The Beginning

Today is March 4th and I thought that this day would be as good as any to write my first entry to my blog. When I say the date to myself, March 4th, it makes me think of marching forth with things, so why not with creating a blog. So here it goes. I have wanted to start a blog for a while in order to document my time living abroad and also as just a way to gain some perspective on my experiences of adjusting to a new life in another country. While this is an interesting experience, it has also been a time of feeling like I have had to learn things all over again. I have spent months asking my husband to explain…”who is that?” or “where is that?” or “what does that mean?” I tell you, it has been like being a toddler sometimes. I am a reasonably intelligent woman, but being out of your comfort zone can be very humbling and it has made me feel plain stupid sometimes. I guess that as they say, sometimes being smart depends on where you are standing at the moment. :-) I laugh about it now, but it wasn’t always that way.

I laugh a lot more now than I did when I first arrived here nearly two years ago. I have had a hard time of it over the last couple of years. I lost my mother suddenly, a few weeks before my wedding and it devastated me with a capital “D”. I was crushed and I basically zombied my way through my wedding just to cope with missing her. My father died when I was a kid so I felt sort of lost and orphaned. It was a strange sensation. But the thing that made the day a joy as much as it could be was that my guy and I were getting married. We had waited a long time to be together so the calm of seeing my guy's face within the whole blur of things after my mom’s death, was peace to me. It was great that our family members were there,and I am thankful for that, but my mom and I were so tight that no one could have truly lifted my spirits that day, but her. She and I had been through so much together leading up to my getting married like you wouldn't believe, so she was the only one who could understand how I felt. :-) It had been a very long road for me and her. I was just wishing the whole day that she could be there with me and my husband to share in the beauty of it all after months of anguish. And the usual wedding anxiety had nothing on the stuff me and Mom were finding our way through. My only consolation that I can see now, nearly two years later, is that at least with all of that turmoil, and the waiting around we had to do, that I got to know more things about my mother and her life before she was married and right after she married my dad. We talked a lot. Even though it is still hard to think about things sometimes, bit by bit, I am just putting my focus on the bond that we shared in the last months of her life.
:-)

So on me and my guy's wedding day, the church was flooded with this golden light that streamed through the windows and it had never looked so luminous to me before. I took this as a sign from my mom and dad somehow, that things were going to be okay.

My life has been quite eventful lately, not in a fun way, since I have been here, but it has given me loads to write about. :-) I have broken my toes and then I was injured in a car accident four months later to round things off nicely. :-) I am still rehabilitating from that little beauty of a car accident. Still I am glad just to be alive. My husband and I are like a lot of other couples in that we give names to things. So when it seems that gremlins are plaguing us with bad luck, we say it is the dreaded “cuddle gremlins”. The cuddle gremlins to us are anything that comes in and tries to ruin our cuddly fun or horns in and makes a mess of things. I tell you, with grieving over my mother, homesickness, and injury to deal with, I was a mess for a long while. But somewhere in there, the old “me” was still alive and kicking. This whole time I kept telling my husband that I should write all of this down and thought about creating a blog. But I never got around to it. I couldn't concentrate. Most of the time when I have been going through a lot of these trials in my life, I have just wanted to do nothing. Plus, I figured I would bum everybody out with my tales of woe. But I thought that I would include them here to contrast with where I am now in my life as I go forward with this blog. As I said before, today is March 4th and that to me means a day to “march forth” and pick up my life fully and run with it. I know that my dear mother would want it that way. She was and always will be my inspiration and she was funny. I miss her laugh and her smile. I can just hear her saying, “Get on with things in your life, it’s time!” So that is why I decided to at long last start my blog and get on with things and march forth. :-)