{qualifying for state: day 1}

Boy, did we have a full weekend.  Times have not been dull in our lives lately.  We are up to our gills in kid's activities and I won't even tell you what we figured our monthly dollar amount is that we spend on said activities.  We are looking very forward to late March when several of these activities come to an end!  We have had wrestling, skiing, swim lessons and gymnastics going on at the same time, six days per week of kid's activities which means Tony and I have no social life and no time for date nights!  That's not okay with me, but it is a short while that we have so many things going on at once and then hopefully some of it will start to feel manageable.  Ok, who am I kidding?  Once a couple of these activities end then volleyball and T-ball start and we are right back to where we were before.  Kid's activities didn't seem so crazy until all three of our kids were old enough to participate.  So, like it has been for the past 6 1/2 years we are outnumbered.  There are many days when we need one more parent in our household, one for each kid.  If I had it my way that other parent would also clean and cook.  Especially clean, being so busy with kids stuff we are home long enough to make a mess, but not home long enough to clean it.  I think we will be spending the kid's spring break cleaning and mucking the house which will have them begging for school to start back  up!  Good times for all!

Anyhoo, back to our weekend.  We had a sports filled weekend starting with wrestling.  We had to be in Eureka (an hour NW of us) at 7:30 a.m. Saturday morning so Kenna could weigh in for her state qualifier tournament.  We were a bundle of tired, anxious, excited and unfortunately sick energy.  The night before Kenna ended up feeling sick and getting a fever after her brother started to go downhill.  So we were  hoping the worst of it would hold off and she would have the enegy to give 100% for her tournament.  Coach Dad was excited.  He felt she had a good chance of making it to state.  Kenna is quite a wrestler.

Tony sent me a text during a tournament that I couldn't go to.  "I love the moans and groans from parents when they find out their kid has to wrestle Kenna." :)  It is awesome!  She has quite the repuation for being tenacious and relentless.  It is very much her personality.  She doesn't stop.  She has been this way since she was an infant.  She keeps going and going and going.  While this has the tendency to drive us crazy we have also said this will serve her well someday.  Well, that someday, right now is the wrestling mat. 

Round One. Beginner Bracket, 60#.  She got a pin in 14 seconds!

The week prior to this tournament she won a quick pin trophy, 7 seconds!  That poor boy didn't know what hit him! :)

Round Two.  She got a pin about halfway through the second period.

I had Tony pick the picture for this match.  He said, "Look how deep the half is!", with a proud shake of his head.  I pretend to know what all this means.  I run the camera and scream encouraging mom things at her.  This is where my knowledge of wrestling begins and ends, through the lens of a camera and my lungs.  There is also the throwing of my arms in the air like a victorious Rocky a the end of a training run when she wins.

Round Three.  Loss in overtime.

There were tears and, to me, this is where things started to go downhill a little bit. She wrestled this boy twice last year and beat him twice, both matches going into double OT.  I am positive he remembered her, his coach remembered her and his parents remembered her.  Pardon my language, but his coach was a dick.  She got hurt toward the end of the match so Tony stopped the match.  She got hit in the mouth and was bleeding.  The other coach said it was bull#$&* and his boy should get a point.  The first thing I thought was, "He knows his boy isn't guaranteed a win.  He knows he has a chance of losing to Kenna again."  At the end of the match Tony went up to him and said he was just looking out for the safety of his athlete. The Columbia Falls coach said, "I didn't see her get hurt, she was crying because she got taken down!"  Tony said, "No, she got hit in the mouth and was bleeding." Columbia Falls coach, "Oh" and shook Tony's hand.  This coach didn't represent his team in a positive light on Saturday.  But on a positive note, the boy she wrestled was a little sweetheart and did represent his team in a positive light!  After the match when they shook hands he went right up to her and said, "You did a really good job!" and when they left the mat he made a point to go up to her and say it again to her.  Then when we we went out to eat after the tournament the little boy was at the same restaurant with his family and waved to her.  When we got inside I heard him say, "That's Kenna!" 

It took a bit to get her ready for her next match.  She was sad, she didn't feel good, she took a good smack in the mouth and she was full of tears.  You could see it in her she wasn't ready to go again.  Coach Dad had a good sit down with her and that helped a little bit.  She was sitting in the stands with me and Abigail waiting for her next match and I asked her if she was ready.  She said, "no".  I gave her the usual, you can do this and you are ready, wah, wah, wah , wah, wah, but she couldn't get the tears to turn off.  So I changed  up my mom speech, "You know what Kenna?  That kids coach was a jerk to your dad.  You know why?  Because he knew you that his boy couldn't beat you easily.  He wasn't sure his boy could beat you and he was being a jerk about it.  He knows you are that good.  You know what else? Before that match when you were going onto the mat I heard a dad stop another dad and say, 'have you seen this girl wrestle? You have to watch her.  She is tenacious!'"  I told her, "That's what all these people that don't even know you are saying about you.  These people watch you wrestle every weekend and they know how strong and good you are.  You are that good!"  It worked, her tears slowed down and she sat a little straighter.  There was still sadness in her eyes, but she was a little closer to being ready for her next match.

Round Four.  Three full periods and a loss. :(

My poor girl.  She battled it out to the end.  She got beat up in her last two matches.  But like Tony said, she could have rolled over and gotten pinned, but she didn't.  There were many more tears.  She didn't feel good and took a pounding.  It was a bit more than her tender little heart could handle for  a Saturday morning.  It destroyed her.  She was sitting with Tony on the edge of the mat after her match sobbing when a man came down out of the stands, a man we had never seen before, and he crouched down in front of her and said, "You did a great job.  I have been watching you wrestle and you are the toughest girl I know."  Then he asked Tony if she was his daughter, he said yes and the man responded with, "You are doing a good job!"  This man later saw us at the restaurant and made a point to catch Tony's eye and give him a wave. That is the kind of wrestler my daughter is.  She may not have qualified for state, but she left an impression on people and sometimes that is better than the prize.

I feel bad because I don't think I had a very good mom reaction.  I was frustrated and I didn't want her to "quit".  I wanted her to muster everything she had and beat these boys.  But, I know she did, she wrestled hard and gave it her all.  I didn't want her to cry on the mat.  I didn't want anybody, like the Columbia Falls coach, to think that girls shouldn't wrestled because they will cry when they are down.  But, she is a girl and she has the biggest, most tender, beautiful heart and it is okay to cry when you are sad or you are broken and she was.  What isn't okay is if you stay sad and broken and she didn't.  She rallied and found peace in that tender, beautiful heart.  She knows she is strong and she knows she can wrestle with the best of the boys.  "Play like a girl beat the boys."  She didn't have to prove that to anybody, but she did by doing what she does and doing it well.

So her wrestling season has mostly come to an end.  She will still be able to wrestle at state but just for fun and experience.  Our club is hosting the state tournament and their head coach wants all his beginners to wrestle so there will be a separate bracket so these kids can participate.  Then maybe freestyle season and freestyle state.  We will see.  She wanted to try volleyball and that starts next week.  It's a hard thing. We want her to try different things so we are glad she is going to try volleyball, but Tony and I both hate to see her not be able to give the practice time to wrestling while the season is going on.  I want her to find HER sport though because she is a strong, powerful, natural athlete.  Maybe it is volleyball, maybe next year she will find it is wrestling.  It's a tough call, wrestling will continue to be challenging as she gets older and is up against almost only boys.  There is just a brute strength there that boys have and I think it gets to a point where it is hard for a girl to compete, not that they can't, but it would be tough.  We will wait and see and support her in whatever she chooses.  Gymnastics is still an option, too.  We are just fortunate that she has the opportunity to try so many different things to find what makes her happy.  Whatever it is I hope she does it with the same tenacity that she wrestles with!

{the day my life stood still}

Nineteen years ago my life changed forever. The woman I would become changed. The mother I would become changed. My sister posted a status on Facebook today that said it perfectly, "‎19 years ago the world lost an amazing woman, and the heavens gained an angel." 19 years ago, three days after her 38th birthday I lost my mom...tragically. 19 years ago Tony came home from work at 5:00, an hour early for his dinner break, with my aunt, her eyes red and puffy from crying. He walked into our tiny college studio apartment, walked past me and turned off the stove where I was boiling bell peppers to make stuffed peppers (I remembered it as steaming broccoli for dinner, but Tony said it was stuffed peppers and that is one reason he has never cared for stuffed peppers). He came back to me and told me my mom had taken her own life. 19 years ago my life came to a numb, screeching halt. I remember dropping to the floor screaming, but feeling numb at the same time. I remember so many things about that day and the week following so vividly. I could tell you what I was doing earlier in the day and the hours leading up to Tony coming home that day. I can still recall the pain I felt as I sobbed myself to sleep that night next to my husband, my then fiance. My rock then, my rock now.

Not a day goes by that I don't miss my mom. So many times I think that I am still very young, yet older than my mom will ever be. I have thought many times that next year on November 21st I will have lived more of my life without my mom than I did with her. I have thought many times this year that I was diagnosed with cancer at the same age that my mom died. Many times I have felt sadness for having more time with my mom than my siblings did. There are thousands, millions of moments that I think about my mom and have needed my mom. I remember so many times during that first year of not having my mom walking to the phone and picking it up to call her and then stopping and remembering she was no longer there to call. Getting married eleven months after her death and not having my mom with me on my wedding day. I was a miserable person that year leading up to my wedding. I couldn't imagine getting married without my mom. I remember thinking after my wedding I was so glad to be married so I wouldn't have to think about not getting married without my mom. I missed my mom everytime I found out I was pregnant, the day I lost a pregnancy and the day my three beautiful children were born. My first daughter named after my mom. Many moments I was so happy and proud of accomplishments that I would love to share with my mom. Hard times that I will never be able to go to my mom for advise or just somebody to talk to that might understand. I miss my mom everyday. She had no idea the void she would leave in so many people's lives. She told me once that when she died nobody would be at her funeral. We had to move her funeral to a church because the funeral home wasn't near big enough for the people that were expected. There was standing room only in the church. If she could have only seen how many people loved her. See how many lives she had impacted.

One of these people comes to mind many times when I think about this day. I went to school with a girl. I don't think she ended up graduating, but I had gone to school with her since elementary school. Her family didn't have a lot of money, her hair wasn't always fixed and her clothes weren't always clean. None of this took away from her being a nice girl. My mom would see her occasionally and always go out of her way to be kind to her and accept her when maybe so many people didn't. This girl would stop in where my mom worked just to say hello to her and my mom would always make time to say hello and chat. When we arrived at the funeral home for the first time to begin making arrangements there was already a message for me from this girl saying she had heard the news and she was so sorry. As we were were leaving the funeral home that day she was walking down the block toward me and was one of the first people to mourn my mother's death with me. This was the impact my mom made in people's lives. They mourned her absence. Tony commented on my, "I miss you, mom..." status today. A little story about my mom that he has shared with me many times. He posted, "The thing I will always remember is the way she looked at me when I came out to visit for the first time. She didn't know me from Adam and she had this look in her eyes of total acceptance and love. She was a beautiful woman." Always full of love for those that needed and deserved it.

Friends and family still tell me how much they loved and miss my mom. Had she only known there would be standing room only at her funeral, maybe, just maybe she would still be here with us. Here to see here six grandbabies. Here to see her children graduate from college and get married. Here to shine her smile on everybody around her. Here to see the adults her children have become. For 19 years I have hoped that she wasn't thinking of me and my siblings in those moments before she took her life. If she had been I like to think she wouldn't have made the choice she did. That she would have made the choice to take back her life and make it hers. Not let those in her her life that hurt her take her power and make her feel less than what she was. I take the best that I can from my mom. I remember the good times and let the bad times slip away. I only want to remember the good times, the good memories are what I share with my kids. Someday when they are older I will share the harder memories. But, today I remember the good. I remember my mom with her impecable makeup that she spent so long putting on in the morning, separating each eyelash with a straight pin and painting on liquid eyeliner with beautiful precision. I remember her never leaving the house without earrings or her hair done perfectly. Everytime I sew I think about the amazing seamstress my mom was and hope she would be proud of the sewing skills I have taught myself. Everytime I wear heeled boots and tight fitting jeans and I run out the door late to meet friends I remember my mom running out the house in similar attire running late as usual. I remember her big beautiful laugh coming from her tiny, petite body. I remember her sending me care packages at college when I was homesick. I remember her loving me and calling me "mija", "my daughter" in Spanish. I remember the Christmas stockings she made and stuffed for me and my siblings and then my hubby when he came home with me for our first Christmas together. This is what I remember today. I miss you everyday mom and hope you found the peace you so desperately needed. I love you, mom, everyday for the rest of my life.