Gymbo Mail

Today was a mostly "normal" day. I woke up, took Isla to school, and returned home to our house. By myself, alone. I actually spent a lot of time writing, which, has been helping me a lot. I remember when I had a conversation with Pat, our genetic counselor (she called to check up on me the Monday after the procedure), she’d asked me if I had written anything down. You know, in a journal. I told her no, but, I had planned on writing a journal or maybe even a blog at some point. I wanted to write things down so that I don’t forget what we went through, so that I remember the pain and the hurt and the heartache that we suffered when we lost our dear daughter, and so that I would have something for Isla and any other children we have to read one day. 

[all of the blogs you've read thus far are written in present tense, but, have been written after the events of that specific day]

In the afternoon, I went to the grocery store to buy a few things…mainly vegetables for Isla, milk, cereal and candy. Yes, candy. I somehow knew that I would need candy on the day of the procedure so I planned ahead and bought myself a few bags of candy from Winco (our local grocer...along with Safeway and Fred Meyer). You know, just the essentials: gummi bears, sour patch kids, and sour worms. Anyway, since then, I’ve been on a candy rampage, and, I cannot stop eating it. Every time I’ve been to the store, I can’t help but buy myself another bag of gummi bears and sour patch kids. I did stop eating the sour worms, so, that’s progress…right?

Okay – on to the point of this post: Gymbo Mail! After getting Isla from school, putting our food away, and heading to the park for a nice afternoon in the sun, we came home to get ready for dinner. While I changed out some laundry, Alberto and Isla took a walk to the mailbox and they brought me back a package. I knew it was from Gymboree because there was a Gymbo sticker on the big manila envelope. I opened it, and it was the sweetest thing ever: a huge card with a handmade pot of gold on it. There were square pieces of treasures coming out of the pot of gold and each of them was a hand written note from one of my former Friday morning Art III class students. On the inside of the card it read “We love teacher Jennifer!” So incredibly sweet. I miss all my ART III and Sports kiddos. 

Little jewels like this help me to remember that although a terrible, tragic and unthinkable thing has happened to me and to my family…there is still good in the world and, people are thinking of us, loving us, and supporting us through this ordeal.

So, thank you to my Gymboree family for thinking of us, praying for us, supporting us and generally being wonderful people.