A Night “Out of Darkness”

I had an emotional and enriching experience this Saturday. I spent time volunteering at the American Foundation for Prevention of Suicide’s (AFSP) Out of Darkness Walk.

Every year AFSP has a sponsor walk. Last year it was in San Francisco and the year before in New York. This year it was here in Washington, DC. The walk starts in the evening and all the walkers, who have raised money for AFSP, walk 16.5 miles until they finish at dawn. It is a symbolic act of love to help others make it out of the darkness of depression or loss.

 Of course I signed up to volunteer. Since Madre was here helping with the house she decided to come along too. We also talked my uncle Ben into coming.

We had the Midnight to 0600 shift. Madre and I decided to head in for the opening ceremony. As we walked up we saw several thousand people milling around waiting to start the walk. There were groups and families wearing matching shirts all memorializing their family members who have died by suicide. We spent the first hour just watching people and feeling the vibe of love.

I had to stop and take deep breaths and blink rapidly to not cry completely as I took it all in. There are truly some wonderful people in the world. They are doing everything they can to honor their family members who have passed on. We cannot heal their heartaches and wounds now they are gone, but we can all join together to help save someone else.

They had ‘Honor Beads’ for us all to wear. Each color represented a different relationship of someone who died by suicide. Just reading the sign was almost too much for me. I wore  two orange necklaces for Trevor and Moana as a siblings, I wore purple for Jex, a cousin, and I wore blue to support the cause. Madre wore purple, white and blue.

We then stopped and made lanterns—five of them—for each of the people in our lives that have died by suicide in the last three years. Again, another emotional experience.

The opening ceremony was full of inspirational speakers and stories. People who had lost spouses, parents, friends, soldiers, and other loved ones. I finally stopped holding back the tears and gave into the emotions. I had the missing loved ones emotion combined with the knowledge that all the people standing in that little square with us has lost people in their lives too.

Madre and I stood, dressed in our green volunteer shirts, and cheered the walkers as they started the walk. I smiled and cried the entire time. We could see all their faces as they passed. Some of them were smiling  others were full of tears. I watched each of them and saw all the beads they carried around their necks.

We saw them on their way. I started honking and they, of course, started yelling!

We stood there with the other volunteers—including one mother who brought her children to help too—and clapped for nearly 45 minutes. My eyes stung, my arms ached, and palms were sore. But I didn’t dare stop clapping because I wanted to show all of them that I appreciate them and what they were doing. 

As we walked out we saw the booth labeled "Incentives" and next to all the water bottles and other memorabilia was a little girl holding a sign that said, "Hugs Here!" How awesome. If a group of people needed extra hugs it was all of us. 

 

We went home for a few hours then made our way back for our volunteer time. It was dark when we arrived and the volunteers were setting out the lanterns. Over two thousand lanterns lined the court yard, each of them with a story on it. We walked through silently, almost reverently, as we searched for our five lanterns.

The walkers started coming in and I found myself back with the other volunteers cheering! It was contagious. We went to set up for breakfast and Ben met us there. We were all decked out in our ‘lunch lady’ outfits and had quite a fun time laughing with the other volunteers.

There we were ready to serve breakfast, but there were no eaters. For some reason the breakfast was in a different setting about half a block away. I decided to go round people up and let them know where breakfast was. As I told them, they were all so tired even thinking about walking another half a block was unbearable. Eventually they came, though.

I stood on the corner for several hours cheering as people came into the finish line. After they crossed I cheered for them to go  eat breakfast. So here I was, dressed like a lunch lady screaming my head off at 0300 at downtown DC! What a blast!

Soon I had several people cheering on the corner with me and four different times I had people ask if they could take my picture! Not to mention all of the people that were filming us cheer as they finished the race. HAHAHA…So I am sure that I was all over Facebook wearing my hot hairnet and plastic apron! Woohoo…

Me and the group of people that yelled until the end!

I yelled so loud my voice was hoarse and again my palms hurt—again.

It was a fun day, I mean, night.

The night ended with several walkers and raised millions of dollars to help people who may not be able to help themselves.

Here is a news clip video about it:
http://www.wusa9.com/video/default.aspx?bctid=2431359783001

Some Familiar Experiences and Some New

This last two weeks has given Lady Hiva some familiar experiences in our life’s journey, AND it has also given up some new experiences.

Part of being in the Foreign Service means MOVING! Roots—in the traditional sense—are fluid. Home is where your pillow is and family comes to visit, not necessarily the building or city either of those happen.

Lady Hiva and I were able to move again—writing this blog I counted, for the first time, how many times Lady and I have moved since we were married: 7 and counting! We moved into our housing allotted to us while I am in training for our next post. Madre flew out to help us get both this apartment ready and to clean our condo that we purchased. The experience of moving into the housing complex where we lived two years ago during training again was full of de-ja vu-like experiences. The floor plan is the same, and the area is familiar. We found ourselves discussing “where did we have this last time?”

The difference in housing is that we will not be able to move into our condo. Long story short, when we left Manila we made a decision to live in assigned housing and all of our household stuff—except clothes and other basics—went to Europe to wait for our arrival. Being at the Condo is fun. We have polished floors, cleaned cabinets, caulked bathrooms repaired fixtures and shampooed carpets. Plenty of work, but now we will be ready for renters to move in! (Sad when you think we own a 3-Bed/2-Bath and we had to stuff all our things into a one bedroom apartment just down the road)

Madre has been such a help with the shipments that have arrived and needed to be unloaded. So grateful that she is here to help while I am at work—another similar experience.

On the family front Tau’aho and Lady Hiva are doing REALLY well still. Being the 6^th pregnancy it is a familiar experience to have Lady pregnant and for us, the stress and emotions that comes with that journey. HOWEVER—Tau’aho has not exceeded our expectations and wildest dreams and has stayed cooking. At midnight tonight we will conclude 31 gestational weeks and will be into 32 weeks~! Lady Hiva is still walking around moderately and is not completely confined to bed…we are SO thankful. Tau’aho has cooked longer than all of his siblings. We are hoping he can stay in there for much, much longer. Another month at least.

Although pregnancy, and it quirks, are familiar to us, having Lady this far along is a new experience. We constantly admire how her body can stretch to fit Tau’aho as he grows. Lady also is experiencing all of the discomforts of the third trimester that she has never experienced before: hard to move, sleep, walk, and do anything in general  Yes, it is not great, but they are discomforts that we are both thankful for. (Maybe a bit easier for me to say than her---I breath, sleep and move as I always have…hehe)

So we conclude this week with plenty of new memories and have reviewed and appreciated old ones.

Memorial Day

It is beautiful day in Washington, DC for Memorial day. On this day each year the Country sets aside time honor those who have died in their families and especially those who have served the Country and lost their lives. One of my favorite places in the DC area is Arlington Cemetery.  The flags are out and the greenery is gorgeous.

It is similar to the cemetery that I grew up near. The large, old trees shaded green grass and small flower patches. Memorial Day weekend the cemetery was always full of people paying respects to their family members and friends that have passed on. One aspect I learned to love the most were all the flags. Each veteran buried in the cemetery had a large American Flag posted near the headstone—a breathtaking backdrop for them to play morning taps.

This year we have several family members to honor. This is a day for us to remember our own family. It was special to have phone calls and photos from family members as they placed flowers on Trevor’s grave, Moana’s grave and especially the grave for our three children. We cannot be there to take care of it, but they thought enough to do it for us.

Today is our first daughter, Annie’s birthday/death  day anniversary. It is days like this that we are thankful for the knowledge we can been family forever.

We are also thankful for this current pregnancy and that baby Tau’aho has now been cooking for 30+ weeks! YIPEE! We never thought we would make it this far, but we have and we are still counting. All of those prayers, thoughts and positive energy that people have sent have made such a difference!

So on this memorial day, we have much to remember, much to be thankful for and most of all a chance to be with family that are still near us.

SOLD to US!

Today we crossed off another item on our bucket list! WE BOUGHT A HOUSE! (A condo anyway… hehe)

For the last two months we have been riding the roller coaster of purchasing a house. We have spent endless hours perusing real estate search engines. We want a place in Hawaii, but because we are working for the State Department we were limited to lenders that would recognize our house as a primary residence even if we were living in a Foreign Country on Assignment. Sadly, Hawaii houses are either way over our budget for a first home or they are leased land and not many lenders will lend on those.

So we moved our search to Washington, DC. This is where we have spent most of our time when living in the United States and will be part of our lives as long as I am in this career. DC, like Hawaii, is easy to rent out while we are gone.

We started looking at places and after about twenty properties we found a place we liked. They did not accept our offer so we started looking again. After another ten or fifteen places we put in an offer on a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom condo.

It has been a whirl-wind month as we processed papers, juggled the many different aspects of purchasing a home but today we closed! Our realtor (who I had to have a 'talk' with a few times) tried to butter us up by filling our home with welcome goodies--beer, wine and cigars-to celebrate! HAHAHA...Lady Hiva said, "I have never had beer in my fridge before" But the gesture was nice, we will have to find someone to give it to.

The gift from the Realtor company that we will regift.

We are now home owners! YAY!

Here are some tips (if you want them) that we learned being first time home buyers:

1-      Know what you want. Do your research. Know what type of place you want and what is important to you and what location is preferable. After looking at several homes each has their positives and negatives so it is nice to know what exactly what you need  so it does not get overwhelming.

2-      Realtor shop before committing. We have learned that realtors are an abundant species. If you don’t like the one you have, switch.

3-      Stick up for yourself. Every step of the way people have suggestions and advice. Usually it would benefit them if you did it their way, so stick up for yourself. Listen to their advice and then make the decision based on your own comfort level.

4-      Don’t give up. The experience can be frustrating at times, but don’t give up. It all works out.

5-      ASK QUESTIONS. Now the people that I was asking the questions may not be so happy I am telling you this, but I asked hundreds of questions until I was comfortable with the process. 

 

Here are some photos of the place:

Baby Tau’aho Update

The big news: WE HAVE MADE IT to 27 and a half weeks! 28 weeks here we come!

Those of you who have read WHITE LILIES IN AUTUMN  know that Vaitafe was born at 28 weeks. That was our next big milestone for Tau’aho. We know that a baby can survive out of the womb rather well at that point (minus the scary gram-negative bacteria that came well after he was doing alright). We hit 28 weeks on Sunday—Mother’s Day. Anything after that date is new stomping grounds for Lady Hiva. We don’t know what to expect.

This last week Lady Hiva has spent, much to her dismay, more time on the bed resting. We had a few days that she had some sharp pains and that is usually NOT a good sign. Luckily, she put herself on bedrest for the last four days, only doing the essential things and they seemed to stop.

The Braxton Hicks contractions have started and she is watching them closely. They normally start around this time, but for us EVERYTHING is scary and we find ourselves holding our breath often.

Today we had another doctor’s appointment and the cervix is still closed and not shortening! YAY! We were so relieved to hear and see that today. After this week we were really worried about what they would find, but the doctor said it “looks really good and that is pleasing.” Pleasing may not be a strong enough word for us, but it conveyed the idea—I would go for that is “AMAZING” or “EXCITING” or that is “WONDERFUL!” …or something cheerful and over-the-top corny like that.

So the journey continues. It is fun to see that Lady Hiva is starting to look pregnant more and more. She constantly says, “I feel HUGE!” I just laugh and remind her that she is pregnant and you are supposed to get bigger. We are both getting more encouraged as the days go on. She has started a “list” of things we will need to get. We already have some things left over from when Vaitafe was born and he never was able to use, so we just need to add onto that.

The doctor is having us come more often over the next few weeks  just as a precaution to watch the baby and Lady Hiva’s progression. Once we hit June 1 we will be into 31 weeks and counting! YAY!