November 5, 2005: Derik and Lindsay get married.
November 23, 2005: Lindsay and Derik travel back to Fredericksburg for Thanksgiving and Lee's baby shower.
December 11, 2005: Lindsay's nephew is born a full two months early, so it's back to Virginia (Roanoke, this time) to meet the baby.
December 23, 2005: Lindsay and Derik fly to Elkhart, Indiana for Christmas with Derik's family.
December 31, 2005: Derik and Lindsay receive the news that Lindsay's stepmother, Steph, is in the hospital with a sudden - and life-threatening - illness. Party plans are cancelled; Derik and Lindsay drive to Virginia to visit Steph in the hospital and spend New Year's Eve in a hotel room with Lindsay's father.
January 2, 2006: Lindsay and Derik fly to San Jose, Costa Rica for their ten-day honeymoon. It's the trip of a lifetime.
February 18, 2006: The final selection of wedding photos necessitates one last drive to Fredericksburg for Lindsay; meanwhile, Derik attends the reunion of the 352nd WWII Fighter Group in Wichita, KS with his father and brother, an event they will always remember.
February 26, 2006: Lindsay and Derik put an offer on a house in Decatur.
March 1, 2006: Lindsay and Derik fly to L.A. for four days so that Lindsay can continue the six-year-old tradition of celebrating her birthday with Kelley Yearout. A fun time is had by all (during the times when Lindsay and Derik are not on the phone with their real estate agent/mortgage broker).
March 15-16, 2006: Lindsay and Derik close on their house.
March 17, 2006: Derik's father passes away at around 10:00 p.m., finally losing his battle with cancer. After the initial grief and shock, Lindsay and Derik throw a suitcase in the Jeep and drive with Keith to Elkhart, Indiana for the week.

And that catches us up to the present. What I didn't mention, because there are no specific dates attached, is that Derik's band was recording and mixing their first album, and Lindsay was recording the new Joni Minstrel album while all of the above was going on. If you've been wondering why it's been so long since I've posted an entry, well, see above.

I'd really hate to come across as complaining because all of these things were more than worthwhile. It's just a lot, all at the same time. It's been all Big Moments, all the time, with very little time to sit back, breathe in and out, and say, "OK, what next?"

Of course, "next" always comes, whether you plan for it or not, and I can tell you exactly what will be taking up the next few months of our lives: getting the new house ready for us to move in by May 1st, getting the old house clean enough to guarantee that we'll get our deposit back (a major part of my budgeting strategy), the move itself, and, of course, the Georgia Renaissance Festival, which begins April 15th. Oh, yes, it's that time again already! The time of sunlight, music, good friends, and absolutely no days off for eight weeks. I have to admit, I have taken to wishing I were 25 again. I don't know what happened, but all that energy I used to have is gone, as is my slim, goal weight, wedding figure. (Perhaps those two things are related, in fact. Hmmmm. It is a commonly known conundrum that, while it is most difficult to fit in exercise when one is busy, exercise is the best weapon against panic and stress. However, I personally find that exercise, while making my body feel more healthy, also makes me even more tired and hungry, so I don't know that the gym is the answer. OK, sorry, tangent over.)

As for the Big Moments themselves, they really were life-changing. I was nervous about having a baby nephew because babies have never been my thing, but as soon as I held Oliver Hilton Carter in my arms, I knew I was going to love him madly. He was a lil' preemie back then, still in the NICU with tubes attached to his face, but he's fine now and growing amazingly quickly! I get new pictures at least once a week, and he always looks slightly different than he did in the pictures from the week before. He's starting to smile and vocalize and try to grab things with his tiny little hands. Here's a picture of Ollie with his mommy in the NICU:

And here's a more recent photo (it's last week's photo, but it's still my favorite):

Cool, huh? Ok, one more picture ('cause I can't resist him when he scowls as though he's trying to solve a riddle in his head):

As for Steph, she is doing much better now. The week or two she was in the hospital (was it really only that long?) was a very scary time for the whole family, and we are very thankful for her recovery. It's slow going, and she's not back to 100% yet, but she is back at work and doing her best not to hurt herself by trying to do too much, too fast.

I wish I could make a similar report on Derik's father, Dennis Rinehart, whom I knew for only a few years but loved very much. Unfortunately, he succumbed to cancer two weeks ago (was it really only two weeks ago?) and will no longer be the teasing voice on the other end of the phone when we call up to Indiana. The week we were in Elkhart was difficult, emotional, and painful at times, but it was also wonderful in some ways. Derik needed to be with his family and to say goodbye to his dad, and I needed to be there to help as I could. Most of Derik's relatives could not travel to Virginia for our wedding, so I met many of his family members for the first time. It was wonderful to put faces with the names that I had previously known only from having addressed wedding invitations. Derik's family are warm, kind, generous people, the kind of folks you want to have around you during such times. People brought so much food that we were afraid we wouldn't be able to get it all in the refrigerator, but we always found a way (we even joked about our "magic expanding fridge"). The funeral home was full of flowers, and it touched me deeply. Flowers and plants are not my area of expertise, and I don't usually even notice them, but it was wonderful to have them there - so delicate, so colorful, so alive - that I will always send them from now on when I hear of others who are suffering the loss of a loved one. Derik himself gave the eulogy at his father's funeral, the performer in him allowing him to get through it with clear eyes and a clear voice. When he had finished, though, he saluted his father's casket, saying, "Blue skies, Dad. I love you." There were no clear eyes anywhere after that. He loved his father so much. We will miss him.

Dennis Rinehart (2nd from right) with his sons Keith (far left) and Derik (far right) at the reunion of the 352nd Fighter Group

After we got back from the funeral, I realized that Dennis had passed away almost exactly one year after the death of my Great Uncle George. I am usually fairly philosophical on the subject of death; I certainly don't take it personally. However, when I was talking to my mother on the drive home from Indiana, she asked me if I'd watched a DVD she sent me of Christmas at 4808 Nebraska Avenue in 1987. I, thinking it was just a photo CD of Christmas 2005, had not. When I got home, I found it and popped it in. There was Donda, already sick, but very much alive. There was Uncle George, slinging around huge platters with turkeys on them like it wasn't anything at all, Uncle Billy, lurking in the hallway, Uncle Jack, picking at the turkey he was supposeld to be carving, and Aunt June, sipping a cocktail. There was Memommie, looking the way I expected her to look (when she got to looking much older, I always had to adjust). There was Mom, looking impossibly young, and man are we alike. It's not that we look alike, exactly, but the way we smile, laugh, sing, gesture when we talk, lean in when we listen, and try to wring every drop out of every moment as we're living it leaves no doubt as to whose daughter I am. There's Lee, with the bangs I always thought made her look like a little mouse, and skinny little Lynn wearing lots of hairspray (though not nearly as much as Uncle Johnny - tee-hee! Hey, it was the 80's; mistakes were made). Can it really be true that they are now both mothers? And who's that shy, mousy little girl with the round face, wearing the misguided jean jacket and stonewashed denim scrunchy, attempting bangs despite her cowlicks, self-consciously singing Christmas carols? Why, that would be me!

Though it was fun to see us all as we were, it left me melancholy, wishing, more than anything, that I could find a time machine and go back to that Christmas night. Was it because I didn't appreciate it enough at the time? No, I knew I was lucky. I knew other families didn't get together on the scale that we did, that other kids didn't even know their great aunts, great uncles, and second cousins, and that other families certainly didn't all stand at the piano and sing carols together. Every year, even though I was a little shy and a little bored and there was no one else there who was quite my age, I cherished those times with all the family, even if I did think, then, that we would have Christmas dinner at 4808 forever. Was it because I thought it unfair that so many were no longer with us? No, nobody lives forever, and I am 33 years old now. It is natural and right that my grandparents' generation should leave us. I just wish I could go back, only be me, now. I wish I could eavesdrop on the grown-ups' conversations and see how much more I would understand than I did back then. I wish I could give Memommie and Donda a great big hug. I wish, most of all, that I could take Derik with me and introduce him to the Fletchers as they were in 1987. It's really for him that I feel sad, not to have ever gotten to go to 4808 or to Tall Timbers or to Uncle Jack's pool. He missed out on so much!

When we were in Indiana, Derik's Uncle Don found some footage of a long-ago Thanksgiving, back when the entire Rinehart family used to gather at the fire station in Elkhart because no one's house was big enough. We watched it on the last night we were there, and, if it was fun to finally meet all of Derik's relatives, it was a major bonus to get to see what they looked like when Derik was a kid! The only thing that was more fun was getting to see what Derik himself looked like. I already knew that Derik had been an adorable baby, but I loved seeing him as a pre-teen even more. He was all gangly legs, skinny arms, and big, brown eyes, with a cap of blond hair, and I couldn't look at pictures of him at that age without wanting to reach into the frame and pinch his little cheeks off. I've always said I didn't want to have kids, but looking at pictures of Derik as a kid is almost enough to make me reconsider. Derik says he misses those days, too, when the whole family used to gather for the holidays, but that they haven't really done it since his grandparents passed away. Oh, for a time machine! If only, if only!!! But that's not how it works in this world. We pick ourselves up where we land, brush ourselves off, and keep moving into the unknown future. Luckily, we are allowed to glance over our shoulders and wave to our former selves, our former lives, and the people we knew then.

Mostly, I'm just glad I don't have that 1987 haircut anymore.

What’s in my stereo at home:

What’s in my car:

What's in my CD player at work:

What I'm reading: