We are on the road and following our dreams and it seems so surreal. Over the past week I would drive down Hooper and realize this is my last trip down here. I won't be stopping at that Dunkin Donuts anymore where the guy always has my coffee ready for me. There are so many emotions it's hard to pinpoint them all. Even packing up the house was surreal, you look at all these rooms and think "What could have we done differently to make this work?" I really don't think we could have done anything differently. It was a dream crusher. I think sometimes that from the moment we walked through the door the odds were against us. The day after we moved in my Aunt Kathy lost her battle with cancer. A few months after that Lenny's younger cousin passed away suddenly. A month after that Lenny's job implemented a company freeze on all salary increases and did massive lay offs. Yes Lenny made it though multiple rounds of lay offs. Yes I was able to recover with a new job that I was extremely thankful for. With out that job I would not have learned some new and wonderful things not only about myself but about The Rathgebers as well. I know that this all seems like normal flow of life to have highs and lows. But during all this time and even to this very day Lenny and I were struggling with something deeply personal that we tried to keep mostly to ourselves. After our first Christmas in our new house we had decided to move on to the next step...kids.
I had thought really long and hard about even mentioning that part. By now a handful of people know. But it can still be very difficult to talk about. So we started trying to expand our family and month and month...nothing. Months turned into years and now here we are 3 years later and nothing. Yes we saw doctors and had procedures and testing done. The answers to all our questions were just more questions. We fall into that percentage of couples who have unexplained infertility. So lump in those big fat negative tests in with everything else and there were moments when the world seemed like it was ending. And I was always looking for those little miracles, especially when Vinnie passed away. I had never wanted that plus sign more then I did at that moment.
But it took all of those things to happen to push us to where we needed to be. So maybe the house wasn't a dream crusher after all but just a stepping stone to open our eyes and follow our hearts and dreams.
So here we are moving our life across the country and following our hearts. I just want to thank so many people for all their well wishes. We have been surprised and touched by this outpouring of luck and love that has been headed our way. Thank you all so much. It is really late now. I will follow up with another post tomorrow.
