16 Years. Time marches on.

At approximately 2:42 a.m. on November 18, 1999, the 59-foot high stack, consisting of about 5000 logs, collapsed during construction. Of the 58 students and former students working on the stack, 12 were killed and 27 were injured. This ended the tradition known as Bonfire on the Texas A&M Campus, and forever changed the face of the university and those who participated in it.

Wow. Another year. This post has slowly come around not only as a moemnt to reflect on the lives of my classmates lost, but also to take stock about where my life is since this event. As I sit here, I’m reflecting on the massive change my life has taken since this post last year. I know the blog has gone by the wayside – for many reasons. I need to pick it back up…once “life returns to normal”.

My son will mark completing his second month at life next week, and my husband and I just marked our 2nd year of knowing each other. Wow, that all sounds so fast, and yet, it feels like I’ve been snuggled into this spot for so much longer.

I was fearful when I was pregnant that I couldn’t love my son this much. I mean, he was a “thing inside my belly” that I couldn’t see, or talk to. Then I was concerned about “how we would fit him into our life”. Now, I can’t imagine how life was before him. How cliche.

Not every day is a Hallmark card full of sweetness and light. There are crying fits, late nights, frustrations. But then again, I know that every day at 7:30 I have a little man, who’s eyes and mouth like a baby bird are contentedly looking at me ready for his bottle and smells of nothing but baby and snuggles me and makes me feel like the whole darn world.

I look forward to each day, despite being tired, without makeup, too many pounds overweight and craving to fit into regular clothes, mentally searching for what I can show him, and do with him and while the days are going too fast, they aren’t going fast enough for me to show him all the things I need to show him.

Today I wanted to be on the way to College Station, showing him the memorial, showing him where Mommy came from, perhaps we can do this together next week. 

Lately, today in particular, I’m reminded of how short life is. I look at my son and want to give him the entire world. More so, I want to give him what HE wants. I know I have visions for him, I know I can could steer him to my choices of what I’d like him to be. But I want him to have his life.

I have struggled this year, trying to be the me I need to be. Not what others want. I want my son to have a mother who is as strong in her convictions as I want him to be. He has two feet, I need to nuture him to stand on his own – and I cannot do that until I learn how to do it myself.

I implore my readers, and friends, and anyone who will listen, to live big. and I have not done that myself. I have not leapt and been brave – I have generally remained quiet when conflict arises, or even when my own substance just plainly differs from another. I’m not here to make waves and cause fights, but I’m tired remaining quiet when there is room for me to speak up and make a difference in the world.

Sometimes the things we do not say make us more exhausted than the things we do. The build up in our heads of how people may react is overbearing. Getting over the fear and anxiety of “being judged” is my goal this year. I will be me, because I have a little one who I want to be anything he wants to be, it’s time that I embraced the same – for to be alive is a gift, and it could be taken away at any moment.

Here.