Anniversaries

I tend to think of my life in terms of time. I always seem to be counting down to one event or another. For example, when I was a student at BYU during finals week, I'd proclaim, "Only 72 more hours and it's all over!" and then, "Only 48 more hours until I'm all done," and so on. It was my way of assuaging my worry and concern about the burden of so many tests. All I could think was that in X amount of hours it would be done, and regardless of the outcome, most surely I would survive X amount of hours.


Another classic example: I counted down the weeks, days, and hours when Trent and I were engaged, especially because he was living out here in NY and I was in Utah. I'd study the calendar carefully, even the mini calendar on my cell phone, scrolling past the weeks and counting how much more time until we were together, until we were married, until I moved out here.


All this counting down to dates I'm anticipating has given me the rather strange habit of marking rather innocuous days with the memory of some random event that happened on that day whatever number of years ago. Thus, I always pause on the anniversary of the day I entered the MTC and the day I came home from my mission (January 25, 1995 and August 9, 1996, respectively). Or the anniversary of my first date with Trent (July 19, 2005), or the day I found out Lillian was coming (December 19, 2007), and so on and so on.


That brings me to my point. I've been pretty reflective all week.


(Long parenthetical interruption: I think my reflectiveness has a lot to do with this book I've been reading (one that I thought I had read but I realized after my sister's post about it and then picking it up again, I realized that I didn't really read it. So I'm re-reading it. And it's making me think. A lot. Okay, tangent over, over NOW!).


BUT, my propensity toward deep thoughts also has to do with the fact that this is a week where I celebrate lots of anniversaries. And that's making me thoughtful, too.


On April 14, Trent and I celebrated our two year wedding anniversary. It was wonderful to pause and reflect where we've been in the past two years (we've packed a lot of living into a short amount of time, it seems) and look forward to what the future holds.

April 14 is also a special day for Lillian. It's the anniversary of finding out that her little heart was perfect and healthy. With my tendency toward seeing all things metaphorical, I've found that I love knowing that she has a perfect heart. A strong heart. A heart that never, ever wavered, despite the roller-coaster ride that my pregnancy and her delivery was. Now that she is here and her spiritual heart continues to make itself manifest, I am continually reminded of the moment we discovered she was coming to us with a strong, faithful heart.

April 16 is another significant day. Two years ago today I packed up my bags, stuffing everything I could into 2 suitcases (all the rest--including all of our wedding gifts--would come later, much later, on a moving van driven by one of our dear friends), and boarded a plane that brought me to Upstate, New York. At the time, I was still so enamored with the idea of marriage and the romantic notion of the Northeast, that I quite simply didn't realize that I was leaving one life behind and beginning all over again.

Looking back at it all with the benefit of a two year perspective, I realize it's quite possibly the most dramatic thing I've ever done. And I didn't even know I was doing it. A new house, a new name, a new identity, a new life. In one quick plane ride I left it all behind and came here to create something new.

So much of who we are is wrapped up in the labels we create for ourselves and each other. Teacher. Single. Utah. Democrat (ohmygosh I have just confessed something big, I think). I have swapped those labels for Wife. Mother. Married. Republican (gasp!).



At the end of the day, they're just more labels. I'm still me. But it's taken me awhile to realize that. Maybe I'm still learning it. Maybe we all are.

PS I just have to add a couple of notes about that picture. The head tilt...can we talk about it? Because I think I'm Christie Brinkley, apparently, that's why. Trent's boutenniere (or however the heck you spell it) was a gift from the ward choir. Very cute. Lillian is wearing the dress that my neice, Ella, wore on my wedding day. And she just learned to frown when she's thinking hard about something. We have that in common. Also: I'm wearing the dress that I wore on our wedding day (pre-wedding dress, you know), too. And that's a picture of the Sacred Grove over our heads. My goodness. There's a lot of symbolism in this picture, now that I think of it.