I miss scrapbooking. I used to do it all the time, but since I spent the last year or so doing tons of crafty stuff for the wedding, I didn’t have much time to scrap. That’s where Cathy Zieleske comes to my rescue!

Cathy’s blog is my favorite. She’s hysterical, her family is lovely and normal, and the woman can scrap like nobody’s business. She’s teaching a class next month for Big Picture Scrapbooking called “Me: The Abridged Version,” and I’m in the class!

That’s right, I’m going to do a book of 28 layouts just about me and my story. It’s never been done (by me, anyway). The coolest part? I won a spot in her online class completely at random. I commented (along with more than 1,000 others), and her random number picking thingy chose me and one other person for a free spot in her class. Word.

Not only do I get to be pushed back into scrapping in a fun and creative way, I’m going to do a parallel book about Mark for Nicholas. I’ve wanted to do a book about Mark for Nicholas since Mark died, but for some reason haven’t really been able to do it. I’m going to use Cathy’s class as the template for it, and I hope I’m able to capture a small part of who Mark was so that Nicholas can know the part of himself that comes from his Daddy Mark. I think it will be good for Mark’s family too, to help me capture some of the stories about him before the stories are all gone.

Who knows, maybe I’ll get to know myself a little better in the process too.

During the few months that Mark was sick and for quite a while after he died, I was amazed at the goodness in people. At the people who sent me flowers, at the people who called, at the people who sent me nail polish when I couldn’t find my favorite color, at the people who cared. I was grateful in a way I had never been grateful before. I wasn’t taking anything for granted. Now, almost four years after Mark’s death, I’m working on getting that level of gratitude back in my life.

Obvious Gratitude

It’s easy to be grateful about the obvious things like a casserole someone has brought you or someone watching your baby for an hour so you can nap or take a bath by yourself. I’m pretty good about expressing that gratitude, and even though it’s a little fuzzy, I think I even wrote thank-you notes to people for different kindnesses after Mark died. Even if those notes were in the form of e-mail.

Now the things that I should be obviously grateful for are things like a colleague who makes a couple of calls for me when they see I’m swamped, or my husband making sure that I have an hour to myself to write a post. I’m usually pretty good at both expressing my gratitude for those things and reciprocating when the chance comes.

Obscure Gratitude

I think most of the not-so-obvious moments come when you aren’t aware of them. Or you are vaguely aware of them, and they hit you in hindsight. For example, I am immensely grateful to my former boss, Christie, for the work she had to do to pick up my slack while I was either physically or mentally gone from the office. And the part I am most grateful to Christie for is that she was never anything but worried for us as friends, and I never heard a word from her about where something was or when I might be coming back or why I was sitting at my desk crying.

I’m working to be more aware of the things people do for me so that I can thank them, or at least do the same for someone else some day. I’m also working on awareness of things around me that are going well so that I can be grateful for them (the weather, my car works well, air conditioning, air conditioning, and also air conditioning).

Struggling for Gratitude

The one place I always have to struggle for gratitude is my own health and my body. If I were truly grateful for it, I would take better care of it, it’s as simple as that. I can use all the excuses I can think of (I’m going to start exercising tomorrow, I’m not that overweight, I need this 837th can of diet soda to help me stay awake) but it all boils down to my lack of gratitude for my body. Right after Mark died, I hit panic mode, and tried to get healthy so that nothing would “happen” to me and Nicholas wouldn’t be a total orphan. That lasted a few months until the complacency kicked in again.

I thought I was a grateful person, but now I know how far I’ve got to go. I’ve got a few people I really love who are fighting cancer right now. Awesome, incredible, smart, tough, I-want-to-be-them-when-I-grow-up women. They are moms and wives and daughters and they are fighting harder than anyone I’ve ever known to live good lives and enjoy every minute of their lives while fighting the disease. I’m proud to know them and I’m trying to take their attitudes and apply it to my life.

I’m trying to be grateful that I can get up in the morning without being sick, that I can feel an ache in my hip and know it’s because I need to get fit and not because there may be a tumor in my bone, that I can pull my hair back in a clip. I’m also trying to be grateful for movies, music, books, blogs, art, friends, ripe nectarines, naps and time. And I’m trying to do it in the matter-of-fact way that those people I really respect do it. There is no show of “look how grateful and evolved I am!” They are just aware of all of their blessings (and yes, the crap they are going through too), and are happy to have them.

Forever Grateful

I hope I can say with some truthfulness that I don’t take the most important things for granted. I am aware of how spectacular my child, my husband, my family, my colleagues, my country are. I am also aware of and grateful for the time I had with Mark. I hope that I can use my own example and always be grateful for those people and things while trying my hardest to become more aware and grateful of all of the other spectacular things I am and I have.

This is a cross-post from Type-A Mom and Paper, Scissors, Keyboard

I thought we had the labels pretty well defined, Daddy Mark is the daddy in Heaven and Daddy is the daddy here. My son, Nicholas had just turned 2 when William (a.k.a Daddy) and I started dating and we’ve been married a couple of months now. Nicholas will turn 4 tomorrow, and suddenly the ease of knowing the difference between the two daddys is sliding a bit.

We’ve had confusion about Daddy Mark in the past year. We have photos up in N’s room of Daddy Mark holding N,

Daddy Mark & Nicholas

and there are two particular photos that N is fascinated with. They are both of Mark holding N just after delivery (see right), and N loves for me to tell him about his birth. For a while, N would get confused between his birth story and the story of Mark’s time in the hospital when he died. N thought that the picture of Mark and him was when “Daddy Mark was so sick in the hospital that the doctors couldn’t make his body better.” I spent quite a bit of time explaining the difference in why we were in the hospital for N’s birth and why Mark was in the hospital when he was sick. Nicholas seems to get it for the most part, but is still confused about it sometimes.

William and I began referring to him as “Daddy” after we got engaged. Nicholas didn’t seem to have any trouble with the transition (I’m sure it helped that he wasn’t quite 3 yet), and William has been Daddy ever since. In the past three or four months though, Nicholas has referred to William as “Pretend” Daddy a few times. When asked what he meant, Nicholas said, “Daddy is Pretend Daddy and God is the Real Daddy.” And who can argue with that. We had a brief discussion about how God created us all and so he is parent to all of us but that doesn’t make Daddy pretend Daddy or Mommy pretend Mommy. I should have known that wouldn’t be the end of it.

Now Nicholas is saying that when Daddy Mark gets better, Daddy won’t be his real daddy any more and that will make Nicholas sad. I think part of this stems from the conversations we’ve had where I told him I believe that Daddy Mark is healthy and happy in Heaven and his body isn’t sick any longer. But who knows, Nicholas could be making this up from whole cloth.

Daddy & N

I probably wouldn’t think too much about it, and just keep reinforcing that William is Daddy and that Daddy Mark is in Heaven, but I know it’s painful for William. I try to help him see that it’s not a preference or judgment on him as a father, that N is just confused; but, I can see how it would hurt. William is N’s Daddy, and nobody who sees them together would doubt it.

Any thoughts on where you think the origin of the confusion might be? Do you think there is a better phrase for Mark? Is it confusing for N to have two daddys? I would love to hear what you think!

*Photo of Daddy and N courtesy of Rebel With A Camera.