I had to have been the only kid who had to go to school at like 10:30 in the morning after a tornado hit our neighborhood that morning. That was a bum deal; I was traumatized and wanted the day off too, but Mama and Daddy made me go. 

    The week before had been a tornado too, and but the worst of it was that we’d lost a tree that had come within probably 10 feet of hitting our house. 

    But the next week, a tornado picked up a whole house a hundred yards from my house and put it in the middle of the street, foundation and all. The only reason somebody wasn’t killed was that the people who lived there had moved out a few weeks before. 

    For months after the tornado, you could see the inside of the Greene’s bedroom, up the street, from where the tornado had torn off the whole front side of their house. They eventually had to tear the whole thing over and build from scratch.

    The people’s trampoline next door ended up in the back yard of the house across the street. 

    Some kids down the street rode their mattress down into their front yard, when the front of their house was torn off and their room was exposed. 

    I still remember my friend Amanda yelling my name frantically from across the street at like 6 am when the weather had passed and it was safe to go outside. Mama and I walked up the street, and Channel 2 news was there in front of the Greene’s house. Mama was interviewed but so far as we know they didn’t use the footage. 

    People from all over Carroll County (and probably farther) came driving through the neighborhood for days and probably weeks to rubberneck. 

    I was in high school or college before I found out that the lay of the land in that part of Carroll County is primed for tornadoes, just because of the contours of the land. 

    We took down five trees earlier this year in the yard we have now, and it’s nights like tonight that I am so grateful we did that. And I wish we’d taken down about four more that I would go take down now, in hindsight. 

    I am the Mama who goes and gathers up all my children and shuttles them to bring their blankets and pillows and make pallets on the bathroom floors in severe weather— my kids have grown up doing that and know the drill.

    And that is why. Because when I was 10 years old, there was very good reason to be afraid of a storm. 

  • random facts about my back

    random facts about my back

    My back was not happy last week with the weights exercises, and it’s still not really happy, but I wrote most of this last week. The pain is worst at night. So, you get random facts/ memories about my back related to my scoliosis whether you want them or not. This blog is going to be equally personal and client work, so here goes:

    1. The curve was 87 degrees when they operated in 1993. It got corrected to 15 degrees, but settled back around 45, precisely where it was when they found the curve when I was 6 years old.

    2. I grew an inch and a half in that 10-hour surgery that saved my life when I was 13 years old. It was a 2-part surgery; I don’t even know what all they did except in the first part they cut open the entire length of my side and took out a rib and a little piece of my hip bone. Then they turned me over and cut open the entire length of my spine and Dr. Fackler said he stopped counting after he removed 8 discs, so I don’t actually know how many he took out. My curve is sort of like a corkscrew and was going to crush my heart without the surgery.

    3. My spine is fused to and including my sacrum all the way to just be low my shoulder blades. I bend from the the leg joint just below my hips, not at my waist.

    4. Despite not being able to touch my toes, that isn’t actually a byproduct of the surgery. I couldn’t touch my toes before the surgery, and I have precisely the same flexibility as before in that regard. Dr. Fackler said I would and he was right.

    5. I wore a ginormous plastic back brace from the ages of 6 until the surgery at age 13. I tried to look for the first one to take a picture because I do still have that one, but I am feeling lazy this morning. There were at least 5 of them as I grew, I know. I only have the first one from when I was 6 now. It was tiny; I was tiny. Instead, I found the x-ray they gave me years and years ago, the x-ray is marked 3/3 but I don’t know if that is 3/3 of 1992 or 1993. I do know it was progressing fast right before the surgery and I know it was 87 degrees at the last x-ray the week before the surgery.

    6. To make those braces, they made a cast of my whole core, from just under my arms all the way down. All I remember about it was that it was unbearably hot once it was almost done curing, before they cut it off, and those strips of plaster were wet and really gross going on. I still remember George at CH Martin & Co on Marietta Street a block away from where the Aquarium is now, and Debbie, their receptionist. George made most of the casts all those years I think. I remember being really super scared of the saw when I was super little.

    7. I had two sets of school books my 8th grade year and didn’t have to carry a backpack or do PE. About a week before the full year anniversary of the surgery was up (and I was to be cleared for whatever activity I wanted), the very first physically strenuous thing I tried doing was water skiing with Brandi at Lake Wedowee. I wasn’t very good at it, though, and only tried it the one time.

    8. One of the “twist ties” as I call them that hold the rods

    together busted within a year of the surgery leaving one of the rods poking out of my back. I had to live with it for about a year and it was extremely painful depending on which way I moved. I requested the piece of the rod Dr. Fackler cut off in December of 1994, which is why I have a part of the rods now.

    9. I only missed one day of school for that follow up surgery to remove the busted twist tie and cut the rod shorter that December. It was the day before Christmas break and I didn’t want to miss the fun with my friends even though I’d finished my work early. I remember standing in the bandroom and Mr. Elrod seeing me and asking if the surgery got cancelled. I just held up that little bit of rod and smiled and he shook his head.

    10. I got lots of cards and kept them all for years after the surgery. Tommie Freeman sent the very first one; it was waiting for me in ICU at Piedmont when I got out of surgery.

    11. The whole reason I started loosening those braces when I was still wearing them all those years was because somebody at school told me to or dared me to, one. I got in a lot of trouble over the years for that, though thankfully I know now that wouldn’t have prevented the surgery regardless. And kids with my severity of scoliosis especially rarely wear my kind of brace anymore anyway.

    12. When I went for the last visit with Dr. Fackler before he retired, he said “We don’t do surgeries like yours anymore.” To which I was like, “Great, I’m already an ancient artifact.” But, when I went back after Jared and I were married and after Dr. Fackler had retired, the orthopedic surgeon I saw at Peachtree Orthopedic Clinic was the one who told me that surgery had saved my life, that it would have been the only option available to do so, and that I was one of Dr. Fackler’s miracle cases. I got paraded around to the other doctors on the floor that day for that very purpose. He told me to go home and thank my parents for saving my life, which I promptly did. He told me Dr. Fackler was the only doctor in the entire Southeast who could have done that surgery. But, I’m glad people don’t really have go to through that anymore because it wasn’t fun.

    13. The worst pain I have ever felt in my life wasn’t giving birth with nothing for pain but Tylenol, which I have done twice and it wasn’t a c-section either. It was having the chest tube removed after that back surgery.

    14. Because of the fusion from the surgery, an epidural was not an option for childbirth. Which is why I opted for nothing— I’m not sure the Tylenol counts because I had it so late with Porter and I’m not sure I had it at all with Liam. And because of not being able to have an epidural, when Oliver’s heart rate plummeted after they induced him, it was off for an emergency c-section under general anesthesia. At the follow up with Oliver the doctor was surprised I’d had two babies the natural way— the only way it probably happened was they were both preemies— Oliver was our only full-term baby.

    15. Just like I know what it is to have people reject me socially for mental health reasons, I know what it is to be the weird little girl with a back brace that a lot of kids don’t want to play with.

    16. A few days after I got home from the hospital after the surgery, I thought to feel my back with my hands. I was astounded to find out that the ginormous hump I’d previously had on the left side of my lumbar spine was completely gone. The fact that it is gone is still weird to me 31 years later.

    17. When I was super little in first grade when I first got the brace, it was fun to let the boys in my class take turns trying to punch me in the stomach. It only hurt their hands, not me.

    18. I still remember having to buy clothes that were too big for me, to fit with the brace. I remember being very glad to be going into high school not having to wear clothes that were too big.

    19. There will be no revision surgery; I was told in 2022 when I visited an orthopedic surgeon with hip pain that those don’t turn out well at all. Basically, I was told I just can’t ever get into a car accident or have any other sort of traumatic injury. It would go badly.

    20. All I cared about during the surgery was two things: I was very concerned about how Dr. Fackler was going to eat lunch if he had to do a 10 hour surgery, and I wanted to see Picket Fences the Thursday night after the Wednesday surgery. It turned out Dr. Fackler had a sandwich right in the operating room, and the nice nurse in ICU did turn on Picket Fences but I wasn’t with it enough to ask for my glasses and I am blind as a bat without them, so I couldn’t follow any of it.

    21. The bottom half of the brace always had to be tighter than the top. And it couldn’t be up too high. Both things would put me in a bad mood all day long. Or I would take it off entirely, which was actually very difficult for me to do on my own. I certainly couldn’t tighten it by myself.

    22. The rods line both sides of my spine from right at my shoulder blades all the way to being held together by these little twist tie looking things, held together by a little plate at the base of my spine, splitting and are drilled most of the way through into both hips.

    23. When we were still taking Liam to CHOA neurosurgery for his Chiari, the doctor who had followed Liam since he was 2 said he remembered Dr. Fackler well. He said he didn’t know how many scoliosis surgeries he did at CHOA, but it was a lot. Mine just happened to be at Piedmont.

    24. It is only comfortable for me to lay on my left side, because as the curve has progressed up into my rib area, the curve moves to the right. Fighting the direction of the curve is the only thing that is comfortable.

    25. I only know my upper back doesn’t look like it used to because I caught a glimpse of a chest x-ray at urgent care when I was sick about a year and a half ago. But whatever the full length looks like must be fairly unusual/impressive because the orthopedist I saw about my hip in 2022 ordered a full x-ray panel and I put it off till mid-2023 when I finally thought to do it…. The radiologist or some random medical person came out of the office and gawked at me a minute after I left the dressing room. My only guess is it’s not quite something they see every day. I still haven’t scheduled the follow up with orthopedics, so I don’t know.

  • fun at the pool

    fun at the pool

    I used to enjoy doing a lot of stuff I don’t do much anymore.

    The pool at the rec center closes its summer hours tomorrow, so Jared and I skipped Funny Girl at the Fox so we could take Oliver and Liam to the pool. 

    I wasn’t going to get in the deep end. I didn’t want the chlorine damage to my hair. But Oliver loves the diving boards and the deep end, so it wasn’t long until Liam and Oliver were in the deep end. And Jared joined them soon after, leaving me in the shallow end by myself. 

    That was boring.

    And then I remembered that I used to LOVE diving off the high dive at that rec center pool when I was a kid, when there was one.

    Now, there are just the two lower diving boards. 

    Oliver and Liam had never seen me jump off the diving board at all. It had probably been at least 29 years since I jumped off one of those diving boards; if I had to guess it was probably the summer I was 15 because that would have been long enough for me to do it after my back surgery.

    So I got up there, and it was higher than I remembered. But, I jumped in. And holding my nose with my hands did nothing to keep the water out of my nose because I didn’t remember to blow out my nose as I jumped. 

    And, I had to keep my eyes completely closed, which was not my style back in the day. But I had my contacts in because again, I wasn’t going to get in the deep end at all today. 

    But jumping off that diving board…..it was like I was 10 years old again, in day camp at CPRCAD. It was fun.

    So, I went again. And, I decided, what’s the worst that can happen if I actually dive? I mean, really? I used to dive off the super high dive, and this wasn’t that. 

    I may be 44 years old, and my kids may never see me do fun physical stuff much. But today, they saw me dive off that diving board three separate times. 

    It was so fun. And it reminded me that I should do that kind of stuff more often.