Merry Christmas and Happy New Year....

This blog is part remembrance, part promises to myself for 2010.

Now, in light of the past three weeks, the other day I said, "I just want to put this year behind me." But last night, I realized a few things, responding to a message from my newly discovered family member, Brenda.

There was some bad in 2009: I was pretty sick for almost a month, to only a month later have my sweet Cate hospitalized with viral meningitis.....a week of anxious waiting and watching. Uncle Virgil. There have been issues with my own medical condition; there have been issues in my marriage, which in and of itself have brought about a sort of grief that I can only describe as--yes, the grief that death itself brings. My cousin Vicky described it to me today as 'having a marriage that may be suffering from a terminal illness.' Whoa. Dead on the money.

But looking back over 2009......the expression, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away" has taken on a whole new meaning.

For, in 2009--March, to be exact, I realized with wonder......March, which usually begins a season of remembrance of my mother (a remembrance that is bittersweet, my relationship with my mother considered)--a relationship with the best friend I ever had was restored to me. A relationship that was restored not as if seventeen years had gone by....but more like seventeen minutes. And with Rebecca came her husband Steve, her daughter Katie and her baby Joey. I got the wonder of how two people--best friends for four years in high school, across all the years and miles--have somehow, someway, known almost down to a 'T' what the other's life has been like. Or how she named her daughter Kathryn Elizabeth, and I have a Caroline Elizabeth and a Sara Catherine. Coincidence? I think not.

I got the excitement of coming back into her life during the last trimester of her pregnancy with Joey. I teased her mercilessly about having sympathetic pregnancy--and wasn't that Steve's job, not mine? As the time for Joey drew closer, I waited to hear doctor's reports, ultrasound results, and worried right along with her that this would not be an early and difficult delivery, as she had with Katie. And worry had never brought me such joy.

On July 2nd, at 8:19 in the morning, Joey came by scheduled C-Section--a whopping nine pounds, four ounces and a perfect early birthday present for his Mommy. Rebecca--ever the trooper--was sitting up in a chair within hours of the surgery, and if I didn't have enough happiness at the very moment this happened to last me a lifetime.....the nurse came in to her hospital room; Rebecca in a chair and me sitting on the bed holding the baby. The nurse did a double take and saw Rebecca in the chair. "Hey.....is she your sister?" We shared a look, and Becca said, "Not by birth....."

It doesn't sound like it would be a blessing.....but I went to the hospital to sit with a friend for a day while her husband had an eight hour surgery for what turned out--mercifully--not to be pancreatic cancer. Kelly and I walked all over that hospital campus all day, laughing about old times, our lives now, and I think there may have been a few tears, too. It's a day I'll always cherish.

I went on a vacation for the first time in years.....and while in a few ways it was a bust--weather, hello?--I will always, always be grateful for those seven days, because......

It was on this vacation that I realized--or rather, re-discovered: that in spite of what I call difficulty in my life right now......I am blessed beyond measure with a family who loves me more than I deserve. I have many, many moments from that trip polarized in my mind now......

......sitting on my cousin Caryn's couch watching Full Metal Jacket with her, Eric, and my Aunt Crys and Uncle Lee--and all the funny commentary that went along with it. And last night, when I really got to thinking about the bad times vs. the good times of 2009--it occured to me: Caryn, whom I still see in my mind's eye waiting for the bus with us when we were kids, or drinking pickle juice.....while I may have had a few anxious moments over my baby in 2009--how much greater than mine were hers? My little cousin has sat and watched her baby have chemotherapy. The realization was very humbling, to say the very least.

I have the memory of my Dad, me and Uncle Lee at the gun range on a freezing cold afternoon laying waste to Dad's targets--and about a hundred pounds of ammunition. For a shining moment, I was fifteen again: when I was firing my Dad's AR-15, I decided to go ahead and 'open up on it'--as he would say--and could hear his, "Wooooo-hoooooo! ROCK AND ROLL, LITTLE GIRL!!" over the gun fire, while my Uncle Lee laughed.

Since that vacation, I don't think a day has gone by that we don't all communicate in one way or another. I didn't realize how much I needed them.....I sure am glad Someone saw fit to show me. It has been an amazing source of strength and inspiration; and both a reminder and affirmation of my own opinion as to just how fiercely a family could and should love each other. Home and family is a place I can go where I can still hear, "Now, Cheri Lynn Morgan....." where I am still someone's 'little girl', 'baby girl', and when I say, "I guess I'll be getting on the road....." my Aunt Crys will say, "Not before you've had breakfast, young lady." Some things never change--thank God for that. (Home and family is also where I can go to get the best biscuits and gravy in the world--thanks, Aunt Crys!!--and the world's best chili dogs, which are in downtown LaFollette at a little hole in the wall--plus you can buy them for a dollar--yes, a dollar--thanks Aunt Ann and Vicky for pointing me in their direction.) Where someone--when I deserve it--will take me down a peg or two, then take my face in their hands, kiss my forehead, look me in the eye, and say, "I love you," and I know that they mean it.

I have almost a whole photograph album full of what I have to be grateful for, in 2009. Pictures of me and Rebecca with our families and our beautiful kids. Pictures of my family--one of those--on Facebook, me and my four younger cousins (eeeeuuuw, girls, I realized that I'm the oldest one in that picture by at least three months!! NOT fair, LOL....)--really, all of them like sisters to me--I look at that picture and think of all the little stinkers we were, and see us transformed into the lovely women we have become. And I marvel that between the five of us--there are ten kids to go around!! (And my God, girls, those kids have 23 of our chromosomes--look out, world!!)

So, in the closing days of 2009, I think of the blessings this year has brought.

In 2010, I will take the love that has been restored to me--in the form of my family, which includes Rebecca and her family--and pay it forward. I will throw myself wholeheartedly into the planning of our family reunion--the first in over a decade!!--that my family is having in July. I will work on building a relationship with Dorothy, my father's amazing wife, and who--when I called her to talk to her the other day, said to me--and I think it's the first time I've ever heard someone actually say this: when I told her that she was right and I was wrong, she said, "No, Cheri, it's not about who is wrong and who is right. It's about understanding." Those words meant alot. It also made me realize: I have been held to the 'who is right, and who is wrong' standard for so long now that I've come to being too quick to point it out, too.

I will take council and advice from those who love me--and I know who that is. I also know that I won't get a pat on the head and a 'there, there' when I am obviously wrong. I will be corrected when I go to these people.....and it may be ugly, LOL, it may not be--but I will get the truth.

I will not work so hard on hiding my own weaknesses.....I will hold them up to those I trust; it's only through getting them out in the open that I can turn those weaknesses into strengths, both by my own effort in working on them, and relying on the strength I get from others to turn them around.

The words from the following song describe much of the way I feel about how I feel about the year that is so quickly passing us by now, and what I will do in the year to come:

Half of my mistakes I made stone cold sober,
Half of my mistakes I made at closing time,
Half the time I never saw it coming till it was over,
Half of mistakes I made with love on the line.

Half of my mistakes I swear I should have known better
Half of my mistakes....were just amongst friends
You get a little distance on it, the truth is clearer
Half of my mistakes--I'd probably make them again.

And if I had it all to do over,
I'm sure I'd win and lose just as much,
But spend less time on right and wrong,
And alot more time on love.

Half of my mistakes I made cause I was moving too quickly
Half of them I made 'cause my heart was moving too slow
Nobody can tell you a damn thing if you ain't listening...
Half of my mistakes I made cause I couldn't let go (let it go)

And if I had it all to do over,
I'm sure I'd win and lose just as much
But spend less time on right and wrong,
And alot more time on love....

Half of my mistakes I'd give anything to change how it ended...
Half of my mistakes--God, I wouldn't change a thing.
You can lean too hard on regret, but I don't recommend it...
Cause half the good things in my life came from half my mistakes
Yeah, alot of good things in my life came from half of my mistakes....

Merry Christmas, all. And bring on 2010.