THE TEA ON ME
I am not sure if I am that interesting, but my friends whose stories I will tell you are.
I was born Leana Corrinne Wall on December 21, 1967, in Winnipeg (Winterpeg), Manitoba, Canada. Winnipeg has the coldest winters among Canada’s major cities. I was brought home from the hospital on Christmas Day, and my parents have told me I was their best Christmas present. I have always known I was loved, and that, along with my size ten feet, is a solid base for life.
I had a lovely, peaceful childhood in Canada, with summers spent playing at the cottage with cousins and family, sometimes under the northern lights. The five months of a winter wonderland of mountains of snow that looked like white diamonds, we were skating, making igloos, and curling.
The only thing traumatic about my teen years was my choice of makeup and hairstyles. Of course, I made stupid decisions with my underdeveloped brain, but nothing life-altering.
I graduated from the University at 21 with a highly marketable degree in Theology and History. I got married at this tender age of 22 because, of course, I was mature enough; my parents gently disagreed, but I didn’t quite get the message.
Then my husband and I got a big surprise seven months after getting married! A baby was on the way! Yes, we knew babies were made; nature can outwit science sometimes. Of course, he is the best surprise I have ever had. His sister arrived three years later, completing our matching set. Despite my youth and their early arrival, I loved being a mother and delighted in every second of raising them. Their dad and I must have done an okay job, because they are fantastic human beings.
The kids’ dad and I then moved from Winnipeg to Calgary when they were 2 and 5 years old. We were looking for an adventure, then two years later, we moved to Nashville, Tennessee, a real ho-down, I thought I had landed on another planet, down South in the United States. Finally, we ended up in Atlanta, Georgia, where I reside in 2026. It was in Atlanta that the adventure turned into a nightmare and the marriage collapsed.
There was a lot of pain and change for the kids, me, and their dad. I set a personal record for an eight-day consecutive migraine ending in the hospital. I had to lean on all the principles of my faith and ignore my basic instincts, which involved some illegal acts that may have resulted in my imprisonment. I applied grace and forgiveness to the situation as much as possible each day, and, little by little, with many periods of regression, things got better.
Then I met Dennis, and a brand new journey began.
Our lives together are fragile, messy, and beautiful, and if you are interested in more of the details of how we navigate through having our patriarch coping with a progressive disease, I have provided a link to my first Blog series, Frolicking to Fifty.https://leanaconway.blog/
