Moving and Valentines

I was thinking back to 13 years ago when we found out I was pregnant with my daughter. We had been married for 8 years by then, and we'd pretty well given up on the idea of having children. I was getting to be “advanced maternal age”, and we hadn't had any success thus far.

We lived in Chicago when we got married, and we loved living there; we were there for 10 years. Well, 2 months shy of 10 years. Then 9/11 happened. We realized that while we loved it there, we didn't have family there. In my mind, my beautiful Chicago skyline was now splattered with bulls eyes. We made it our mission to get back to Buffalo, or as close as we could to Buffalo. 

So in March of 2002, my husband got a job here in Buffalo. He had to start working, so he came to Buffalo and stayed with my mom while I stayed in Chicago to finish packing up our stuff. He and my mom went apartment hunting while I kept on packing. And packing.  

Geez, it was astounding to me how much we accumulated in 10 years!

We only had dial-up internet at our place in Chicago, so I'd be on my cell phone looking at the pictures he would email me and then talking about the pros and cons of the different places. There was one he was really excited about, and it wasn't bad. We took that place.

Sometime in April of 2002 was moving day. My husband took a bus back to Chicago so he could drive the truck eastbound while I drove my car. Our friends (Chicago division) came over to help load the truck. One friend looked at the truck, looked at our stuff, then looked at the truck again and said, “You'll never fit all of this in that truck”. I said that yes, we'll have enough room. Our friend wasn't convinced.

Once the truck was loaded (and filled to capacity), our friend said, “You were right. I should have known. You probably figured out the cubic feet of all of your stuff before you reserved the truck”. All of our stuff fit, save 2 old kitchen chairs and our Bird of Paradise plant which was quite large. We gave that plant to a friend of our who always admired it.

We arrived at our new apartment, where a crew of friends (Buffalo division) helped us unload the truck. My mom had made her world-famous barbecued hamburgers and potato salad so we'd have something to feed all of our “crew”. The burgers were infinitely better than the usual pizza and wings.

We settled in, I got a job at a local jewelry company, and things were nice.

Then, we went to a bar one night, and I had 2 drinks. I stood up from the bar stool, and fell into a puddle on the floor. I got up, promptly ran to the bathroom where I got very sick. After 2 drinks in almost 2 hours. Hmm, something was wrong, I must be coming down with something.

I was okay the next day, but over the next few weeks, I started to notice things. I won't go into detail, I'll simply leave it as I was “noticing things”. I decided to buy a pregnancy test on my way home from work one day. In fact, if memory serves, I bought different brands for a total of 3 tests. I took all of the tests. I suppose I passed because they were all positive.

Once we saw the doctor, we were ready to tell people. Bursting to tell people, in fact! My husband and I decided that we would tell my mom first. Valentine's Day was coming up, so we went to the store and bought a Valentine for “Grandma”.  On a Sunday afternoon, we went to visit my mom, and we brought this card. We had signed it with our names, and “Baby L”. Of course, I was truly excited to tell my mom!

We gave her this card that said “Grandma”, she opened the card, and just kinda stared at it for about a millisecond. Then she saw the “Baby L” that I had signed. Grandma, Baby L...then the gushing of happiness came! Tears, hugs, laughter, excitement, disbelief. 

What a great day that was.