Melinda writes about surprises and waiting on her blog:

Waiting for Surprises

I have never been good at waiting. I am that person who turns to the last few pages of a novel to see how things end even though I have barely read the first chapter. It is a really silly thing to do actually because after just starting a book skipping to the end usually leaves me more confused than satisfied. There are always important characters who have yet to be introduced at the beginning of the story, so I find myself scanning through the book trying to figure out how they relate to the story. It is a viscous cycle that usually ends with me giving up and reading the book as it was intended.

Surprises for a Little Girl

When I was a little girl I was always so excited about Christmas that I would often sneak around during the season trying to find where my mom hid the presents. I was very good at ferreting out her hiding places, but when I couldn’t find the presents I would wait until they were wrapped under the tree. I would deftly open them and then wrap them back up.

I am a little embarrassed, but also pretty impressed with myself that at a very young I had an almost savant ability at unwrapping and rewrapping gifts leaving returning them to under the tree as if they had never been touched. While I was always excited by the gifts when I found them, I was always equally disappointed Christmas morning because everyone else was so delighted by their surprises and I had ruined mine. I was a smart and stupid little girl.

This year when my daughter found out she was pregnant I found myself once again waiting on another big surprise, but this time there was no opportunity to figure it out. She and her husband, Patrick decided to wait to find out the sex of the baby. It was such an old fashioned, lovely idea even if I was little annoyed. When Katie was born, the ultra sound, as part of a normal course of pregnancy, was relatively new. My mother certainly never had an ultrasound and likely the test did not exist when she was pregnant with me. Heck, back when my mom was pregnant nice people did not even use the word “pregnant,” yet alone share pictures of their unborn children. CONTINUE READING