1999

Looking out at our decapitated snowman, freezing weather, wind blowing, snowing, winter scene, I wanted to remember warmer days!

A corner of the vegetable garden. The wood chuck ate most of that garden!

May was born at the end of a very hot summer. That was the first year we lived in our house and my first time gardening. Joseph spent hours and hours digging garden beds for me. (Many of those beds have since been filled in with grass.) I planted most of the flower beds with seeds and was given the gift of perennials from a couple of people who heard that I wanted some. As I planted the yard in flowers that year I told myself that I was planting it for the baby that was coming, as a gift. The yard was beautiful that year as a result.

I remember looking out our bedroom window one night at the sunflowers that were growing there. On the stem of one of the sunflowers was a tiny frog. Michigan is full of frogs. It's fun to hear them chirping, but we usually just see the toads in the grass, bumpy and brown. Or we see the bull frogs at the nature center. I keep meaning to plant sunflowers in that same spot in the hopes of seeing another little frog. If you look at the pictures, you can also see a little tree. It's a flowering plum. It's pretty big by now. I wouldn't be able to take that same picture today. Mostly you'd just see tree.

The sunflowers

We didn't get an ultrasound with the pregnancy and so we didn't know if the baby was a boy or girl. I had a kind of sixth sense about it though and bought many, many baby girl clothes at garage sales that summer. May brought a lot of joy to our lives. The best word I can think of to describe the time after she was born is 'sunshiney.' She was a peaceful baby and a beautiful one. Since she was too little to enjoy the gift I gave her that summer, I give it to her now.

When each of our babies have been born, we have picked a classical piece for them. May's piece is "Sheep May Safely Graze" by J. S. Bach. It is a happy, lilting, sweet melody that totally captures those early days of her life.

The day my water broke, I had driven down to Charlotte (40-45 minutes) because they had the closest Walmart. I heard that music while I was driving and just knew that it was "the one."

I love you, May!

P.S. Just for my own benefit, Nathan's piece was "Air in D" by Bach, Elijah's was "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" by Bach, Sariah's was a violin piece from Chris Baker's doctoral CD (Joseph, do you remember?), and Brigham's was Pachelbel's "Canon."