At about this time last year I started writing a blog. It was fun, and I was doing pretty well with it until the last few months. Then my life suddenly became very, very busy (more on that in a minute), and my blog was temporarily abandoned. Now my sister, Ellen, has started her own blog. Every time I read one of her installments I can’t help thinking that I should be posting as well. This takes some of the fun out of reading her blog, but what are sisters for if not to provide a little friendly competition? OK, it worked; I’m finally getting back to writing “Moira’s Home”. As I mentioned earlier, my excuse for taking the last few months off from blogging is extreme busy-ness. Anyone with any experience with real life knows that things tend to happen all at once. Both the phone and the doorbell can be silent all day, and suddenly at seventeen minutes after two in the afternoon they both ring, while you are washing the dog. I don’t understand why this is, but the “everything happens at once” phenomenon pretty much describes my spring/summer 2014.
The fun started last fall when my daughter, Melissa, announced that she was pregnant. Her baby was due on May 26th, 2014. Needless to say I was thrilled with the good news and looked forward to becoming a grandma. A few months later my son, George, announced that he was engaged to be married to Angela Coletti, a wonderful woman whom the family had all gotten to know and love. This was also very good news, but there was just one problem. The only date available in 2014 for the wedding at their church, Old St. Pat’s in Chicago, was June 7th.
Obviously my life was going to be more than a little complicated in the spring of 2014. My daughter would be having a baby in Denver; less than two weeks later my son would be getting married in Chicago; and I lived with my husband at his house in Pittsburgh. To complicate things further, his house was for sale because we were planning to move to Charlottesville, VA. Ideally, he could sell his house in Pittsburgh within a couple of months. We could then buy a house in Charlottesville and get settled in our new home before I flew out to Denver to help my daughter. The birth would be right on time (like this ever happens) and I could fly to Chicago for the wedding before returning to Charlottesville. It didn’t turn out that way.
The real estate market in Pittsburgh was rather slow, and by early spring of 2014 his house still had not sold. OK, slight change of plans- I would be traveling to Denver and Chicago from Pittsburgh. That could work just as well. Then in late April while we were visiting my parents in Charlottesville we saw a house we really liked, so we made an offer on it, which was accepted. The sellers insisted on a closing date of June 9th, two days after the wedding in Chicago. We would have to rush to get all the paperwork done, but if we got everything in order and signed in advance the closing could take place without our being there. After the new baby was born and the wedding was over, we planned to spend the summer moving things to our new house in Charlottesville at a leisurely pace. With any luck the house in Pittsburgh would sell during the summer season, and we would ask for sixty, or even ninety days before closing.
Of course there was still the problem of timing with the birth and the wedding. My son assumed that a due date of May 26th would give me plenty of time. I could be in Denver for the birth, and then help his sister get settled in her home with the new baby before flying to Chicago for the rehearsal dinner on June 6th. I have considerably more experience with these matters than George does, so I suspected it would not be that simple. The women in our family tend to have first babies about 12 to 14 days late; this meant the baby could easily be born on the day of the wedding. I booked my flights on Southwest and hoped for the best. My schedule was: May 20th- fly from PIT to DEN, June 6th- DEN to MDW, June 8th- MDW to DEN, June 17th- DEN back to PIT. With any (more) luck, the baby would be born before I had to leave Denver for the wedding in Chicago. I told my son that if I was in the labor room with his sister on Friday June 6th and the birth was imminent, I was absolutely not going to walk out of the room just as the head was crowning. He didn’t think that scenario was very likely; I knew it was a real possibility.
On May 20th I flew from Pittsburgh to Denver as planned. My daughter was doing fine, and it was fun to be with her and her husband, Mitch, as they got ready for the big event. The due date came and went; we waited patiently. As the days passed it became apparent that I might not be able to attend the birth as I had hoped, but as long as mother and baby were both fine all would be well. Then on June 4th there were signs of labor, and early in the morning of Thursday, June 5th Melissa checked into the birthing center of Lutheran Medical. My flight was not until late morning on Friday, so it seemed that everything was going to work out after all. Melissa’s friend, Lisa, had volunteered to drive me to the airport, picking me up at the hospital if necessary.
This was a first baby; the baby was large; and the labor was long. By 6:30 AM on Friday morning dilation was almost complete and Melissa was looking forward to the pushing phase at last. After 24+ exhausting hours of hard work the mood in the labor/delivery room was now relaxed and happy as everyone prepared for the impending birth. I turned to the mid-wife and said, “I know this sounds ridiculous, but I have to catch a plane to Chicago this morning.” She did indeed think that sounded pretty ridiculous, and asked me why I earth I would be leaving for Chicago at such a time. I explained that my son was getting married there the next day, and I was hosting the rehearsal dinner that evening.
“So you live in Chicago?”
“No, I live in Pittsburgh.”
“You can’t make this stuff up”, she remarked as she probably thought to herself, “Some families really don’t know how to plan.”
I am happy to report that Keeva Grace Rumsey was born at 7:50 AM on June 6th. Weighing in at 8 lb.14 oz. she was the picture of good health. The new parents were overjoyed, and I was thrilled to be there. Throughout the labor and delivery my job was to take pictures with my iPhone and keep in constant contact via text messages with: Mitch’s mom (a pediatric nurse in Idaho Falls), my husband (who would be flying from Pittsburgh and meeting me at Chicago Midway), my daughter, Mavia (who would be flying to Chicago from Portland, OR and co-hosting the rehearsal dinner with me), my son, George (who would have been in big trouble if I had missed the birth of my granddaughter), and of course my sister, Ellen. Twenty minutes after the birth Lisa arrived at the hospital to drive me to the airport. My son was right- he knew I would have plenty of time!
When I arrived at Midway my husband met me in the terminal and we found a place to eat lunch. As soon as we sat down I thought I heard him say, “I sold my house.” I’d had almost no sleep in the past 48 hours so it took a minute to process this information. But there was more. “We have to be out by July 2nd.” This meant we would have two weeks from the time I returned from Denver until we had to move. (Good grief!) “No problem- we can do that”, I told my husband, as I thought, “How can we possibly do that?”
The rehearsal dinner was a lot of fun, with a particularly entertaining speech by my daughter, Mavia. And the wedding at Old St. Pat’s was absolutely beautiful. On Sunday I returned to Denver as planned, and then flew home to Pittsburgh nine days later to get started packing for the move to Charlottesville. After the movers left on July 2nd we drove to Virginia, both cars loaded with breakables, valuables, personal items, and the dogs. We have spent the last few weeks unpacking boxes and setting up our new home in Virginia.
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