Second Chances

Recently I had my first overnight with just the baby and I. I was a little bit nervous about quite frankly as I do not tend to do well without my husband around. Yet somehow I felt okay about it with the baby. I know that he couldn't protect me, but that I needed to protect him and somehow this made me feel like a super-heroine.

The night finally came and I debated actually keeping the baby in bed with me, but I opted against it because I wanted to be able to get into the shower in the morning and knew that it would be a challenge putting him back in the crib in the morning without waking him. All night, I tossed and turned and kept looking at the clock. I wasn't really afraid, but our bed seemed huge. I wondered what my husband was doing. I wondered if he was having as difficult of a time sleeping as I was. I kept peering at the clock figuring out that if I went to sleep now, I would get this many hours of sleep. I also didn't know if the baby would wake up in the middle of the night or how early he would wake up and how would I get my shower in for the day? I think I finally drifted off to sleep sometime after 2 am and I was awake by 5 am. I think I took my shower at 5:30 and then tried to go back to sleep. I was so happy that I survived my first night alone in our house with just the baby and myself.

The next morning happened to be my husband's birthday and he was returning home later that night from his trip. I decided to buy him a single balloon and some roses and made him a card. As I was leaving the grocery store parking lot, the balloon got sucked out of the car and I must have made some sort of face like, "Oh my goodness" and this nice bystander woman looked at me and she ran after the balloon and so generously handed it back to me. I said to her, "That'll teach me to drive with the windows down with a balloon in my car!" And she smiled and I thanked her and drove away. I carefully rolled up the windows in the front seat where the balloon was. I started to drive home and I felt a tug of the balloon and I quickly tried to grab the balloon and before I knew it, the balloon had gotten sucked out of the back seat window and out of the car and was extremely high in the sky within minutes. I thought for sure that the balloon was safe since the front seat windows were rolled up.

I then thought of my poor husband and how he would never see his birthday balloon because I so foolishly left any of the windows open. I thought, "Let this be a lesson to myself! Sometimes life gives you second chances and you need to learn from your previous mistakes." This was the thought in my head as I drove home.

Later that night, I learned that Randy Pausch had passed away. Randy Pausch was the inspirational Carnegie Mellon professor that had given the famous "Last Lecture" speech that had been downloaded by millions on Google. He was someone that I so admired for his messages, his love of his wife and kids, and just a passion for life. In a recent interview he had asked Diane Sawyer to ask him why they couldn't make a Hollywood movie about his life. When she asked he looked lovingly at his wife and said, "There's no Hollywood actresses pretty enough to play her."

It saddened me greatly to hear of his passing and I thought of that single balloon that had left my car that evening and in some mysterious way, I felt better about it being released into the sky...as if it were being sent to Randy in some way, shape, or form. I also thought of Randy's wife, Jai, and how empty her bed must be feeling that night, for the many nights about to come, and how their three kids must have felt without their dad.

I'm not exactly sure of what this post is about, but I've been wanting to write about it since I learned of Randy's passing. He definitely made me look at my life differently as he always said, "You cannot change the cards you are dealt in life, but you can change the way you play the hand." I feel as though I want to live my life differently because of him-I want to rejoice in the joy in my life, I want to push myself to try new things, to live life in the moment, and to really truly love and savor my family. So here's to Randy and all of the lessons he has taught us all.