Out of Commission

Here is an official apology for missing last week's post:

I am sincerely sorry to the dozen of you who have been consistently checking my blog for the past few days to see where my missing Thursday post and promised bonus post and not-so-popular reading list for May went. They don't exist yet. But thank you for your support.

Here is an official excuse:

Last week, sickness hit our house. Kevin and I were scheduled to go up to Richmond on Tuesday and that trip got pushed back to Wednesday. I thought we were over the worst. I was wrong. On Thursday, my youngest sibling graduated from Sky View High School, number four of four. Yay for my parents! Kevin was on her worst possible behavior. By the time we got back to my parent's home, I was tired. And I snapped. And after I snapped, I didn't feel like pulling myself together to write a blog post as I'd planned. So I decided to put it off to Friday. This was a bad idea. On Friday, I woke up with Kevin at six am. We both went back to bed around eight am. I woke up fifteen minutes later feeling nauseous. The rest of the day became a constant battle with the bathroom and my blood sugar (the stomach flu with diabetes is its own kind of torture--more on that below also). I was out of commission for the rest of the day (okay, more like the rest of the weekend, hence why I am posting on Monday). Also, because I know my family was probably wondering due to my highly-emotional and constantly-puking state, no. I. Am. Not. Pregnant.

Here are some official thoughts on said excuses:

Attending my brother's high school graduation brought back mixed memories for me. I remembered attending my older brother's graduation ten years ago and watching him with his friends making all these beautiful memories and thinking I couldn't wait to have those with my friends. I cried at Ben's graduation. By the time my own graduation rolled around two years later, I was so ready to be DONE and move on. There were no tears to be found. I had grown apart from friends I was once close to, grown tired of my busy life of extracurriculars and none of my service to the school really being appreciated (the hundreds of barely-skimmed"senior editions" of the school newspaper that I'd spent a full three months working on by myself as a gift to my classmates in the trash cans at school were a testament of this), and grown disillusioned with the "magic" of high school. I just wanted to be done with it all. So, after the vice principal (to whom I'd personally delivered each monthly edition of the school newspaper) pronounced my name "Miranda Birmingham" (bless my auto-correct for telling me I spelled that last name wrong), I tossed my cap in the air and walked away for good.

And it was good.

College was awesome. I made lasting friendships and courageous decisions and became a person who not only had much better haircuts, but a much more personally satisfying life. Sure, I enjoyed catching up with my high school friends every so often, attending missionary farewells and homecomings and occasional wedding receptions, but more often that not a trip back into "high school world" resulted in a conversation with my best friend about how we were so glad we weren't there anymore.

Don't get me wrong.

I had a great high school experience.

I made great friends.

I did some great things that opened great doors when I reached the university.

I have very few regrets about how I lived my high school life.

But I still do not ever, ever want to go back to living it.

Or at least I thought I didn't, until I heard the familiar strains of the Sky View High School school song...and the memories came flooding back...sitting in the stands at football and basketball games and assemblies. Singing it in a friend's basement with the debate team after we celebrated yet another state championship. Decorating the walls of the old gym for the homecoming dance to match the lyrics--the mountain peaks and the starry skies and the lit up "SV" we had custom made to match the one on the mountain. And I realized that I did miss that song.

I watched my little brother, his arms around two little girls in white gowns, his BFF with the afro and the scholarship because he is going to save USU's basketball team next year on one side of the girls and the half-Asian BFF I didn't know had a real first name (I'd always known him as Tivo, apparently his name from a middle-school Spanish class) on the other side, other best friend RJ having gotten the short end of the stick and being stuck on the row behind them. They had arms wrapped around each other and swayed back and forth and I teared up, because by the time they got to those last strains, the lyrics that were supposed to teach us that friendship really was the best gift Sky View could give us, I remembered that Sky View did give me that. Maybe not the way I expected it, but it was still there. Emails and comments about my blog posts and writing. Feelings of happiness every time I see another facebook picture showing an engagement, a wedding, a new baby, a graduation. And best of all, that one friend who thought I was so silly for falling for her cousin but  has stuck by me anyway for the last eight years, through moves and missions and miles and more rounds of PMS than either of us want to admit.

And later that night, as I was struggling to fall asleep without my husband in my old yellow-walled bedroom, I cracked open the hope chest I received as a graduation present from my parents and pulled out my old photo album and a white binder. In the binder I found every certificate I was ever given from middle school to the end of high school. I hope my children never see this binder, because I don't want them to feel they have to live up to their nerd mother: honor roll certificates, department awards, 4.0 recognition, transcripts that only have two minus signs and not a "B" (or anything lower) in sight. I probably should burn it, just so they don't feel bad when they don't recognize me as the same person who received all those go-getter awards (because sometimes these days I can't even get out of my pajamas before two o'clock in the afternoon). I started feeling very distanced from that girl who had so much going for her.

But then I found two unexpected (and somewhat out of place) papers in there. One of them was a short, paragraph-long essay I wrote in middle school about how my friends were my anti-drug. The true gem of this paper was the eighth-grade picture of myself and my friend Katrina (easily this blog's number one fan) pasted to it. I couldn't stop smiling when I found it. Oh, we looked so awkward...but we also looked so happy. That's a rare feat for young teenage girls!

What was the second paper, you ask? Well, actually, it was an envelope. From the Office of the First Presidency in Salt Lake City, UT. And inside that envelope, in a page protector, was a piece of off-white fancy paper with the most important letter I've EVER gotten written on it, signed by a man I believe to be a prophet of God. And that paper changed my life.

And I realized I still have a lot going for me, because I still have a lot of that girl in me, the one who just never knew when to stop and step back. I might not be able to keep up her crazy pace, but I still have all those lessons she learned, all those friends she made, all that knowledge that helped her realize that the only thing she really wanted to do with her life was the dream she was living, the one breathing heavily in the pack-n-play in the next room.