lemons and life

They say when life hands you lemons you make lemonade.

Aren't there more options though? Can't you make lemon chiffon, or lemon bars, or lemon martini's, or lemon cake, or lemon chicken, or lemon drops? Is your only choice really to make lemonade?

I was recently involved in two conversations in the work place about having children and getting married, mainly just revolving around 'making plans'. Each of the individuals talking about planning for the future, whether in getting married, meeting someone or having kids. I laughed a bit when I said "don't bother making plans, life has a way of changing far from what you ever thought would happen". At the time we had a good laugh, but with the luxury of my drive on the way home I got the chance to think.

My drive consists of around 10 miles of highway (opposite the traffic) and around 20 miles of back roads, country roads, twisty turny winding roads past a lake, through a mountainous region, it's awesome. And it gives me the luxury of clearing the work cobwebs out of my head as I drive to and from work, as I see the fog clear off the lake on cool mornings, or snow hanging like cotton puffs from fir trees.

So last Friday I thought about these conversations. I thought about the things I had planned for my life before I met E and the things we planned together after we met.

My plan growing up was to get married, start a family and have my last (either 2nd or 3rd) child before I was 30. I met E when I was 31. Go figure.

Plan A shot to hell.

After our first (private) wedding we started to try to have kids, figuring we'd wait till a few month before the big family wedding that way I wouldn't be obviously pregnant as we walked down the aisle, cause you know, we'd just have to quit the BC pills and just like that we'd get pregnant. HA. We started in Feb of 2002, we planned to have 2 kids and would have them close together due more so to our ages and life dreams.

Plan B shot to hell.

And to make a long story short our paths took us on a journey to China, one we planned would be finished in 2007, 1 year after it started, followed by the mandatory 1 year wait between and then another one year wait for the second child. So by 2009 we'd have the 2 children we dreamed of. It's now 2008 and well, somehow continued planning just hasn't been fruitful.

Plan C shot to hell.

What we've finally accepted is that our second adoption will not come from China, this is disheartening. E and I came to grips with this decision over the holidays and to say we had a hard time with it is an understatement. We both greatly mourned that our 2 children would not share their homeland, that we would not be making 2 trips to China for children. Both E and I shed a tear over this discussion.

But we learned the lesson that life continues to shed some light on. That all the planning in the world doesn't really matter, sometimes fate is more important.

As such, you should always be prepared to dig deep into your life recipe book and make something out of those lemons, only time will tell what recipe we select to handle the change to Plan C. Perhaps some day we'll share.