Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Ummmm . . . are we really ready for this?

Now that the hassles of the seemingly endless paperwork is behind us and we are within just a couple of weeks of bringing Noah home, the reality of it all has hit me. I was talking to Phil the other day and I think I made him a little nervous because I'm suddenly feeling quite anxious about things that have been relegated to the back of my mind until now: What do we feed this little guy? Is he going to freeze to death? How is he going to sleep? How in the world am I going to comfort him when I don't speak his language? How is he going to react to our friends and family? How can I lessen his fears when he's saying good-bye to everything he has ever known and entering our world? How will Adam do? Will they get along? Will the other kids be nice to him? How am I going to handle being a stay-at-home mom? What in the world are we going to do all day, every day? I could go on and on. None of these are questions that I haven't considered before, but it has been kind of easy to push them out of my mind since I really can't answer any of them. Phil's eyes got a little big as I was talking and it made me laugh a little. I had to reassure him that I'm definitely not having second thoughts; I am so ready to be Noah's mom and I can't wait to get him here. The thing is, even with that excitement, there's plenty of room for apprehension.

The best analogy that I could come up with for Phil, to get my point across while also not making him think that I am freaking out, is a roller coaster. If you have ever been on a roller coaster you know the feeling that you get as you are going up that first big hill; the click, click, click of the cart on the track as you slowly climb just heightens the anticipation and although you climbed on board willingly, and you know it's going to be a great ride, you can't completely squash the feeling in the pit of your stomach that tells the rest of your body that something big and a little scary is just about to happen. You have no idea, really, what you are going to encounter once the coaster reaches the peak of that first big hill, so you basically just close your eyes and hope for the best. I realized that although roller coasters frighten me a little bit, I am always up for jumping on a new one and I've never been on one that wasn't a great ride. As I painted this picture for myself and for Phil, I saw myself climbing that first big hill on a giant coaster and even though I was uneasy, I had a big smile on my face.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Julie,
Your analogy is great and if you have never seen the movie Parenthood you need to watch it because the analogy is in that movie. You guys will be great! Best of luck with everything. Liza