That Memory Place

I have a poor memory.  It's something that has bothered me for a while now.  I don't remember names and I don't remember specific every day events, and on occasion I don't even remember the context of certain conversations.  And lately I've been thinking a lot about my childhood.  For the longest time I didn't remember specific events from my childhood that siblings remembered; old family friends, etc.  It has bothered me for so long and on a level that caused discomfort.

Today, I had the crazy idea to look up an old childhood home on Google Maps from when I lived in Missouri.  Have you all played around with Google Maps?  If you have, then you know of the awesomness of it all.  I don't remember street names.  I just remember random facts, but today I started with a small ghost-like town I lived in name Mayview Missouri.  It's tiny.  As of the year 2000, the census reported a grand total of 294 people who reside in this town.  I don't remember it being that big... maybe it was, but to me it was big in a different way.

What I remember.  Mayview felt excluded from other areas.  It is nestled between Lexingoton, Bluesprings, and Odessa (if memory serves me correctly) and I remember going to the Wentworth Military Academy to go swimming.  People would practice their scuba diving at the bottom of the deep end of the pool and I would inch my way down there, clinging to the wall, so that I could dunk my head under water and watch them; sometimes they would wave at me which would make me laugh so hard.

I lived at the bottom of a hill and from the bottom of the hill a long road (turns out it's name is Long Road... imagine that) stretched forth before you and it made me feel like Dorothy  when she was trying to find her way back to her aunt's at the beginning of the storm... I just knew that it had to have led somewhere pretty spectacular, but I don't know if I knew that it just led to another town.  It was a road we would drive often.  At the top of the hill was Pastor White's home... I think that was the family name.  His home shared the property with the Baptist Church and across from the Baptist church was another church; I want to say it was Catholic... I remember a giant cross out front.  Every Sunday the two churches would open their doors wide and try to out-sing each other.  at least that's what it sounded like because the music would progressively get louder and louder.  One summer, my mother signed me up to practice with the Baptist choir, I don't know why she did this.  I'm thinking maybe it was for some summer structure; I don't know.  All I remember was that at the tender age of 7 I realized that I lacked severely in rhythm and that singing was a way to praise God, "probably the best way" I remember thinking.  We sang this song about not going in the water... okay, I just found the song on Google (got to love The Google, it knows everything).  It's called "Wade in the Water" and it's a negro-spiritual and the below video is a youtube video with this song, and it's done beautifully.

And I remember the pastor was pounding the crap out of the piano he was playing on with one hand while leading the choir of children, which I was a part of.  I remember it was alarming but also the coolest thing I'd ever experienced up to, and including that moment.

Where am I going with this?  I guess I just had a cool experience on Google Maps.  All I remembered, structurally, from this town was these 2 churches.  When I looked them up on the map, I couldn't find them and so I just started playing around with the street view.  Thankfully, Mayview isn't that big so it didn't take long to figure out where I was and where I wanted to be.  I found the childhood home I lived in while I lived in Mayview.  It was weird and awesome.  Everything is so different.  All the boarded up and condemned buildings that were there 20 years ago, I didn't see any sight of them.  It was just houses.  And the home I lived in, all the roses were gone.  We had so many roses.  That was the home that I never turned 7 in.  What that means is technically I never had my 7th birthday.  I kept getting sick for all the reschedules, so it just never happened.  I don't say that in a hurt way, I say that in the way that it will become handy when I'm turning 40 and I can still say that I'm technically 39.  How's that for thinking outside the box?

On Google Maps, I went through the streets one by one and specific family homes stood out to me.  Like the home of one of my friends.  I think her name was Anna (I was only 6 at the time).  Looking back on all of it, I'm pretty sure her family were Ozarks people... and if you know anything about the South, you know what that means (smiling and nodding head), not to say that Missouri is the south or deep south for that matter, but it's south enough :)

I remember my friend Timmy.  He made a big deal out of me being white (laughing out loud).  Yeah, in Missouri I was the minority and it was a great experience for me in more ways than one.  He was a bigger black kid and my dear friend.  As was Xane (Zane).  We were buddies and we would play tag at recess.  We would also play in this carriage-jungle-gym thingie on the playground.  It was a carriage.  We wouldn't play princess stuff though... I was never the damsel in distress, that was my friend Tonya.  She was the damsel in distress, and I was one of the thieves along with Xane and Timmy.  We were merciless in our plunderings.  They would also climb trees with me and we would hide and plan our next attack on the carriage.  We weren't supposed to climb the trees on the school property, but that never stopped us.  It's fun to remember this stuff.  

I guess the reason this is such a big moment for me and one I'm blogging about is because Missouri was a huge part of my childhood and one I cherish and miss.  And also, so much can change in 1 year... and it was truly shocking to see how much more can change in 20 years.  It feels like it was another life.  Also, my perception has changed from just 1 year ago.  For the longest time when I would think about Missouri, the main thing that would stick out in my mind was the horrible teacher I had in the first grade who would belittle me and humiliate me on a near daily basis, in front of the rest of class, simply for being Mormon.  That was a horrible experience and that was the one I always remembered.  Now I remember Xane and Timothy and Tonya.  I remember Ms. Moorhead who was the coolest teacher I've ever had.  She was the first teacher I respected; I was in the 3rd. grade.  

Perception is so interesting.  It changes as swiftly as the temperament of the person whom it belongs to.  Mrs. Allenbaugh was the name of my 1st grade teacher who was extremely horrible to me and I held on to a lot of anger towards her for years.  I don't anymore.  In a way, I guess I'm grateful for her.  I think it's in gratitude that we forgive and are able to move forward in life.  I've said it before, and I say it again, my mission in this life is to learn all I can about unconditional love.  Mrs. Allenbaugh taught me a valuable lesson about love; it is that no matter how different someone is from you, or the things they believe, or the practices they enact and preach, they are deserving of love.  Even if they don't meet the expectations or qualifications or standard of life that you require... they deserve your love.  Furthermore, love is not your's to withhold from those who don't behave in accordance with your ideals and values.  We are all creations of something much bigger and Christian law warns us against judging others.  She taught me that love is not something that is used to judge.  She taught me that love is not a tool used to accept or deny a human being because they are different from you.  I would not have been able to learn this valuable lesson had it not been for Mrs. Allenbaugh.  And so, in letting go of the anger I've wasted on this woman for so many years, I express my gratitude out into the cosmos in the form of good karma.  I hold no ill-will towards this woman anymore.  I have better things to exert my energy and time upon.  

I miss Missouri.  I hope to re-visit it one day.  I hope to one day re-visit my old childhood homes and favorite climbing trees.  More than that, though, I hope that my future children will be blessed enough to grow up in an environment where they have free-reign over their imaginations and adventures.  I hope that I can offer that kind of freedom to my future children.  That's something worth striving for.

Soul Food

Today I'm getting spiritual.  I don't think it necessary to declare the religion I associate myself with because it doesn't matter.  God is God and he loves his creations.  Whether you are Buddhist, Wiccan, Catholic, Baptist, Vegetarian... a Lawyer... we all believe in something bigger than us and whether you worship a llama, a cow, life as life, a fierce God, a loving God, a God-like father, nature, or money, that thing that you believe in that is bigger than yourself, it makes you strive for something more.

I am Christian.  I am a Christian who has a close relationship with nature and loves open spaces.  What does that have to do with anything?  I don't know, I just thought I would share that with you.  Where I'm going with this post is I've been feeling like I need to post a blog, but every time I've logged in to do so... I sit at my keyboard for a portion of time and my mind is blank.  I just sit here, hands poised upon my keyboard, staring at the screen... and nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  So, I thought that instead of setting out to write something inspiring and world-changing, that I would just let you all know what's going on in my life.

I'm attending a group alongside my personal therapy and in my group, a thought has been shared a couple of times by the facilitator that I wanted to share here.  It's been the one thing that has been primary on my mind lately.  She was quoting another source, which I can't remember, but she said, "Sometimes we confuse who we are with where we are."  That's a pretty profound thought to me.  I think the "where" in this quote can be reflected on in different ways.  When I initially heard her say this a couple of weeks ago, my initial thought was that I feel like I'm in this "blah" kind of place.  I've lost a lot of motivation in certain places, and yet I'm completely motivated in others.  "Where" can be emotional, it can be physical, it can be mental, it can be cosmic... it can be spiritual.  This begs the question, "Where am I in these places?"  

--Emotional:  I'm a bit hurt.  I'm a bit gun-shy... "gun" meaning shy of trying anything new and "shy" meaning, scared crapless.  How is that for eloquence?  I'm angry in one emotional sphere, and hopeful in another, and the common thread between those two places is that I'm ridiculously cautious in moving forward.  But, frightened is not who I am.  And that's the point.  I look back at the experiences I've had and not once to I see a frightened girl-child, but instead I see a determined woman who will see "it" (the experience) through and she does it with a grace and strength that I've never claimed as my own before.  So, while I'm gun-shy at life, I am determined to follow through with what is important to me and I will not give up until I find resolve and peace.

--Physical:  This is the main part of the "blahness" I've felt.  I've lost a lot of motivation in my personal weight loss.  Having said that though, looking back on my previous attempts, I don't know that the desired outcome was one I truly believed in.  Part of that lack of faith in myself and my desired outcome was not for the lack of constant support I received from people in my life, but it was in my not believing in myself, and my confusing who I am with where I am, "where" being this belief that I was undesirable if I didn't "fit" a certain mold, and that mold varied depending on whom I spoke with, but I feel like I finally have a better grip on who I am for me.  This is what I know:  I am here.  I am alive.  I am strong.  And that's enough.  The fact that I exist is enough to be enough.  I hope that makes sense.  Where am I?  I'm in a world where sexiness is defined in rather unhealthy proportions, whether that is physical proportion, or mental/emotional/social/spiritual proportions.  Who am I?  A girl who finally realizes that I don't have to be 120 pounds to be taken seriously as an active and valuable part of this Universe.  The fact that I exist is remarkable in it's own right.  Who I am is a woman deserving of happiness and a long life of health and joy.
-Mental:  this used to be a scary realm for me.  It was very muddles and confused.  I think the mental and the emotional are twin cousins... yes, twin cousins, they are immediately related, while still maintaining complete autonomy from one another.  I've kind of talked about this before, but the best way I can summarize it is where I was was confusion and a need to be what other's wanted me to be, at the sake of not becoming who I know that I am.  I am beautiful.  I talk about things that are difficult to talk about.  I can relate to any kind of person because my mission in life is to love and promote love... not physical love, but that kind of love that is unconditional.  I get it, some of my decisions frighten others, but I wouldn't be who I am without having taken any of the risks I've taken, and I wouldn't change them for the world because I know more about love than a lot of people claim they know.  That battle- that confusion of being told that you are wrong in who you are and the way you live your life- that alone is confusing where you are with who you are.  I see complicated and worthwhile where other's only see bad.  I see something deserving of a second, or third, or fourth to tenth glance, where other's only see something not worthy of time.  Because of this, the way I see things, I've been told for the longest time where I can make better decisions, and how to better live in accordance with the ideals of those telling me I'm doing "it" (life, my life) wrong.  And for the longest time I thought something was innately wrong with me.  Do you know what the definition of innate is?  It is "belonging to the essential nature of something."  Essentially, it is something that is natural to the thing it belongs to, so in context to what I just stated, for the longest time I thought that I was made of only wrong.  Where am I?  I'm in a world where perceptions rule and each perception is as unique as the person viewing it.  Who am I?  A loving human being who believes that life and love are worthy of taking risks, and what other's deem as a risk, is only viewed as a opportunity to me.


--Cosmic:  Where am I?  Earth, one of potentially billions planets that can sustain life.  Who am I?  Life worthy of living and so small in comparison to the Universe around me that my actions should not even peak on the radar of people who are concerned with their own existences and living the one life they will ever experience here.  I'm not saying I don't believe in life after this place, because I do, I'm saying that we will ever only know this life in this format, in this way, the way we are living it now... once.  Only once.  So, should not the focus be to live our life for ourselves and the way it feels right to us, instead of how other's believe we should live?  It's a s simple question.  Rhetorical, even.


--Spiritual:  This is where it gets religious-y.  Where am I?  A place meant to challenge me.  A place where I had to come in order to learn the spiritual concepts that only this place could teach me.  A place I chose to come when I new how everything would play out... a place I chose to come when I had the spiritual knowledge to know the end from the beginning... I still chose to come here.  Who am I?  A being much braver than I give myself credit for.  A spiritual child who, through my own sorrow and loss and sacrifice, understands my spiritual connection with my Mother-in-Heaven better than I ever thought I could.  A person who strives to know everything there is to know about love in it's highest and most noble form... and I chose to learn that here.

It is said that "The worth of souls is great in the sight of God."  Knowing this answers a simple but completely necessary question.  Who are we?  We are souls of great worth.  That's easy to forget when we compare who we are to where we are, and there is a major difference.  You can never do enough to change a core feeling about yourself that has been embedded in you for who knows how long.  We literally have to retrain our thought patterns that feed our core beliefs.  And this retraining has to happen with every breath.  With every breath we have to remind ourselves of who we are, and not base who we are with what is currently going wrong in our lives, which is the where.  That's hard, but nothing worth having is easy.  I'm an awesome lady.  I have a lot of love to give and who I am is a lot better than what my current hardships cause me to believe I am.  And that's something worth remembering every second.

Perspective at Village Inn's Ladies' Room

There is something that I've been mulling over for a couple of weeks now, which is pretty new to me as I used to just blurt things out as they came to me without fully thinking through what it was I was saying or trying to say.  I was having coffee with a friend of mine and we were having one of those really great conversations where you are completely engaged in the dialogue and it is uplifting dialogue and you are learning a lot from it.  We were also laughing a lot which is always a nice thing to do.

I don't even fully remember what we were talking about, but what I do remember was visiting the ladies' room and having one of those thoughts that seemingly come out of nowhere and have massive impact of yourself as you know you.  Oddly enough, all those kinds of moments that I just described always seem to happen while I'm in a bathroom, or while I'm brushing my teeth.  

I work for a law office and so I am used to being analytical about every major piece of information that comes in to my hands.  The type of family law we primarily do is the kind that involves a lot of reading between the lines and asking the difficult questions to the stuff that doesn't add up right (yes, there is a kind of math I do relatively well with, it just doesn't involve numbers).  I analyze everything.  Outside of my employment, as an English major... I'm always analyzing the text and trying to figure out what is beneath the suggestion that are the words on the paper.  

While this analytic nature works well in my scholarly and professional worlds, it doesn't work well at all in my interpersonal world... in fact, it's been quite damaging to that world.  In the scholarly and professional worlds where I'm analytic and questioning the texts I'm given, it works because I'm supposed to find the loop-holes and pieces that contradict one another and I'm awesome at that; I've protected children from some pretty horrible situations because of my ability to really know what their parent's are saying without saying.  

But, you see, in my interpersonal world it's different.  What I learned at the Village Inn ladies' room... the thought that came out of nowhere and left me dazed and alarmed like I'm pretty sure a 2x4 to the head would impact me was that... analyzing your interpersonal relationships... it doesn't work.  You aren't supposed to look for loop-holes or confused stories when they really just don't exist in the first place.  And when you start doing that... you are weaving your own insecurities into the actions of another person.  That's the big thing I learned.  It is no secret that in my past I've been traumatically hurt.  And that word, "traumatically"... yeah, it's not an exaggeration.  

All of you out there reading this blog faithfully know of a small portion of the traumatic hurt I've faced.  But, the truth is that what you know is only the tip of that cliche iceberg; it's the result of a part of the underlying and ever invasive emotional injury.  Sheesh, that sounds so dramatic.  Maybe you all already knew this simple fact that when we analyze the actions of other's and, in doing so, only ever see the things that don't add up even if those things are creations of our own beliefs, and not actually truth... then ultimately all we are doing is weaving our insecurities in the actions of everything around us.  It's hard to trust anything when you live your life that way.  And I get that now.  For whatever reason that truth has evaded me for the longest of times, but I get it now.

That's not to say that there are people out there that don't have cause for suspicion.  But, when you place that suspicion on to someone who has only ever shown you kindness and respect and purity of love... and you let the thoughts of other's just as distrustful as you assist in tightening the weave of your own individual brand of insecurity... then it's not good.  I don't fully know what this post is.  I'm just excited about the moment of clarity I received in the ladies' room of Village Inn.  That sounds weird, but it's true.

If you could feel the quiet joy in my heart right now then I think it would explain it perfectly.  For as important as it is to ask the questions and get the answers, and be suspicious of people when it's necessary, there is no balance in doing that with everyone you meet.  Just as there is no balance in just existing in a moment that feels wrong but you don't dare understand why.  Analyzing is red, and turning a blind eye is blue... but trusting and believing in good when you've witnessed it time and again in a person, especially when that person answered the difficult questions... that's yellow.  And, yellow is joy; yellow is warmth, yellow is honesty, yellow is humility.  Yellow teaches you to imagine and believe that life and people can be good.  Yellow is your instinct telling you that it's either right or wrong, it's that part of you that knows without having to be encouraged by others.  Yellow is balance and having hope in faith is yellow.  Balance is patient and balance is peace in the instinctual.  Balance is a delicate truth that can come to us in the most unusual of places, but it comes to us regardless, even if it is the ladies' room of a family restaurant.

Loss, We Meet Again

I've been thinking for about 35 hours how I want to talk about what this post is about.  Let me start off by saying a recent experience I had caught me completely off guard.  I bought a cat last Friday.  A cute little, big eyed baby kitten.  I named him Ellipses, which is plural for ellipsis, which is what is used in grammar to signify that you are not using a full quote, and it also suggests that you are withholding information, it is also used when a sentence dies off without finishing and while alluding a sense of hesitancy... it is signified as three dots (...) and I use it a lot in my writing.  So, yeah, that's what you get when you are the cat of an English major.  His name was either going to be Ellipses or Comma; either way he wasn't going to escape the English nerdom that is my life.

This little kitten... I love him.  The shelter I adopted him from thought he was about 13 weeks old, but it turns out he was between 6-8 weeks old and tiny as can be.  I had him for 53 hours before he died from feline distemper.  I don't know if you all know what that is.  Basically it is related to the parvovirus found in dogs.  It's a virus that attacks the white blood cells in the cat so it is unable to fight it off and it eventually overcomes the neurological system and is 99% of the time fatal.  It can be contracted en-utero or through other cats that have been subjected to it.  With how quickly it overcame this sweet baby kitten, the vet believes it had already been in his system for at least a week before I adopted him.

In the time that I had Ellipses, he was... well, the vet thought his occasional vommitting was related to transitional difficulties.  Cats can be extremely finicky when it comes to transitions and this little baby was too tiny to have been taken from his momma and then to go to a shelter and then to be adopted... he had been through a lot of transition and that alone can cause vommitting in a kitten.  He and I spent a lot of time cuddling and when we weren't cuddling, he was vommitting and the pressure with which he would dry-heave was so body shaking that it would throw him back a little each time and so I spent my time holding him securely in one spot so he could get it out, while rubbing his back to soothe him.  The day he died he was vommitting about every hour from 3:30-4:00 in the morning on.  I started to get concerned when he became lethargic and stopped drinking water.  He stopped walking around too.  By the time I got him to the vet, he had lost motor function in his legs and couldn't even stand but would roll over on to his back involuntarily.  

I held him as he was fading.  I held him on his back over the warm blanket (his temperature was dropping and he was slowly becoming hypothermic) and I rubbed underneath his chin as he tried to keep his eyes on me... but he was losing his ability to focus... if he could even see at all at that point.  He wanted so desperately to be able to stand and walk around that he started to panic and I said my goodbyes and I handed him over to the vet to put him... down... or out of his misery, however you want to define it.  

Obviously I didn't expect him to die when I adopted him.  Moreso, I didn't expect to bond with him as quickly as I did.  But I did.  He was so vulnerable and tiny and unsure about the world that he relied on me.  And... that brought back a lot of memories from my time in the hospital with Baby Boy.  I fell in love with this little kitten.  And saying goodbye to him... I wasn't expecting all the raw emotion that saying goodbye to Ellipses would bring up from the day I left Baby Boy in the arms of a social worker.  

This weekend... needless to say was the second worst and most rewarding weekend of my life; the first being the weekend I delivered Baby Boy and then placed him for adoption.  I had a panic attack at the vet's office, in the bathroom while they put him down.  To go into complete details and maybe I shouldn't- but what the heck- I wasn't allowed to go back with him because it would have been too traumatic.  You see, he was so tiny that they couldn't inject the euthanasia into his veins, so they had to inject it straight into his heart.  They made him comfortable at first so he wouldn't feel anything, but doing it that way is so sudden that it can be traumatic for an owner to witness so they don't allow them back to witness it.  

Obviously, there aren't a lot of connections to be made between Baby Boy and Ellipses.  Baby Boy is thriving... and Ellipses is no more.  Baby Boy is human and... no matter how much of a cat lady I'm turning in to... Ellipses was not a human even though to me, he was baby-like.  But the striking similarities in all of this is that I was only in both of their lives for a short time and they both taught me more about love than I've learned on my own in my nearly 28 years of existence.  

Thought shift: sometimes I question God.  Don't get me wrong, I know emphatically that there is a God because I've experienced blessings that are too sacred to ever question and so I don't question the existence of God... rather, I question the whole process that is religion and Deity and trial and tribulation and... all of that... a lot.  I know that I have a sort of say in the direction my life takes and that life, in general, is not pre-determined and that none of us are pre-destined for any grand scheme; we all have a say in our actions and our decisions.  But, I don't want to know Loss anymore and that's where I get hung up on whatever God's divine plan for me may be.  This weekend was too close for comfort to the sacred memory that is Baby Boy and it struck me that... anything... anything can resurface those memories and it will always be that way... and that's kind of exhausting to think about.  And... I mean, that's just it, there's nothing more that can said about that, I guess.

Do I regret Baby Boy for the loss I endured?  I don't regret anything about him.  I would go as far as to say that I don't even regret his dad (though I still dislike Baby Daddy strongly) because without him, Baby Boy wouldn't be here and without Baby Boy being here I would never have known his light and his parents would never have been blessed with his addition to their family.  Do I wish that I had waited and created Baby Boy with another person?  Yes, deeply.  The man I love and who loves Baby Boy... he is a great father to his children and so I don't doubt for one second that he would have been a brilliant father to Baby Boy because I know he would have.  I took a risk with Baby Daddy and it didn't work, but I was blessed to have known an angel in Baby Boy and to have been a part of his life for a short time and I don't regret that for one second.  He taught me about love... the real kind.  The selfless kind that changes your world if you are lucky enough to have ever known it.  I may not be an active part of his world, but for the time that I got to spend with him... it was worth it.

Now the other question.  Do I regret Ellipses?  Nope.  When I placed Baby Boy for adoption, there was this part of me... it was the survival part of me that closed off the maternal part of me in order to survive the decision I made.  There's really no other way to say it; I couldn't have made that decision and decided to stay in that active maternal place at the same time.  So, I shut it off.  And while I'd like to think that I've still been a kind woman towards others since I shut that part of me off, there was this other part of me that was scared to really open that closed off part... to ever fully open that part of me again.  I didn't realize how scared I was to love someone so completely again and so... I've convinced myself for a long time that I've completely opened my heart up again to the world and the opportunities that may await me.  But, the thing about convincing is that when you're doing it, the thing you are convincing yourself of doesn't exist.  So... as much as I wanted to open my heart up and trust again and love again and laugh freely again and be easy in my skin again... it was a show for the most part.  There were some very genuine moments but they were fleeting.  

And then I adopted this baby kitty and he needed me and I needed him and it was easy to open up to him because he was so unassuming.  And... that was curious to me and that's when I realized how closed off I've been.  And so in a long about way of saying it, I don't regret Ellipses.  And that plan of God's... I don't understand it, but I'm trusting it more.  If my only purpose in this kitten's life was to give him a lot of love and a couple days of comfort outside of a dirty animal shelter and to cry over his loss, because regardless of how tiny he was, he was important; if that was the whole point of me finding him and loving him, then I can live with that. Just like Baby Boy, if I wasn't supposed to be his active mommy and I was only supposed to know his spirit and his life through carrying him to term and loving him and his companionship for nine months, just to hand him over to people who love him just as much as I do; if my only purpose was to learn of that kind of love, then it was worth it and I can live with that.

I don't know how else to look at any of this.  As much as I don't want to know Loss anymore, I'm understanding that it is essential to our human growth.  If we allow it to, Loss can teach us more about love than it ever could about hate and that's the balance of loss.  Yes it can kill our souls and breed hate within us, but only if we allow it to.  But also, if we allow it to, it can grow our souls to where we long to be and where we will experience the most powerful of love.  That may sound hokey and a bit hippy-like, but I believe it.  Loss, if you allow it to, can teach you more about love than anything this world has to offer; especially reality t.v.  It's true.

As it stands, I'm going to get another kitten.  I'm looking into one right now that is being fostered and he's so precious and I can't wait to meet him.  I'm not going to let my heart close off again, that's for sure.  It's open now and I like it.