365 Days of Everything Georgia: May 5, 2010

These days I always seem to be late for everything, so why not Cinco de Mayo too? I took this picture on the 5th as a "happy Cinco de Mayo" picture. Good news is it did make it to my FB page on the 5th, but it's not making it up here until... um... what is it, the (checks computer calendar) 8th! So happy *belated* Cinco de Mayo.

Cinco de Mayo got me thinking about heritage. It seems these days so many of us are a little bit of this and a tiny dab of that and a sprinkle of something extra. I remember researching my family tree for a class project in the 4th or 5th grade, going to my grandmother on my dad's side and my great-grandmother on my mom's side to get the bulk on my generational information. Names, marriages, years born and died, births, even a few well-known Americans. I learned my love for gardening might just be inherited. After all, I'm related to America's first botanist. But I also learned my family tree is pretty boring - English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh for the most part. ::yawn:: Never seemed to fit my dark looks either. Hmmm...

Georgia of course inherits my bloodlines of boring, pasty and what I can only imagine as stuffy 1700's English folk (not that I don't love the English. I promise, went to university there for a while and loved it), but she is also entwined with her daddy's background. I'm not too clear entirely on what all of his family heritage is (::makes mental note to find out one day::), but I do know there is Mexican-American heritage and I'm told some Italian. At least Georgia's dark features will make perfect sense - lucky, unconfused girl.

Perhaps one day she'll hold tight to her Mexican heritage and learn Spanish, or perhaps she'll want to find the rainy, misty hamlet in England where my family left to board a ship bound for America. Or maybe she'll just realize she a perfect mix of so many lands and as American as they come. But most of all, I hope she will always embrace her heritage and love the history that crossed paths through the years to arrive at this point - Georgia.

Georgia's Birth Story

The timing of Georgia's birth, in a way, came out of a journey to death. I'd like to think with every death comes new life, and for me, Georgia is that life. She is my saving grace and has kept me breathing when my lungs were screaming to stop, screaming to drown in my own self-pity.

My husband and I decided to try for Georgia just a few months after our walk down the aisle. You see, my mom had been diagnosed with incurable Ovarian Cancer, so I wanted a baby soon. I wanted a baby while there was still time to have my mother there as I brought a new being into the world, to see my mother hold her granddaughter, to ask my mom which of my baby features my daughter bore, to lean on my mother when I had those "new mom" questions and for so many other moments I had played out in my thoughts over and over again through the years.

My husband and I were thrilled to soon find out our little Georgia was growing inside of me, rounding out my belly day by day, pushing tiny feet into my sides, entertaining us with a neverending chorus of hiccups. We went to the doctor's appointments, the baby classes, took the hospital tour and had everything ready for the day we brought our darling home in Omaha, Nebraska.

It's funny though, life seems to fight our planning and always chooses its own course - and so it did. When my belly was just shy of 38 weeks round, the day came. After a 52-year-long life, which was as bright as they come, my mother faded away. She died on Sunday, October 11, 2009.

Early Monday morning, with my doctor's permission, my husband and I got on a plane to fly home to Georgia for my mom's funeral. We got off the plane in Atlanta around 3 p.m. Twelve hours later, at 3 a.m. on Tuesday, I was sleeping at my parents' house. As I lay in the home where my mom had been just days before, that journey toward life took a leap. My water broke and the contractions started coming within minutes. We were more than a thousand miles away from our doctor, our hospital and our house.

So off to the local hospital we went in the dark of night, my husband driving my mom's SUV and not having a clue where he was going. I had to give him directions between contractions. We arrived at the hospital and didn't even know what entrance to go to. We found locked doors twice before finding the right entrance, and yeah, I floundered up to both locked doors!

We checked in and by the time we got to a room, I turned around and there were my sister, brother and cousin in the room with my husband and I and my other sister and father were on the way. We had thought we'd be delivering in Omaha with just my husband and I and the calming classical CD's I'd burned. I guess my mom had other ideas.

So there we were, in the hospital where two years earlier they had cut cancer from my mother, in the hospital where my two nieces were born, in the hospital where my delivery nurse had also been my sister's bridesmaid - there surrounded by those who love me most and the memory of one who just couldn't stay long enough to make it. I delivered Georgia Katherine at 10:46 a.m. She weighed 7 lbs. and 8 ounces.

We left the hospital on Wednesday with a borrowed car seat, a bag full of borrowed baby clothes, a lot of flowers and hearts bursting with every emotion you can possibly imagine. We arrived at my parents' house to a borrowed crib, borrowed baby supplies and relatives arriving in town with funeral clothes and baby gifts packed in their suitcases. On Friday, my daughter and I looked down on my mother in her casket, and on Saturday we buried her. It's the only time my daughter every saw her grandmother.

My mother fought hard to live long enough to meet her granddaughter and in the end, she missed the date by two days. But life doesn't stop, and it's the beauty of my daughter's life that keeps me smiling. And oh how her life makes me smile. I like to believe whenever I'm holding my daughter and she's starring off into the distance, over my shoulder, that she's seeing my mom - a guardian angel for both of us - and that they are already the best of friends.

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May 5, 2010 - Heritage

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May 5, 2010 - Heritage

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