My most Memorable Memorial Day

Good afternoon all!

Happy Memorial Day!  God bless those who risked everything to protect our freedoms.

Looking back on Memorial Days past, I think as a child my parents did not really do much.  Since my dad was a teacher, chances are that those final report cards were due on the Tuesday after Memorial Day, so most of the Memorial Days in my childhood involved the green card table set up in front of his brown recliner.  Papers and his big desk calculator covered the table and we were instructed not to bother him.

I do, however, have one story I can share with you...from my days as a very young mother.  Skippy was not quite three, and I was pregnant with Peaches. 

I probably should mention this up front...I was never good at being pregnant.  I was excellent at getting pregnant at the wrong times  (Like when we didn't have health insurance) but actually being pregnant, well, I was not good at that.

Isn't this lovely?  Isn't pregnancy a beautiful thing?

See, pregnancy is sold to women as some sort of beautiful, peaceful growing process in which mother and unborn child spend their days before birth rocking in a lovely antique rocking chair with gauzy curtains blowing a gentle breeze on them both.  A pregnant women is always pictured quietly reading a book, perhaps to her other children, if she has them, or just to herself.  Perhaps there are pictures of pregnant woman strolling on a beach, always wearing something white and flowing, and always happy and lovely. 

Let's just call that THE BIGGEST LIE EVER TOLD.

I was pregnant exactly twice, and I was pregnant twice in large part because hubby and I didn't want Skippy to be an only child.  And both times I never wore white, I rarely sat in a rocking chair and the only reading I did scared me to death.  ("What to expect when you're expecting...the scariest book every written...) Most of the time while pregnant I was on my knees barfing into whatever toilet or sink was closest.  With Skippy I had wild, raging cravings that Hubby gallantly tried to appease.  The hardest one was for wedding cake.  Hubby brought home a lot of cake, but it just wasn't right.  (Didn't stop me from eating it, though.)  Also with Skippy I could not eat chicken of any kind.  I had to through out the frozen chicken in our freezer because I couldn't bear the thought of it being there.  (Oh, and we lived a block from a fried chicken place.  Awesome.)

They'll never show this picture in any of the brochures they give you when you find out your pregnant.  They should...but they won't.

  
With Peaches I was again, the Mount Vesuvius of pregnancy, only the twist this time was that I could not bear the SMELL of cooking meat.  Any sort of cooking meat.  (Perhaps it's no accident that Peaches is a vegetarian.)  While I did not gain as much weight and I did not swell up as much with Peaches as I did with Skippy,  I still held the family record for most weeks of continuous vomiting.  Awesome.

Anyway, the spring of 1996, I was just barely pregnant, but already in the throes of anti meat smell.  Hubby and Skippy often ate elsewhere since I couldn't stand to cook, and couldn't stand to have meat in the house.  Memorial Day weekend, we of course, had to go to a friend's house for a picnic.  I manage to control my gag reflex during the Sunday picnic, but the floodgates opened once I was home that evening.

The next morning, Memorial Day, dawned as mornings should...and at about noon I was cast into the depths of pregnancy hell as neighbor after neighbor fired up their grills in the time honored tradition of grilling dead animal flesh to honor our fallen soldiers.  I shouted out the window of my house, "MUST YOU GRILL SO LOUDLY?"  No one took notice.  Skippy and Hubby did their best with cool clothes and an endless flow of 7-up soda, but the handwriting was on the wall.  I spent the day face down in the toilet.

Friends, by the evening of that day my body had lost the battle.  The beautiful, yet sickening aroma of hot dogs, burgers, brats, sausages, steaks all of it, had done its worst.  I was down...on the couch...and did not get back up for two days. 

And with that, my friends, I wish you all a happy and safe Memorial Day....God Bless our veterans and our troops!