blogs
Five years. And counting.
Flipper celebrates her fifth birthday Sunday, May 25.
Five seems like a big birthday, a landmark in some way. Perhaps only to me. It seems so grown-up, and yet not-teetering on the cusp of babyland and little girlhood.
The weeks leading up to her birthday are filled with memories of when I was pregnant, and, early on, hideous flashbacks of labor. I will Cliff-Note labor for you: Water breaks. Thirty hours of hard labor at the birthing center ensues. Dehydration sets in. Hospital. Twelve more hours of labor. Fetal distress. Finally born. I still can't watch any movie or TV show that depicts a woman in labor. Or a cat. Or anything, except the MALE seahorse. That, I love.
Anyway, I think for most parents it would be hard to NOT remember the first birthday ... but then, for me, they fade. I made no baby book entries much past the first year. I cannot even remember what she got from me last year. This bothers me less than I think it should. So here we are, another year flown by. This year, we will be at the beach with my parents and their friends. We will have a small party, since Flipper gets freaked out when it is all about HER, and shed many a tear at parties past. I will repeat the frightful "doll cake," a picture of which is below. I will let her play with the doll-pick, which is disturbingly legless.
But this year, another anniversary, another milestone will pass, unobserved and unremarked upon. No cake, no candles. My mother, the linchpin of my and Flipper's life, will have just passed the five-year, all-clear mark for breast cancer.
She finished her last dose of Tamoxifen last week. She finished 13 weeks of radiation the week before Flipper was born. Flipper's impending arrival was even more special then, as it gave us all something to look forward to, focus on.
She does not talk about it, no support groups, no pink ribbons. Just another woman that has fallen on the good side of statistics. So there will be two celebrations, really. And the pinata? A seahorse. Of course.
Leigh appears every Monday on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Leigh at Flipper and Me.
Leigh Sparacino
Leigh is a TriangleMom2Mom featured blogger, appearing every Monday.
Leigh grew up in Durham, attended college in
North Carolina, left the area for an island off the coast of Georgia,
the high mountains of Colorado, and her favorite mountains in western
North Carolina, before returning to the Triangle eight years ago. She lives near
Carrboro with her 4.5-year-old daughter Flipper and two dogs. She
is single in marital status only, surrounded by friends, family, and
her daughter's very involved and loving father. She works part-time and
tries to be as involved as possible in her daughter's school, The
Emerson Waldorf School, where Flipper is a kindergartner. She likes
wood, glass and other natural materials for toys, loves the principles
of Waldorf education and hates plastic. She might be the only person in
the world with no TV and who hasn't been to a movie in 15 years, but races
to the mailbox every Saturday for the most recent issue of People
magazine. In other words, a contradiction. Or just human.
Flipper celebrates her fifth birthday Sunday, May 25.
Five seems like a big birthday, a landmark in some way. Perhaps only to me. It seems so grown-up, and yet not-teetering on the cusp of babyland and little girlhood.
The weeks leading up to her birthday are filled with memories of when I was pregnant, and, early on, hideous flashbacks of labor. I will Cliff-Note labor for you: Water breaks. Thirty hours of hard labor at the birthing center ensues. Dehydration sets in. Hospital. Twelve more hours of labor. Fetal distress. Finally born. I still can't watch any movie or TV show that depicts a woman in labor. Or a cat. Or anything, except the MALE seahorse. That, I love.
Anyway, I think for most parents it would be hard to NOT remember the first birthday ... but then, for me, they fade. I made no baby book entries much past the first year. I cannot even remember what she got from me last year. This bothers me less than I think it should. So here we are, another year flown by. This year, we will be at the beach with my parents and their friends. We will have a small party, since Flipper gets freaked out when it is all about HER, and shed many a tear at parties past. I will repeat the frightful "doll cake," a picture of which is below. I will let her play with the doll-pick, which is disturbingly legless.
But this year, another anniversary, another milestone will pass, unobserved and unremarked upon. No cake, no candles. My mother, the linchpin of my and Flipper's life, will have just passed the five-year, all-clear mark for breast cancer.
She finished her last dose of Tamoxifen last week. She finished 13 weeks of radiation the week before Flipper was born. Flipper's impending arrival was even more special then, as it gave us all something to look forward to, focus on.
She does not talk about it, no support groups, no pink ribbons. Just another woman that has fallen on the good side of statistics. So there will be two celebrations, really. And the pinata? A seahorse. Of course.
Leigh appears every Monday on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Leigh at Flipper and Me.
Leigh Sparacino
Leigh is a TriangleMom2Mom featured blogger, appearing every Monday.
Leigh grew up in Durham, attended college in North Carolina, left the area for an island off the coast of Georgia, the high mountains of Colorado, and her favorite mountains in western North Carolina, before returning to the Triangle eight years ago. She lives near Carrboro with her 4.5-year-old daughter Flipper and two dogs. She is single in marital status only, surrounded by friends, family, and her daughter's very involved and loving father. She works part-time and tries to be as involved as possible in her daughter's school, The Emerson Waldorf School, where Flipper is a kindergartner. She likes wood, glass and other natural materials for toys, loves the principles of Waldorf education and hates plastic. She might be the only person in the world with no TV and who hasn't been to a movie in 15 years, but races to the mailbox every Saturday for the most recent issue of People magazine. In other words, a contradiction. Or just human.
