Ansley Brooke...my first born beauty!

ANSLEY BROOKE STEPHENSON

Five years into marriage with my high school sweetheart, John and I decided we were ready to start a family. John was working at Atlanta Gas Light as an engineer and I had just started working in a family business with John’s sister, Kelly, and his father, Stanley. Stanley asked us to wait at least a year for the business to get up and running before getting pregnant, just so I could give it 100% of my time. We thought, what the heck, we’ll start trying now anyway – it’ll probably take a while to actually get pregnant. WRONG. First time’s a charm! John was so disappointed…haha. This was back in the day when doctors were now able to tell you the sex of your baby, but we decided that we wanted to be surprised.

My beautiful baby girl was born on July 19, 1990 at Georgia Baptist Hospital in downtown Atlanta. I had an easy pregnancy, only threw up twice the whole time (I HATE to throw up – something Ansley inherited from me) and only 8 hours of labor (with drugs of course). My Dad called and asked what he could bring me on his way to the hospital, so I asked for what any long-time Atlantan (and daughter of a Georgia Tech graduate) would want: lunch from the Varsity. After skipping two meals to birth my baby girl, that chili dawg, onion rings and a PC was AMAZING. For you non-locals, PC stands for “pasteurized chocolate” milk over ice. Yum. I ate all this while gazing out my hospital room window looking at the city skyline. Ironic that Ansley now lives just a couple blocks from that hospital and looks out at that skyline everyday from her apartment. But back to my little miracle…

Ansley was the first grandchild on both sides of her family so of course she was the center of everyone’s world! After six weeks of trying to nurse her, while listening to her scream bloody murder the whole time, I finally stuck a bottle of formula in her mouth and she slept through the night from then on. Poor thing was just hungry I guess! She was also a little jaundiced when we brought her home from the hospital, so she had to sleep in one of those lightbox/suitcases for a few days to rid her of the yellow tint of her skin.

My brother-in-law called her his little “subdivision”, mainly because he thought “Ansley Brooke” sounded like it should be the name of a North Atlanta neighborhood. Well, I did get the name Ansley from a beautiful little community called Ansley Park near my place of employment at the time, so he wasn’t far off. And interestingly enough, we actually did come across a neighborhood a few years later named after my daughter:

Call me a bad mother if you want, but after eight weeks at home with a newborn, I was ready to head back to work at the print shop with my sister-in-law. You know that saying “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t NOBODY happy”?? Trust me, I was a much better person/wife/mother working outside of the home. I had wonderful caregivers helping take care of Ansley and I am pretty sure she wasn’t scarred by the experience of me being a working mom. She might disagree…

Once Ansley started sleeping through the night (THANK YOU GOD), she was a really easy baby. And that was a blessing because about this time, John decided to go back to school for his masters degree. He was working full time plus going to school at night (commuting downtown to Georgia State – this was before the invention of online classes!). I’m going to fast forward a couple of years here, since those infant years were not my favorite time. Those who know me will attest to that fact. To this day, I don’t even like to hold small babies. Heck, I don’t even like to hold large babies or toddlers! (I don’t have that “warm fuzzy” gene some moms have. Sorry. Ansley and Alyssa are praying that changes when they start giving me grandbabies. Surely it will be different then, right? Right?)

She was a beautiful baby. No, really. I know all parents say that, but she was. Forget the fact that she had no hair until she was three years old….a cute little bow stuck to her bald head, and she hardly ever got mistaken for a boy after that. Of course, she could never be mistaken for a boy NOW. Good gosh…

Ansley was only 6 weeks old when she first went to the beach. Remember that first time she slept through the night? Yep – at the beach. She LOVES the beach. Every year from the time she was born, we have vacationed at our place there. That’s when she is at her happiest. It’s the one ‘constant’ in her life and I can’t see a year passing when she won’t go there for a visit. This was about a year later:

She ended up at the University of Georgia, but we raised her as an Auburn Tiger. Don’t know what happened, but I guess we should be thankful she stayed in state and took advantage of the Hope Scholarship she earned. But I still think orange is her color, don’t you? And look at those Shirley Temple curls!

Ansley got her smarts from her Daddy, that’s for sure. All through elementary, middle and high school she was always in the gifted classes. She was reading real books at 5 ½ years old, writing in complete sentences soon after that and making straight A’s easily and without studying. She’s always wanted to be a teacher, forcing her sister to “play school” when probably all Alyssa wanted to do was “play restaurant”. I know without a doubt that Ansley’s desire to become a teacher was put in place by one of her gifted teachers at Suwanee Elementary, Miss Lucy Dalton.

This woman put so much of herself into Ansley’s love of learning, keeping her challenged and hungry for knowledge. It was Miss Dalton’s example that made Ansley want to be just like her, and 13 years later Ansley is working on her own certification to be a gifted teacher! So kudos to Miss Dalton because I know one day Ansley’s students will appreciate and look up to her the same way.

You know those studies that talk about birth order and how each child in a family tends to have certain characteristics? Well, as a child, Ansley sure has those “first born” traits nailed down:

1)    Confident: All that attention over everything she did made her more likely to believe in herself.

2)    Organized: She always knew where to find things, because she had a system for everything. She was always on time and didn’t forget much.

3)    Cautious: When presented with a new situation, Ansley tended to be an introvert – sitting back, watching and listening, until she felt more comfortable. Once she became acclimated to her new environment, the cautiousness would subside.

4)    Perfectionist: Just like her Dad, Ansley hated to make a mistake. She didn’t deal well with criticism and was devastated whenever she disappointed anyone. But all these traits are what motivated her to achieve success, so there is a bright side to the perfectionist in her.

5)    Persistent: This came in handy when Ansley wanted to accomplish something, but it also made her a little bit argumentative because first borns tend to always want their way and will debate a point until they get the last word.

Right after Ansley was born, I remember cross-stitching Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” So true. From the time she was born, she has known the Lord and that He loves her. Her life has been molded around the church and her place in it. Her first paying job as a teenager was interning at a local church. In college she was a part of Sigma Alpha Omega, a Christian sorority at UGA, serving as secretary at one time. To this day, she puts her faith in the Lord, leaning on Him in times of trouble, stress and disappointments. Heck, she even has “Jesus” tattooed on her arm (upside down it spells “Christ”!).

 

Lest you think Ansley’s life has been all unicorns and rainbows, let me assure you that it has not. She had to navigate life with ME. Those high school years were tough for us. She was a good kid, I just had a hard time with giving her “wings” to grow up and become an adult. Once we learned each others love language (and I learned how to keep my mouth shut!), we got along much better. Ansley loves DEEPLY, so she has had a few relationships (romantic or otherwise), that scarred her heart a bit when that love was tested. But those who do manage to find a way into her heart will never have to worry – she is a LOYAL friend and will do anything for you. Here’s a group shot of the gang at her 16^th birthday party, many of whom she is still very close to.

She decided while in college that she wanted to work in the Gwinnett County School system when she graduated. That’s where she went to school, and it is one of the top ranked school districts in the state of Georgia. Right. EVERYONE wants to work there. But she set that goal, and even though we tried to warn her not to get her hopes up, three weeks before school started, she was offered a job teaching 10^th grade Language Arts at Mill Creek High School in Braselton, GA. The girl doesn’t give up.

 

She LOVES sweet tea, Georgia football, reading and traveling. Oh and don't forget really HIGH heels - she even teaches in them.

She has always called Justin Timberlake her “husband”. Can you say OBSESSED?? Waiting outside the arena at her first ever concert back in high school, she won a JT trivia contest with the local radio station and scored “early entry” passes which put her front and center at his concert.

When his tour schedule this year failed to include Atlanta, she bought tickets for his concert in NYC and went there to see him! Give her a break…it was on her birthday in July. What else was she suppose to do?? Of course Atlanta was later added to the schedule for December, so she bought tickets for that one too. Oh! And Justin even called Ansley one time on her phone (long story for another blog one day), but she didn’t hear it ring and missed having that heart attack, thank goodness.

I wanted to give these people some of the responsibility for the woman Ansley has become. Whether it's your sister, your BFF, a high school friend, a boyfriend, a sorority sister, a roommate, a college friend, or a co-worker, each one is a big part of the person we end up being as an adult. I appreciate every one of them for standing by her side in all seasons of her life.

  

 

  

Ansley’s part time job while in college involved a lot of promotional modeling and being a brand ambassador for different companies: she was a Bud Light girl, a foot model, an extra in a movie (The Neighborhood Watch with Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn), a Spartan girl at the Spartan Races, and a runway model, just to name a few. How much fun is THAT?? Living the dream…

  

So let’s fast forward a little more to present day. Ansley has graduated from UGA with a double major in English and English Education. She now has an apartment in downtown Atlanta with a great view of the skyline. She’s enjoying the single life, summers off from teaching, and is working on her master’s degree.

Well, as you can see, I could not be more proud of this girl! She has turned into a beautiful, loving, generous and hard-working young lady. I know she is going to make a difference in this world being a school teacher. True fact in case you didn’t know: No one becomes a school teacher solely for the money…it’s for the joy of making a difference in the lives of students, and I know Ansley is doing that. I wish she was closer to us, but I know her heart is in Atlanta – it was for me too at one time. I hope she knows how much I love her.