BINGO

I just got back from my annual scrapbooking retreat with friends.   GNO (Girls Night Out) on steroids!!!!  It’s always such a great time away from the daily grind while we actually do some work.

Our cropping group

I’ve been scrapbooking for a REALLY long time!  When Mom handed me the  “take your old stuff from the basement box,” there was an old scrapbook filled with photos and autographs of The Osmonds from  “back in the day”.  I was framing photos of fun places with colored paper and stickers in a three ring binder  way ahead of the crowd, so it was a natural fit for me to teach scrapbooking to earn a little extra income (and fuel my habit) during my SAH days with the Newmanettes. 

A photo of Josh from his book

Baby books, family adventure books, Christmas books were strewn around the house almost as often as Legos and Barbies!   Josh was the biggest photo lover, always pulling down his baby books and leaving them out across the floor in his room or playroom.    When he died, it was those same albums  family and friends quietly took from the shelves and passed around to remember our sweet and ornery boy.



Sweet sweet Erika

Busy at work!

The scrapbooking retreat was only 5 months after Josh died, and I wasn’t sure I could go, but my best buddy Erika convinced me to keep going.  She was fighting cancer, and if she could go with her bald head and chemo bag, I could go with my box of tissues and broken heart.  She pulled me close and promised she would take care of me that weekend.  After losing her to cancer in 2013, that promise was even more meaningful to me.    



80+ women attend this retreat and go downtown to a local pub for Friday dinner.  That first year I found myself on the end of the table with an empty chair next to me.  Cue massive sweating and anxiety over just the thought that a stranger would sit down next to me and ask that dreaded question “how many children do you have ?”  I will always have three children, and I will always say it proudly…it’s the followup questions I dread.   So,  I decided to take the avoidance route by eating in with a small group of friends who know my story.  It’s an angel mom’s take on “choose your battles”.

My avoidance strategy has been working pretty well for the couple of years but then the group organizers decided  we needed to play ice breaker BINGO. Sigh….  I looked over the sheet and it looked simple enough, There was the “sang in choir” , studied abroad, studied a language, etc, and then there it was  “Has three children or more”……If someone used a hot poker to poke my eyes out, it would  feel better than what I’m feeling, I’m sure.

So I stayed back from the group a bit.  Slowly they came by, “Which box can you sign?”  I was safe for a while because I had a couple of choices.  "Yes, I sang in choir, Yes, I studied abroad, Yes, I can line dance".

I was slowly building up the courage to participate when the mom of one of Joshua’s friends came up to me and said “Would you sign my box for Has three children or more?  You have three children”.  I looked at her with a grateful heart and said “thank you so much for remembering” as I proudly signed my name. 

I LOVE this event! Once a year I get to openly talk about Joshua without judgement or pity.  Once a year I am on equal footing with the other mothers around me, as we laugh and laugh even more over the wonderful  memories we put in our books.

"As long as we have memories, yesterday remains. As long as we have hope, tomorrow awaits. As long as we have friendship, today is beautiful."~ Author Unknown

HUGS!
Sherri