Friday, October 18, 2013

Back to School to Spend Time in the Present


Dear Brynna,

We are getting closer and closer to your birthday, and it is still unbelievable to me that nearly two years have passed since you were born!  Next weekend…wow…

This weekend Grandma Betty Ann and I are going to Pullman to visit WSU (the college we went to) and our sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta.  Our sorority house has been at WSU for 100 years and this October they’re celebrating by having a Centennial Weekend get together for any and all Thetas that want to come.  They are expecting 400 or so women from pledge classes as far back as the 1940’s.  Grandma was in the 1971 pledge class, and I was in 1997.  Several gals from our classes (and the classes directly before and after our own) will be there, and it will be wonderful to catch up with them, and find out where life has taken them.

I lived in the sorority house beginning my freshman year of college (1997) until before my junior year when I moved out to go to WSU’s nursing school in Spokane. 

I think if I had it to do over again, I would have really invested more of my time and energy into being a member of the house.  I didn’t really know at the time how brief my time was going to be there, and I was not much of a partier so I didn’t really attend many of the “exchange” functions.  Also, Daddy and I had been dating for 5 years or so by then, so I was not in the market to meet any boys, which was another reason I didn’t socialize as much with the gals in the house.

Don’t get me wrong.  I had several close friends, including my Big Sis, Tina, in the house, but now that I look back, I remember much of the time being there spent wishing I was with Daddy at his house on the “Hilltop” in Pullman.

If you had lived, and I got to see you off to school, this is something I think I would have tried to teach you.  To live in the moment you’re in and soak up all the areas of your life, because really, when you look back, they all go by in just the blink of an eye.

Now that I write that I think maybe I should continue to strive to do the same thing.  I spend so much of my time wishing I was with you (or that you were with me), but perhaps in doing so, I miss where I am right now?  No matter how much I yearn to have things be different, they aren’t going to be.  You are gone from this physical world, and Daddy, the boys and I are still here for now.  I feel myself continuing to move toward a place of acceptance (what else is there really to do?  I can’t fight what is, right?), but there are many times still where I am sure I am missing what’s right here in front of me because I am so focused on what isn’t.  I guess I just need to get better at balancing the two…

I look so forward to telling my sorority sisters about my life.  About Daddy, and the boys, and you.  I can’t wait to share pictures of our wonderful family and let them know that although life has been heartbreakingly hard in so many ways, we are still so very blessed.

I love you little girl.  My heart aches that I won’t ever be able to take you to college and watch you spread your wings and fly through this life.  I know though, that you will be with me when I go back this weekend, and you will help me to spread my broken wings and heal just a little bit more.

Love,
Momma

 

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