Little Wonders

"What you need to know about the past is that no matter what has happened, it has all worked together to bring you to this very moment. And this is the moment you can choose to make everything new. Right now." ~ Author Unknown

Well,I have been a bit absent this week.Not entirely intentional,just unforeseen and out of my control in the timing.You see,I have been busy closing a chapter in my life of sorts.Seems as though the last few years have held a lot of that.Closing of chapters I mean.Some of those chapters have been easier to close then others.Some I have eagerly bid farewell to.Others have been painful to let go of and have left me desperately trying to cling to them,not at all ready to see them end but knowing full well,it has been for the best.So this week I have spent,we have spent, time together as a family, closing a chapter that has been long over due.Our home,that we left almost two years ago,a home we put on the market after succumbing to the suffocating financial hardships after Zoey's lengthy NICU stay,has finally sold.For real this time.I say for real because I cannot even count the number of sales that have fallen through.But today, the new owners move in.We will hand over the keys and walk out the front door for the last time and that will be that.It's a good thing.Really it is.But getting to the point of calling it a good thing,has been a work in progress.This past week I spent an evening,by myself over at the house.I sat in the empty living room and had a good cry.It wasn't the physical presence of the house that I was crying for or going to miss,it was more of a cry for memories I was replaying in my head.They replayed in my mind with such crystal clarity and in vivid technicolor,as if they happened yesterday.Like Zoey's homecoming and our prayer circle we formed around her as we welcomed her home after 10 weeks in the NICU.I stood for a long time in the exact spot where we spent months in her makeshift hospital room"area",keeping her alive and getting her to surgery.I smiled as I pictured the boys riding their plasma cars around and around the downstairs .. inside .. because yes, it was that big.The noise often drove Mark and sometimes the girls, crazy but I thought why have a big house if you can't do stuff like that!I looked out the window at the yard and the patios strewn with toys and a playhouse and wished the boys still had that freedom because here,they have none of that,not even the yard.I could almost hear the older girls filing in and out with friends and boyfriends,making their way in and out as they went about their carefree teenage lives.All the family parties and celebrations.Roasting marshmallows at the fire pit.The list goes on and on.I primarily had to let go of the plans we made for the future that will never be because like the line from "Beautiful Boy " by John Lennon, "Life is what happens when your busy making other plans".The work left to be done there has been absolutely overwhelming,physically and emotionally.Although the inside has been empty for quite sometime,the garage,well, that has been another story.That garage looked like people had just left bits and pieces of their lives and ran.Fled their home land and actually that was pretty much how it went down.I was left to sort through tote after tote,after tote and the things I found,well, that would illicit more memories and more tears.Like the picture of Zoey,in this little photo album that Jake kept in his nightstand.It was her,strapped in her incubator, being ready to be life-flighted to Children's ... I had never,ever even seen that picture.Ever.Mark must have given it to him to help him visualize and see the sister that he would only see once in the first 2 and 1/2 months of her life.But as I write this,the job is almost complete.At least over at that house.My very organized and clean garage HERE is another story.This garage is the staging place and the in between till things get to storage.So my obsessive compulsive self needs to take a breath and deal with disorder for a little longer.I know it will feel wonderful,in many ways, to have that house out of our names and start clean but I would be lying if I didn't say that I had a dream,a far fetched dream,that somehow,someway,we would find our way back there.Unrealistic I know but I dreamt it all the same.We have always done fairly well to adjusting to change and loss and new normals and this,this is no different.That house is our past.That past was beautiful but I am convinced the future holds equal beauty and I know that the present,this day,far exceeds any beauty I have ever envisioned.Chapter closed.

*Just a little video of the little love.Pause the music,as usual,if you want to listen.And the picture ... Zoey's crazy,crazy hair,with the clip that she never keeps in about to fall out,which in about one half hour, will be getting a cut.Her second since coming home in June and her 4th since chemo began in October ... who would have thought???