When I read this entry last year from one of my all time favorite writers, Rick Bragg, it literally took my breath away.

http://www.southernliving.com/general/rick-bragg-coming-home-00417000079438/

I sat with it for a long while before I put a pen to paper. Writing as everyone can attest is an organic process that comes to you when you least expect it. In my case it was a job opportunity nestled smack in the center of my hometown and the chance to go home again. I turned down the chance to return but the lingering effects of saying good-bye to my hometown in a more permanent fashion stuck with me. From there the following emerged.

Home

This place that I had struggled to “escape” from for my entire youth. It represented what I didn’t think I wanted or needed.

Salt of the earth, hard-working, pull yourself up by your boot straps kind of people. People who didn’t hesitate to stop and offer a hand to those in need but also knew every aspect of your existence. From your first day of  kindergarten to how you like your eggs cooked, your story was a piece of the fabric of the community. I believed they didn’t get me- my poetry, my drama, my need for space.

So I ran.

First to a wealthy university in a small midwestern town and to Europe for time abroad, then on to DC to chase my dreams.

Finally I settled in a midwestern, midsize city where no one knew me. Over time I learned my story revolved around what I wanted to tell not what those knew of me from childhood.

In a moment of middle-aged identity crisis I turned around and looked. I realized I had for 17 years been caught up in something superficial and I longed for home.

The place where you counted by generations how long your family had been a part of the fabric of the city.

The place where on sunday afternoons, after church, the world stopped and you all watched your team.

The place where you had your own shared “language”. Words like gum band and yinz where ways to connect with each other not language barriers.

The place where the lady down the street knew your parents by name and didn’t hesitate to call them when she caught you in the backseat of a parked car on a saturday night with a boy you thought wanted you “forever”.

Maybe that place exists in everyone’s history.

Maybe my place is not all that unique.

Maybe everyone has a Pittsburgh they call home.

But what aging has taught me is that no matter how far you travel you cannot escape the places that molded you.

You will always come back to the start.

And so now I long for that for my three young girls.

A place which knows them so intimately that they too as an 18-year-old long to escape from  “home” and to become unknown in a  foreign  land.

A place which makes them uncomfortable with all of its knowledge of their teenage souls.

The years of aging also tend to make you look back and pause to say thank you.

Thank you for making home uncomfortable but comfortable.  Beautiful and broken.

But, most of all, thank you for providing me with a foundation.

I will no longer run from my history as it has now become my refuge.

Home.

This is Dr. Willis Potts.

I met him this week although he passed away in 1968.

My mother in law Penny is in the midst of an unexpected health crisis and you see Dr Potts operated on her back in 1958. The work of Dr. Potts would have never crossed my path had it not been for the events of this past week. When I learned of his role in my mother in law’s life I knew I had to find out more about him. Rediscovering a passion for learning that I had not seen in myself in my 14 years post college, I found myself over the last few days scouring the internet in an attempt to dive deeply into the life of Dr. Potts.

When they met, Penny was a four-year old from rural Ohio (ie population less than a 1000) and Dr. Potts was a famous cardio thoracic surgeon who was pioneering techniques on children. Penny and her mother made the long journey from the pastures and farmland to the big city of Chicago to see this giant of a physician.

I am in awe of my husband’s grandmother-to live where they lived and how they lived but to find a way to get their daughter the most cutting edge care imaginable at the time. She was a warrior mom who would stop at nothing but the best for her young child.

Dr. Potts packed Penny on ice (not just her heart her whole body) and operated to repair a hole, a congenital defect that had been there since birth.

What we learned this week is that not many children born with this condition at the time survived into adulthood and those that did had complications. You see back then children’s hospitals didn’t spend time operating on these kids. Their primary focus was on things like appendicitis. Dr. Potts was the chief of surgery at Memorial Children’s and resolved that the field of pediatric surgery needed to be expanded and therefore dedicated significant time and resources to changing that in Chicago.

So a young girl and her mother take a chance on a physician and his team thousands of miles from home and the surgery is successful. Not only does it work but she lives for 56 years without a single complication.

 Dr. Potts wrote the following in a book he authored back in 1959, just a year after he operated on Penny:

 “I want to dedicate this book to the child that has the misfortune of being born with a serious deformity. …. The infant with no language but a cry and the child with no words to express the desire to be well and normal ask that we make available to them the benefits of increased knowledge of their surgical diseases”.

I have read that Dr. Potts was a deeply religious man. His faith in God served as the foundation for his work. The belief that we as a society will be judged by how we treat the weakest and most vulnerable among us.

Dr. Potts has long since left this earth as has my husband’s grandmother.  But to think that the persistence of this mom and this surgeon lead to the  joyful life of a woman I call my second mom is remarkable.

I struggle to find the words when I live in a moment like this.

When the weight of the knowledge I have discovered bears down on my chest.

The life I have today was made possible by the faith and dedication of a man and a women decades removed from where I sit now.

The only words that make sense are thank you.

These are the faces of three little girls after 10 hours in the car (it should have been a 8.5 hour road trip) awaiting the arrival of their uncle.

These are the faces after seeing their Uncle.

BIG DIFFERENCE!!!

And here are their happy faces as we toured Richmond and Petersberg, VA over Memorial Day weekend with their Uncle who was on a weekend pass from Ft. Lee.

We toured a Civil War Battlefield.

Photographic evidence that we clearly disobeyed park rules.

They also learned what it was like to live in that era.

Clearly from Ellery’s standpoint they had crayons.

And Hope decided that she would have been a Union soldier.

Ellery was a little angry at the end of day 1. She had expected shrimp and grits for dinner and was clearly disappointed when we opted for a quick meal of hamburgers at 5 Guys.

Day 2 had us eating more in downtown Richmond and soaking up  history at Shirley Plantation.

And finally one oddity from the trip. Every time we drove by this shop situated in front of our hotel it was closed or else believe me we would have gone in. Cigars, novelties and scooters? Would have liked to be in the room when they decided on that business plan. “Hey Tom why don’t we open a shop that sells cigars and scooters in the same place. People will LOVE IT”.

The week has been a hard one.  A week that weighs heavy on my heart.

A week that started with such a high shortly disingrated into a moment that deeply affected me.

What I walk away with from this week is the reminder that Life, our life-this life, is fragile. It is fragile and it is beautiful.

So I leave you this week with some of the things that have helped me to move through the days.

What I am reading:

In words the gift of siblings:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/opinion/sunday/bruni-the-gift-of-siblings.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Just finished this one. My grandfather served as a mechanic for Lindbergh on one of his flights abroad. Pictures of this hero peppered my childhood along with stories of his ego and temper. Interesting to read this account which is not a work of non fiction but a historical fiction.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Aviators-Wife-A-Novel/dp/0345528670

Ells has been obsessed with this one. Every night before bed I am “required” to read it and this week I choose to really focus on the words and the book proved helpful to me.

http://www.amazon.com/Night-You-Were-Born/dp/0312601557

What I am listening to:

Darius Rucker- Take Me Home (could not find a link to put here that would send me to the actual song so encourage you to listen to the spotify version)

I and love and you. A favorite that seems to be on repeat this week.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1362997825/

Couple of moments from our week:

What I am listening to this week:

This song has been on repeat on my ipod.  I realize it’s been out for a while but it’s worth sharing. My favorite line- ” she carries me when my sins make me heavy”.  

What I am reading this week:

Some of you may have already seen this on my facebook page. Her words are perfect and I encourage all parents to read it.

http://www.handsfreemama.com/2013/05/22/the-important-thing-about-yelling/

Only a few pages in but really enjoying this-

http://www.amazon.com/The-Aviators-Wife-A-Novel/dp/0345528670

What I saw this week that moved me:

This couple and their love. That is inspiring.

http://hopeheals.com/shortfilm

We are so stinking excited for this weekend to be here and to visit with my younger brother. He’s been at Ft. Lee (outside of Richmond, VA) for the last 3 months doing some advanced training. I cannot think of a better way to spend the Memorial Day weekend then being with him.

Harry and I met today in the most unlikely of places.

I was shooting pictures for the day as a volunteer at Sidney’s third grade field trip.

Harry was the square dance caller.

One smile from Harry and I knew I had to get to know him better.

He’s charming, energetic and  87.

He’s been calling square dances for 40 years.

“I tried to retire last year but they called me at the last-minute to do a pioneer day at a local school and since then I can’t seem to stop”.

Today Harry called square dances for almost 6 hours with only a short 30 minute lunch break.  After 2 hours of following 80 third graders around I was pooped. But, there was Harry standing before me full of enthusiasm for the job he loved.  “I love this job!” he told me.

He cajoled all of those 8 year old boys into holding the hands of the 8-year-old girls beside them. None of the kids complained in fact they loved every minute.

The common refrain in this day and age seems to be that kids of this generation just don’t get it. They are disrespectful and maybe even lazy.

Harry shared with me that over the last 10 years he can count on one hand the number of times he has had to tell a child to leave. He finds them to be engaged, completely respectful and down right excited to dance around a barn while he calls the commands.

Maybe, we just need to learn to talk to kids more like Harry does.

Meet Nina

Nina is eight years old.

 I have a daughter who is eight years old. Her name is Sidney.

Nina’s mom was a healthy young woman when she became pregnant with Nina.

I was a healthy young woman when I became pregnant with Sid.

Nina’s mom and I should have had identical pregnancies.

Neither one of us had histories of preterm birth.

We both carried singleton babies.

We both had access to the best prenatal health care in Ohio.

But somehow the births of our daughters, eight years ago, were radically different.

An average pregnancy lasts 40 weeks.

Sidney was born at 39 weeks a great big ball of screaming baby. She weighed 7lbs 12 oz.

Nina was born 9 weeks early at 31 weeks and weighed just 2lbs 15 oz.

 Sidney came home from the hospital with me 4 days after she was born.

Nina fought for 5 weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit of a hospital before she eventually came home to  her parents and  big brother. For months and years after her birth her parents waited for the other ax to drop but her health has remained exceptionally good for a child born at that size.

 I was able to meet Nina and her mom yesterday and hear their story. I walked away with these tidbits:

Not one researcher can answer the question why it is that so many women in the United States deliver babies way too early. Women who should, according to all the statistics, deliver a healthy baby.

But statistics fail us and babies are born every day way too soon.

We believe that bringing our children into the world in America they will be armed with every advantage imaginable but yet we fail at just that- bringing them into the world.

That is why there are groups like the March of Dimes. Groups that bring stories like Nina’s to people like me. They bring these stories in the hopes that by the telling of stories we create a society that deems this as unacceptable.

One out of every 9 babies are born too soon.

We have put men on the moon and we have invented a modem that will connect us with each other every moment of every day.

One day we will discover the cause of preterm birth.

Until then Nina and her mom will continue to tell their story.

Starbucks 8am

I swear there is a corporate memo hanging out there somewhere that “encourages” baristas to make small talk with the person in the drive through line awaiting their much anticipated cup of morning joe.

 The memo reads something like this:

“The line is backed up and you are confronted with a sleep deprived mother of three on her way to work. Take her mind off the wait by inquiring about what she is up to today. If that does not work then ask her what she is doing this weekend (or last weekend if it’s a monday). If she offers one word answers or appears disinterested do not take it personally, said mom is probably emotionally drained and in need of our espresso to jolt her into a state of heightened awareness”.

This morning I hit the pause button. I looked up from my satellite radio, jumped past my own distaste (and lets face it lack of ability) to make small talk and I engaged with, let’s call her Kelsey (since I did not get permission to use her name in my blog), my drive through attendant. She smiled and inquired about my day. I told her I was heading into the office. And then instead of waiting for her to ask another question, I turned the tables on her. How was she doing? How was work for her this week? Oh you are worried about your nursing exams? Tell me what kind of hospital would you like to work in? The questions rolled off my lips in a manner much easier then I ever anticipated.

Once I started I simply could not stop.

The grande misto long since handed over and there I sat still learning about this young lady, working early mornings at the Starbucks and making her way through nursing school on her own at 20- excited for where life is going to take her.

An awkward moment where I realized I was now the cause for the back up in the drive through line, so I smiled, told her I hoped her exams went well and then drove off. Off into the start of my day filled with meetings, deadlines, doctors appointments and time chauffeuring children to evening activities.

Now I sit and rewind that morning interaction and I cant help but smile. I think about my days as a young women  much like Kelsey-climbing the ladder, working a day job at the office and an evening job at Ann Taylor to make ends meet and surviving on pots of coffee and  the proverbial Ramon noodle dinner. The conversation this morning took me back to a time long since forgotten by this working mom of 3. 

Thinking on it now I wonder how maybe not that much has changed. I’m still surviving with pots of coffee (this time starbucks mistos) and now instead of ramon noodle dinners I order expensive takeout from the chinese restaurant down the street. I am still striving. The only difference between my 21 year old self and me as a 35 year old women is that I now climb for a different purpose.

Thanks Kelsey for reminding me how far I’ve come but how close I still am to where I was 15 years ago.

So this journey begins:

People and their stories .Challenging myself each week to reset and connect with those around me -strangers and friends alike.

My new story begins.