Unfinished business.

(The best thing to deal with disapointment is to find something to be grateful for. I for one am grateful for the content in this post.)

With likely about a year... or more (seems we've heard that frequently here before) to go, the nursery is but a fleeting thought for now.

I think often of people, my kin, my LID buddies, whose nurseries are long since complete. Not one of us thinking the wait would unfold infront of our eyes and continue to unfold and unfold and unfold again, like some magical origami crane flatening itself out.

I think of a question a friend at my workplace asked recently, "God it's got to be hard to have all that stuff in the closet and the nursery partly done and to see it". As we chatted over lunch I realized just how far I've come. I gave myself a silent and invisible pat on the back as I said, "no, not really, it's not hard. Hard was coming home the day Sophia died to the house full of baby gear, strewn all over the front foyer, living room and her nursery from our recent shower, then having the construction workers show up a few hours later to finish her playroom in the basement. The new nursery, it's something that has yet to take on a life. It's a subtle reminder of lovely days to come. And it's really ok to see it".

Perhaps what makes it easier is that the nursery is NOT done. Part of that, ok, most of that, was helped along by the move from the mid-Atlantic area to New England last summer. We packed up all that was, all that was never to be, into boxes. And during the last year we unpacked most of them, stored things away in a spare closet and continued to collect. We've collected wonderful hand-me-downs, toys, clothes, books, a closet organizer still in it's boxes, a crib, ... the list goes on. It's all waiting, waiting for Magpie.

I think of my fellow LID buddies, I think of their completed nurseries and I wonder what it's like for them. Is it hard on them to see their room? Is it ok, a place of peace like it is for me? Can they go in there, curl up on their giant stuffed rocking chairs, holding an Ugly Doll and breath in the air that separates them from their daughters in China? Or is it a room, behind a door that's always closed?

I wonder, and yet I know, it's really ok how it is right now, a hodge podge of things, waiting to be assembled, some still figments of the corners of my mind. The valance boxes E will make and I will upholster, the curtains I plan to make, the crib to put together, the closet organizer to install, the lights to wire, the walls to paint, the decorations to hang, the bookshelf we made to put on the wall, the artwork that we hope starts a lifetime of a passion for art. It's all there, waiting for this winter, next spring and summer, when the nursery starts to slowly take on a life of its own.

For now, it's another item among a sea of items on our Magpie to-do list, later this year we'll start to slowly check them off our list, one by precious one. So Magpie's nursery and her collection of things, they aren't hard on me at all, the wait... now that's hard.