My dad had been dead only a week or two. My brother slouched in the gold fake-Americana rocker and said to me, “Want to hear a family secret?” And that’s how I learned that my great-aunt was not who she seemed to be. She was really my aunt–my dad’s older sister.

Until then, here’s what I believed: My dad, the oldest child, had a younger brother and a younger sister. His mother, Jeanette, had three sisters, Aunt Petranella, Aunt Constance and Aunt Lucille. As it turned out, Aunt Lucille was actually the first child of my grandmother, Jeanette, who’d been a pregnant teenager at age 14 in 1938. Her parents raised the child as their own. My dad’s mother, Jeanette, was not Aunt Lucille’s sister, but Aunt Lucille’s mother, too.

My brother once saw my dad’s birth certificate and noticed that it indicated the mother had a previous living child. How could this be if my father was the oldest kid in his family? Now we know.

That explains why my dad was so close to his “aunt.”

Here’s another story.

Back at the beginning of 1971, a marriage was in deep doo-doo. (That’s a technical term.) The husband and his wife had three small children and money was scarce. They barely spoke to each other, yet one night things happened and the wife became pregnant.

The husband was livid and accused her of getting pregnant on purpose. She pointed out that it took two people to produce the problem they faced. She went to her obstetrician for prenatal care, but her husband refused to allow her to give birth in the hospital. Their insurance didn’t cover it and he was still furious at this development.

She checked out the only book about childbirth she could find from the library and prepared to give birth at home. One October night, she put her three kids to bed and closed herself into her bedroom where she labored throughout the night. Her husband came into the room in time to don rubber gloves, catch the baby, tie off the umbilical cord with a sterilized shoelace and cut the cord. The only existing picture from that night shows him holding a coffee cup, grinning from ear to ear, still wearing his rubber gloves.

The birth of that child changed him in a deep, fundamental way. She lit up his life and even though his marriage ended a few years later, the birth of his unexpected youngest daughter transformed him, redeemed him. It was as if he had been the one who was born that night.

He ended up with full custody of the children and spent his remaining years shoring up the family that he’d earlier eschewed.

That man was my dad. That unwanted, unplanned, inconvenient baby was my baby sister.

Here’s another story.

Way back in 1960, a preacher’s wife became pregnant by the youth pastor. Her husband was not the youth pastor, so you can see that this was problematic. What’s a woman to do when she already has five children and is pregnant by an inappropriate man, a man who is not her husband? The marriage ended, but thankfully, the life of that baby was spared. That infant grew up to be my husband. And despite the circumstances of his conception, he was loved by everyone who knew him, both his mother, his biological father and the father who took him in and raised him as the most beloved son. This is the truest picture of forgiveness and redemptive love that I know.

You see, we all have a point of view which has been colored by our personal experiences. As an adoptive mother, as a relative of more than one “unintended” people, as the daughter of parents who embraced a baby at the worst possible time, as the wife of a man who should never have been conceived, let alone born, I have a particular perspective. So do you.

We all have a story. And in light of the stories I know, I believe in good coming from bad, in hope coming from hopeless situation, in strength coming from hardship, in redemption showing up when you least expect it. You can’t argue with my stories any more than I can argue with yours. But I do know for sure that we can’t possibly know the future. What seems inevitable at this exact moment–an impossible situation, impassable obstacles, insurmountable troubles looming ahead–may turn out to be only a mirage when we get closer. You just never know.

That’s why I believe in erring on the side of life. With life comes hope. I can’t see it any other way.

I thought it would be fun to time-travel to this date in 2004 and 2005. And the entry for 2004 was all right, amusing, even, however minimally.

But the entry for 2005 was utterly depressing. So, I offer, instead, this entry from January 2005, which is slightly less moody, but still.

January is not a good month for me, apparently.

Dear Internet,

Thank you for pointing out that most boys don’t discover the pleasures of appealing to girls showering until age fifteen. Since three years is a long time to inhale body odor, I realized some parental manipulation was in order.

I told them that they couldn’t ride in the car with me–ever–unless they were clean and smelled good. Without delay, they rushed upstairs and one by one, came downstairs with sopping hair and, one would assume, defumigated underarms. You see, today is the day the video game they want should arrive at the video game store.

Incentives: the secret weapon of parents everywhere.

Thank you for your insight, Internet. How did I ever live without you?

Love and kisses,
Mel

I never thought my life would be small enough to keep in a box. But it is. My life has shrunken until it could fit into a ring box, or a shoe box, if we’re being generous. For instance, yesterday, the highlight occurred when the 8-month old baby girl belched loudly, then spit-up through her nose only. She shot that formula straight onto my carpet, leaving small rivulets of regurgitation mustachio-ing her lip.

I mean, seriously, that’s all I can remember from yesterday.

I am in the midst of my most serious parental struggle yet. I still haven’t forgotten that long ago day when my blue-eyed twin, then two years old, repeatedly bashed a small cologne bottle against the window pane. (He liked to carry it around to sniff.) I said, “NO!” in my stern mommy voice. And then he did it again. I repeated, “NO!” even louder and he did it again. And again. And again.

So, I wrestled that bottle out of his sticky little hand and he howled his outrage and I swept him off his feet and marched him to bed for his nap and he cried a while and then I cried awhile over the struggle that is parenthood and over my failure to triumph over evil. Well, really, I cried because convincing my son that I was the parent and he was the child has rubbed the fabric of my sanity threadbare. Power struggle does not begin to describe it.

But this is worse. Oh, so much worse, for a few days ago, my husband and I agreed that the time has come to give the 12-year old boys a little more responsibility. Two days ago, I said to them, “Boys, Dad and I have realized we’ve been treating you like babies, telling you when and how often to shower or bathe. From now on, you’re in charge. Take a bath or shower when you need one. It’s up to you. Except on Saturdays . . . then you have to bathe before church on Sunday.”

And so, this is their second full day without bathing. Yesterday, they had P.E. at the YMCA. Still, no shower. I’ve had to stop myself from ordering them upstairs to commune with the soap and the shampoo because . . . yuck.

Tonight, I inquired, “Boys, do you have any idea what time you’ll shower tonight?” and my blue-eyed twin, the cologne-bottle-basher, accused me of not trusting him and of treating him like a baby and so, I slammed closed the door and left. He apologized later for being disrespectful to me, but he did not shower.

But we will be strong. We will let them be in charge of this. Sooner or later, they will smell each other and they will discover the glories of soap for themselves. Or they will pass out from the stench and then we can hose them down.

Meanwhile, pass me a gas mask. And leave the cover off my little boxed life when you go . . . we’re going to need the fresh air.

Listen quick. I don’t have time for this–my son’s about to leave for second grade and needs his hair combed, the 13-month old baby is due to arrive, the boys need to be roused from their slumber, the dirty laundry needs to be dumped into the machine, the clean laundry needs to be folded, the syrup needs to be put away, I ought to bring my school-at-home records up to date and I need to put my contact lenses in–but I have to say this.

This must be the longest week on record. Am I in some kind of personal time warp? Because on Monday, I thought it was Wednesday and every day since, it seems like it should be Friday, but it’s not.

And yes, the rain continues. Today is our twenty-fifth consecutive day of rain. Only another week and a day until we break the all-time record.

And the doorbell rings.

I finished The Beach yesterday. I read it in only a few days. I purchased it at a garage sale and I was thrilled because I’d seen bits of the movie (starring Leonardo DiCaprio) on the Oxygen Network, but never the beginning. So I was curious. And the price was right.

I didn’t expect to be pulled into the story so quickly and completely, but I did. I have quite a few books waiting to be read that are author’s “first novels.” This was Alex Garland’s first novel, and the book I read prior to this (Ellen Foster) was also a “first novel.”

And the book I’m reading now, A Severe Mercy is also a “first” book, though it’s not fiction. But every once in awhile, you have to lift your head out of the pool of fiction and read something else.

Then, I’ll dive back into a novel, probably another “first novel,” in keeping with my spontaneous theme.

I used to sing in church quite often. Since my 3-year old was born, not so much. She is a scaredy-cat and clingy and since my husband is busy on Sunday mornings, I’ve stepped aside.

But today, I led the congregational singing from the piano. And during the offertory, I sang a song.

And here’s the embarrassing part.

I sang a song I composed. A simple song with a simple chord structure, involving a lot of flats. I ran through the fingering before church started. No problems. I don’t have written music for it–well, maybe I do somewhere, but generally, I just play my homemade songs without music or even a chord chart.

So today, when I got to the chorus, I suddenly began to think about my fingering and the chords and then I blanked out and zigged when I should have zagged, hit E-flat when I should have hit B-flat and actually had to sing while my fingers hovered silently over the keyboard for a second.

Second verse, no problem. Then I stumbled on the chorus again.

That’s what I get for thinking while playing.

I might still be blushing.

Won’t you please go over and read my brilliant friend’s blog? You can start with that post. We went to high school together and she was the calm one in math analysis class, figuring problems in her tidy handwriting while I was busy having a coniption fit about something or another.

She also plays the piano better than I can and can tell if a cat has worms by looking at its hindquarters. She hates President Bush, too, and wears Birkenstocks, but I admire her anyway.

So, go. Say hello.

At 9 p.m., I went to the store tonight to buy ten pounds of potatoes. My husband gave me a list of his necessary items, too: bottled water, Welch’s grape juice (plastic bottle, not frozen concentrate), peanut M&Ms in snack-size packs, lactose-free milk, Skinny Cow Fudge Bars and Dr. Pepper. You know, items vital to life.

Rain fell as I drove in the dark. Today is our twentieth straight day of rain. Hills are beginning to slide and I doubt we’ll ever be able to remove the inflatable snowman from our front yard because I keep waiting for it to dry out before I store him away.

I wandered the aisles slowly, checking for sale items and calculating mentally whether I could make enough meals this week based on the stuff I have already in the freezer and cupboards. In the cereal aisle, a couple passed me and I kid you not, the cigarette smell met my nose a full ten feet before this couple walked by me. And wouldn’t you know it, they stood directly behind me in line.

The only way anyone could smell more like cigarette smoke would be if they poked cigarettes into their hair and lit it on fire.

They let a barrel-chested older man ahead of them in line because he was only buying a box of sandwich bags. I let him go ahead of me, too. Then, another guy appeared in line behind me and ahead of the Cigarette Couple. He held only a roast, so I said, “Do you want to go ahead of me?” He looked puzzled and then said, “Sure. Thank you!” When he passed me, the odor of beer floated from him and settled into my unruly hair.

So, that’s the reason I smell like I was guzzling beer and smoking cigarettes when in reality, I was grocery shopping. Honest.

p.s. I couldn’t bear to buy the Welch’s grape juice. It was over $4.50 for a 64 ounce bottle. My husband sadly informed me that Juicy Juice is just not the same and I said, “Well, I am incapable of buying a bottle of juice that costs so much.” He’ll have to do his dirty work on his own time.

p.p.s. Do you let people cut in front of you at the grocery store if you have a cart full of groceries? And do you call it a “cart” or a “buggy” or something else entirely?

Earlier today, I sat at my keyboard with vivid awareness of my cold head. This morning, I didn’t have enough time to thoroughly dry my mop of hair and why not? you ask. Because I woke up at 5:15 a.m. when my husband’s alarm went off. Because I woke up at 6:07 a.m. when the unplugged, yet still functioning, extra alarm clock went off. Because I woke up at 7:18 a.m. from a terrible dream when my daughter woke up. Because my daughter insisted on having a bath first thing this morning. And so, I ran the bath-water and reclined on my bed and watched morning television while she frolicked.

And I contemplated my bad dream. First, in my dream, a good friend gave me the silent treatment because I got rid of an item she loaned me. Of course, that didn’t really happen, but still. Then, in my dream, I went to a wedding where I had to sit with the other guests on risers in a classroom and when I went to the bathroom, all sixteen of the toilets were overflowing and THEN and ONLY then, I noticed I had a giant purple towel on my head and no make-up on and hey, where are my clothes? When I opened a closet, I found a comforter I used to own and then I woke up.

That was the first time I’ve had an anxiety dream about being a wedding guest. Usually my anxiety dreams are all about wandering a campus, looking for a classroom, knowing full well that I have played hooky all year and that I am ill-prepared for the final exam.

So, my wet hair. I didn’t have time to dry it because I had to get downstairs–quick!–to clean up choking hazards (aka Playmobil people) and vacuum thoroughly because the toddler would be here today for the first time in a couple of weeks. And he eats leaves and marbles and unpopped popcorn kernels. Don’t ask me how I know.

At one point this afternoon, I had to count on my fingers to figure out how many kids were here. I used all my fingers, but thankfully, none of my toes.

As for my mood-swing yesterday . . . nothing cures a funk like perspective. Today, I received a letter from an incarcerated woman I know. She has five more years to serve. Yesterday, my husband told me about a high-school classmate of his who has a fourteen year old daughter battling cancer. Her prognosis is grim. And what about those miners? This world is so sad sometimes.

Oh. And wasn’t that a cheerful wrap-up to a Thursday night? You’re welcome.