Picking up where I left off ... um, in 2016 talking about 1989 and here it is 2021 postish pandemic and in my elder years or at least so it feels.

So I was 21, graduating college, in the white rose ceremony at BW (an honor bestowed on virgins) pregnant! I was four months along when I was meant to grace the graduation stage but it got canceled due to rain and the possibility of lightning. Damn it! The group absolution they gave telling us to all move our tassels and sending us a stupid letter of congratulations was no consolation prize. After all, starting out dubious about completing college due to lack of smarts and then later to marriage, I really wanted to do the jig across the stage for all to see. My Mother in Law said, someday you will look back on this and laugh. I'm 500 years old, still not laughing. 

Then it was time to name the baby. We decided not to find out the gender because we wanted to be surprised, or at least I did. I figured going through labor might be tough so why not have a cracker jack toy in the box sort of excitement to offset the pain. Yikes, bad choice of words. We agreed that if we had a boy, he would be Christopher, after his Dad. What would we name the girl though? Being a Barry Manilow fan from back in the day, I always loved the song, Mandy. I declared we could name her Amanda and call her Mandy for short. Chris was totally agreeable ... really to all of my preferences, including waiting to find out the sex. Hmm. So I told a select few people in all my excitement at the beautiful name for our sweet unborn baby daughter who might be a boy but who knows. Flash forward to a few months later when my sister in law had a baby girl and named her ... wait for it ... Amanda and they would call her Mandy for short! WOW! I wonder where she got that idea. I was like Charlotte when she found out her friend stole her baby name (Shayla) only I never said it to my sister in law, I just seethed in the background. I had to find another baby name and you can bet I was going to keep in under lock and key so no other peeps could steal it. One of my favorite movies was A Chorus Line and I always loved the name Cassie from it as well as from a soap opera I watched. Once again I was in the driver's seat for the name and Chris was totally on board. Oh gosh, I'm learning a lot about myself as I write this. Was I domineering? Or did he just not give a crap? Jury's out. 

I phoned my Mom and Dad to spring the girl name on them. I said to my Dad, we are going to name her Cassandra and then we can shorten it to Cassie or Sandy. Then I warned him not to tell a soul because I didn't want anyone to steal my name again. A while later I called my Parents and was chatting with them on the phone when the convo went like this.

Dad: hey, your friend from high school is having a baby ... um, what's her name 

Me: Tina???

Dad: yeah, Tina and she said she's having a girl and they are going to name her ...

Me: CASSANDRA???!!!!!!

Dad: yeah, and they are going to call her ca for short or caca.

Yep, that was my Dad always tricking me into believing something outlandish, like the time he told me not to walk on the grass around the church because it was holy grass. Boy was I embarrassed when Chris had to tell me (around age 20) that was all a hoax! For years to come, I would say things out loud only to learn it was another time Dad was teasing me and I fell for it hook, line and sinker. 

My baby's due date was November 28, 1989. I went into labor on November 27 and she was born the day after, November 29, 1989 2:49 am, baby Cassandra entered the scene. 

I really skipped over the birth except by doing the math you can figure it wasn't a short labor. More to come.

So in November of 1989 Chris and I had a baby daughter. We named her Cassie which was short for Cassandra but I liked the notion that she could one day also call herself Sandy or Sandra should she desire to reinvent her life. Ha! Talk about thinking ahead. 

It all started when I was 20. I am now 48, so brace yourself this is a long one. I will not do it all in one post.

I was in college. My life was pretty decent. I paid for my entire tuition on my own with the help of grants, scholarships, loans and working 4 jobs simultaneously. I was finally on my own from a small town in Ohio to what felt like the big city, even though it really wasn't all that huge.

My first roommates were both black. I only mention this because of my small town upbringing. You see I only knew one black man and one gay man ... and it was the same guy. For the record, I only new two Asian people and they were twins. Let's not forget one Jew ... yep, that's all I knew. The rest were white and mostly Italian Americans. To say that I was sheltered and very unaware of the world is a gross understatement.

My biggest fear of starting college was that I would flunk out. I wasn't a particularly bad student but I knew some subjects weren't my favorites and I had it in my head that it would be infinitely more difficult taking classes at a college level. The good news is I was pretty darn good at college, especially after a boyfriend told me I was smart. This was something I had never heard before but I have an open mind and he was a chemistry major so if he said it, it must be true, or at least that's how I thought about it.

Fast forward through two boyfriends to the third boyfriend. His name was Chris. He was not my physical type but there was something about him and oh my, was he talented. As I got to know him, he was funny and smart too. He got all A's and at that time, that was all the criteria I needed to know he was in fact, smart. He was a musician and a singer. He sounded and even looked like Billy Joel. He could make his voice sound like Billy or Elton and even Bozz Skaggs or Billy Vera. We connected through music. I had been a voice major so running into him at the Conservatory was apparently how he first saw me. I never noticed him but he made sure I did later. So after dumping our current significant others (although how significant could they have been), we were together. Inseparable is more like it. We laughed, loved immediately, fought and sang together. We were engaged just six months after our first encounter which by the way, was while I was working and he was on a date but that's another story.

We planned a wedding that would happen right after I graduated from college, just four years later and many majors later. Our itinerary included living together for about a year prior to our wedding date. His Mother was not thrilled about that so she suggested we move it up a year. That would mean we would marry after he graduated and one year before I did. My gut reaction was that if I married early, I would not finish and after all, why was I working so hard to prove my new found smartness but to finish college????! His Mom said there was no reason I couldn't just finish school as a married woman.

I have to say that although I didn't go to college for an MRS degree, it wasn't off my mind. I was preoccupied with marriage. You see, I wanted kids so much, I cannot even express how much but I will try. Let's put it this way, when I was little I had a bunch of baby dolls and then as I grew to only 11, I began babysitting and when I was 13, my first nephew was born and he was the absolute love of my life. I adored him so much. I would let my sister sleep in and feed him every morning even at the young age of 13. I was very close with him and it only made me want babies more. I LOVE babies and to this day, if they were like goldfish and had tiny life spans I would have a hundred. It's not so much I wanna see them floating on top of the water but the idea is that there would never be too many. I am the baby whisperer. Soooo, back to the MRS degree, maybe it was more on my plate than I am letting on. I wanted that as much as I wanted my independence and a degree.

Bottom line, I was married at 20. I had two majors. They were Speech Communications/Theatre and Political Science with a Theatre Minor. My ideas for a career included being an attorney or a newscaster. I loved acting and of course adored singing but I wanted to be more practical. Well, after I got married I was deciding which of the two directions to head and did some research. I quickly found out the divorce rates for attorneys AND broadcasters were really high. How did I find this out? I read about it somewhere or someone said it or who knows, I just wasn't going to take that risk. I was left wondering what I would do for a living. I said to Chris that I couldn't do any of those jobs due to the divorce rate so maybe we should start a family. His response was this, "Let's try for 6 months and if we don't get pregnant within that time we can consider it a sign and wait.". I agreed wholeheartedly. We got work on it right away. Is that the nicest way of saying we had  ton of sex you have ever heard? Well, perhaps needless to say, one month later we were one month pregnant. Waiting was no longer an option.