And the speculation begins...

Is he the curly-headed man who stood talking to our landlord for 15 minutes at the base of the stairs, while we peeked between the slats of the blinds? Or maybe it's the couple who wandered up the stairs, wondering which apartment was for rent. Or maybe someone we didn't see at all, who came by during the day while we were working.

Our old neighbor moved out a month and a half ago, and we've been wondering - somewhat anxiously - who would take his place. He was the perfect neighbor: almost never home, and when he was, just at night. We had the whole common deck to our selves, and since summer started I took advantage of that. Tanning has made itself an important part of my weekend routine.

But we learned this week that come July SOMEONE is moving in. It's a small apartment for a couple, so right now we're betting on the curly haired man (who JJ says looks annoying... not sure how you can tell that from between the slats of a blind...). I guess when you share a thin wall and a deck with someone, it really matters who they are. I wonder if he's thinking the same about us?
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And in the name of saving gas, we've bought ourselves a scooter. JJ rides it to work when it doesn't have a flat tire, and to the park when he wants to play basketball, and I ride it just for fun. I never knew 35 mph could seem so fast...

Remember that feeling when you fell asleep the night of yourbirthday, knowing that eternity lay between you and the next birthday you’dhave? “Next year” was pretty much “in the next life,” and you scoffed when yourparents told you it would pass quickly.

I wish I could have that feeling again. I feel like I’m on atreadmill, and someone has just increased the speed. I can barely keep up. Ihonestly don’t know where the time has gone.

I guess it’s the passing of my first wedding anniversarythat really has made me realize how quickly time goes. Most of my life I’vebeen looking forward to something; being double digits was awesome when I was9, I could wear make-up AND drive when I was 16, and who wouldn’t want to reachthat 21 barrier between a child and an adult? Then I was dreamed of love, andwhen it found me, I dreamed of marriage.

I’ve left 21 behind, now, and I’m really content to stayright where I am; happily married, generally content with work (well, I am thisweek – a story on the front page does that to you), keeping up old friendshipsand making new ones. But life doesn’t seem to stop, and the days slip by fasterand faster. Was my anniversary almost a month ago? Was it really three weekssince I held and lost my baby? Has it really been five months since I evenlearned I was a mother?

I guess it’s the age-old cry of mortality. We’re not reallymeant to grow old; and even though I’m young enough that 30 feels ancient, I’vesuddenly realized that growing up also means growing old… and I’d kind of liketo stop the clock.

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I generally don’t like to do this, but I’m proud: visit thislink to read my latest success in the world of journalism.

It’s not that I don’t like prayer. I do - I believe in God, and I believe He hears us and responds to our prayers. I appreciate it when friends offer their prayers for me.

But somehow, the way she said it made me feel violated, as if my personal life had been dragged out without my permission and made public.

“Why is your hand on your belly?” she asked me as we finished up a conversation about obituaries in the front lobby of my office. I looked down, startled, unaware that I was absently resting my hand on my slight hump that seems invisible to everyone else but huge to me. For a moment I felt like child being corrected for some unknown societal faux pas, and wondered if it was inappropriate to rest one’s hand on one’s belly?

“Ummm,” I stalled. “Because it feels weird. I’m not used to it yet.” My answer was ridiculously vague, more because I was still surprised than anything else. Then in answer to her probing eyes and her hand that was now also resting on my belly, “Because I’m pregnant.”

I think her smile was meant to be warm and congratulatory, but it took on a more victorious glint to me. “When are you due?” she wanted to know. And “Do you mind if I pray for you every day through September?”

Before I could answer she was pulling out her pen, ready to scribble my name and “pregnant” on her pink notepad. Of course I said I didn’t mind, and even as I walked away I wondered why her words irritated rather than comforted me. I’m still wondering that.

It’s odd, how people seem to think of one when one is pregnant. “How do you feel today?” people ask me, making eye contact with my belly as if it could answer for me. And when I meet them in the grocery store their eyes go first to my waist, to see if I am showing yet, before coming up to look at me.

And while it’s exciting to know that a life is developing within me, and I, too, stare at my waist every morning while I dress, trying to gauge how much of that expansion I see is baby and how much is extra weight, sometimes it feels like I have been reduced to “the one carrying that baby.” It’s as if “Heather” has disappeared, and all that matters or pertains to her is that child inside her.

It’s an odd feeling.

Oh... and for those of you whom the grapevine hasn't reached; I'm pregnant, due September 8.

Death has become a commonplace part of my life.

Every day I take a people’s lives and boil it down to less than 12 inches of copy, reducing their history to their job, their hobbies, and their memberships.

Sometimes I find myself sifting through paragraphs, trying to pull out the more important clubs or the most impressive of the career history, because what the family brought in was just too long for the paper’s policies. And the words I read tell of a man or woman I would have liked to meet – like the “bird lady,” or the grandmother of 50 or 60.

And other times, I can write 80 years of living in just 3 or 4 inches.

Mortality, then, is striking in its harsh reality.

One man liked “counting his medicines.” A woman liked smoking. Others have nothing listed at all – just the funeral information and a few survivors. “We just want to keep it simple,” the family tells me. “We don’t need to list all that stuff.”

So after a long life, an obituary runs in the paper. “She died, is survived by one son, and the service is tomorrow,” it says, and then silence, and she is forgotten.

It makes me wonder what will be written about me. Will I have touched enough lives that my children will fill an obituary full of their memories? Will I devote myself to good causes, or will I be remembered for my love of Bingo and Wheel of Fortune? What will they remember about me?

Or will I be remembered at all?

It's worth thinking about, now when all of life still stretches out before me, still unwritten, and while my  habits are still forming, not yet frozen in almost-immovable ruts. May the habits I make and hte paths I follow be ones that are worth remembering.

It's a privilege to be a journalist. It gives you the opportunity to meet people you'd never have run into; to ask them the questions it would be rude to ask otherwise; and to hear the stories that inspire, then pass that inspiration on to others.

The doctor was one of those people that makes me love my job.

He was in his 80's, his hair thin and receding, leaving his already prominent nose and sharp face even sharper. His pants hugged his rib cage as he sat in the low chair at the low, round table in the corner of a large and ornate, 70's style, living room. He was writing a letter when I arrived, and his voice was almost musical as it rose and fell in the accent only Eastern Europeans can achieve as he courteously greeted me.

My eyes were drawn immediately to the glass sliding door leading to a deck. Late-blooming roses clung to the vines against the deck, and the hill fell away to the water below. Across that bit of the bay, the sun was reflecting of the buildings of the Naval Academy.

His story fascinated me - so much so that I'm waiting eagerly for his book to arrive to the nearest library. Born a Jew in Poland, he was 16 when he led his mother and grandmother through the woods when the Nazi's invaded and expelled all the Jews of his town. Provided false papers by the Polish Christian Underground, he managed to survive the war working on a railroad; he hid his father in a secret room in his apartment (he calls this time the "single greatest event in my life" - the time he saved his father's life.)

The end of the War saw him alive and with both parents, but without around 30 family members and many childhood friends. After he married a fellow survivor (who had lost her family), they came to America around 50 years ago. He remembers the exact date that they sailed in to New York, and how the sun was setting.

A doctor by trade, he opened a family practice where he worked for close to 40 years. He claims he knows each of his former patients by face, though he may not remember their name. He remembers helping frightened and pregnant teenage girls face their parents, and talked them out of abortions (he says it's odd to meet those children, now with children of their own, and realize he may have saved their lives).

He never turned away a patient due to lack of money, though he insists he wasn't any sort of great benefactor.

Now, despite his age and the many years of service he has already offered, he travels around the county telling his story (with special emphasis on the help he received from Polish Christians - something that still seems to astound him). He thinks it's important people understand what happened, so they can keep it from happening again (it is happening, now, in Darfur, he says), and he thinks that as an eyewitness, he must speak.

The doctor called me the other day to make sure everything was set for the story. Did I need anything? And as I hung up the phone and finished the story, I was frustrated by my limitations and wished I could tell more. I wished I could really know this man, understand his motivations, and learn the full story that I had just barely glimpsed.