Day4: Your parents

My parents are the most wonderful people I know.  They have always supported me, even when I was a teenager and would have bitter fights with my mom she was always there when I needed her.  My dad is currently undergoing chemotherapy for anal/rectal cancer, and this is a very hard time for my family, but with our support of each other it is going much more smoothly.

Mom was born in Rochester, NY in 1959.  She is the youngest of 3 girls with her oldest sister being 9 years older and her "younger" sister being 5 years older.  She was shy in high school and didn't really play sports or participate in plays or anything, just attended school and got good grades.  After high school, mom began attending college at the Rochester Institute of Technology (ironically, the same college that my husband attended) for sign language interpretation.

Dad was born in Rochester in 1960 and was the baby of the family for 11 years before the arrival of his youngest sibling, Kyle.  Dad also has 3 older sisters, all of them born within about a year of each other.  He was the typical "jock" in high school, lettering in Soccer, Swimming, and Baseball.  After finishing high school, dad was offered a scholarship to SUNY Geneseo (affectionately referred to as the "Harvard of the SUNY system") but chose to join the Army instead.

Though my parents knew each other pretty much their whole lives (Mom graduated and was friends with dad's older sister), they never really "hung out" until after dad got out of the Army.  It wasn't that they didn't like each other, just Dad was the popular jock and Mom was the shy older girl.  After Dad got out of the army he ran into my mother again and began "stalking" her (in her words, not mine).  She would be at the grocery store and he'd just randomly show up.  She would be walking around the block and he'd randomly drop by.  Eventually, he got the courage to ask her on a date and they got married in April of 1983.  Several months later, they conceived their first child (me!) and I was born in July of 1984.  About 4 months after I was born my brother was conceived and we are very close to being "Irish Twins" as he was born in August of 1985.

I love my parents more than anything in the world and would do anything for them, just as I know they would do anything for me.  In Summer 2007, Geoff and I moved 9 hours away from my family which was the hardest decision I ever had to make, and 2 years later Mom and Dad decided to move to Kentucky with us (Dad's current job is based out of WV, about an hour's drive from their current home).  I love having my parents close and the relationship that I continue to have with them.  I know they will be amazing grandparents and I look forward to seeing the joy on their faces when I finally get pregnant and can give them a grandbaby.  I am also optimistic about my Dad's prognosis, because even though it was staged at stage IV, they did not do a PET scan, just MRI's.  I am hopeful that it was staged wrong and that he is able to beat this cancer.  He is a strong man and has a great family support system which helps immensely.  He is also doing very well during the course of Chemotherapy and his latest MRI, though not necessarily indicative of anything, looked good.