March 22, 2006

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  Rainey, Spring 2005

  
  

  

  
  

  Las tres amigas, Cancun, June 2006:  Kim, Toni, Rainey

  
  

  I did not get to blog yesterday because I was a mite busy.  19 years ago yesterday morning, my life changed completely when I saw the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my life.  Lorena was beautiful, so beautiful that I had asked her to be my wife several years before, but this new girl was absolutely stunning in her beauty.  What was so wonderful about meeting this new girl, though, was that I got to hug and kiss Lorena as we admired the beauty of this new girl, and Lorena absolutely beamed as I hugged and kissed the new love of my life.  And, yes, it was definitely love at first sight...

  
  

  It was snowing the morning of 21 March, 1987,  when I took Lorena to the 97th General Hospital in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.  We had been to the 97th a few times already, so we were both tired, but Lorena assured me that this time was definitely the real one, so I called for a sub at school and traipsed back to the hospital with Lorena.  There she delivered an angel that we named Lorraine Michelle Thomas.

  
  

  It wasn't a real easy birth, and Lorena chafed the restrictions of the military hospital where she was treated as if she were [A] a service member (or, [B], worse, the wife of a service member.)  She was expected to get up, make her bed, eat in the mess hall, and take Rainey to the bathroom with her to shower, etc.  Lorena had lost quite a bit of blood so she was exhausted, and she quite quickly assured her caregivers that she was neither A nor B.  [See???  Si!!!!]  After her tirade (echoed then in my tirade), life became much easier for her.

  
  

  Bud and Patty Olmsted were Rainey's first visitors, taking her a Teddy Bear and a Polaroid camera for her first modeling shoot.  Herb and Marion Wooten quickly followed, bearing another Teddy Bear and a ton of motherly advice.  Lupita Naupol (close friend and niece of Mexican ex-Presidente Miguel de la Madrid) was a regular at the hospital, as were several of Lorena's other friends and my colleagues. 

  
  

  It was definitely a learning experience combining new parenthood with cultural differences.  Lorena's first food or drink after the birth was Malzbier (malt beer -- a minimal alcohol beer celebrated for its nutritional value.  Yes, we were definitely in Germany.)  I had only known chamomile tea from Beatrice Potter books because Peter Rabbit's mother was a disciple of it, but soon I was an expert of it both as a beverage and as a Sitzbath liquid.  I soon had a Master's degree in Tea-ology which served me well since my kingdom had become a Tea-ocratic society.  It seemed I constantly brewed for my brood: manzanillo, peppermint, fennel, lemon grass, you name it.  Vigilantly checking to see that our cupboards remained well-stocked, I quickly became a Tea-totaler.

  
  

  Little lily-livered Lorraine was definitely yellow.  (Actually she was not handling her bilirubin well, suffering from  neonatal hyperbilirubinaemia, where the newborn's liver is not able to properly conjugate the bilirubin (see jaundice).  [Therefore, I am not exaggerating when I accuse her of looking early on at the world through a jaundiced eye...])  UV light breaks down bilirubin, though, so as a result, I had the indescribable pleasure of holding a naked little brat in my lap as we lolled in the sunlight streaming in through our double-paned windows that separated us from the frigid outdoors.  Those really were halcyon days.

  
  

  Technically, Rainey could not legally be registered as a German citizen, but one of the first things that Lorena did was go to the Rathaus in Frankfurt and register her birth on the official German roll "just in case."  When Rainey was just a few days old, we lugged her to the U. S. consulate in Frankfurt, where I held her slouched over for her first U.S. passport.

  
  

  

  
  

  Rainey's first passport photo...

  
  

  

  
  

  Rainey and Lorena in happier times...

  
  

  Just a couple of weeks later, she took her first international trip as we drove to and through the Netherlands with Socorro and Javier Almeria [Mexican Consul to Germany] and their daughters Christina and Margarita.

  
  

  I still get to tease Lorena quite a bit for those early days.  She was not a happy camper, and she had colic quite often so that I quickly became sleep deprived.  However, I still had to get up and go to school each morning.  Finally, I grew so desperate for sleep that I slept out on our 9th floor balcony in my sleeping bag -- in the snow...

  
  

  Last night we had a wonderful little get-together for Rainey's birthday.  We ended up calling Lorena separately, but Rainey said that Lorena was very quiet during their conversation other than crying quite a bit.  When the rest of us had a chanced to talk to her, she was very subdued, again crying quite often because she cannot talk to Rainey and I know she desperately wants to do so.  There was some laughter from Lorena, but her dearth of laughter yesterday was more than compensated by the antics of my three clowns at Rainey's party.

  
  

  Lorena, we need you back.  We need you to keep us sane and halfway civilized.  We need to be able to hold you and to thank you for making this family what it is.  We need to be a real family again.  We need to laugh with you at all your little comediennes.  We need you to help us sing "Happy Birthday" and "Las Mañanitas" to Rainey.  We need you to see how beautiful and wonderful your daughters are.  We need to grow up -- and old -- with you.  We need you.  And we love you...

  
  

  

  • 5:28 pm
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