As might be expected, I could start this entry with, “This has been a very long year of many emotions.” However, I’m fairly certain every single person in the universe could start their blog that way… Well, those that feel the necessity to have a personl blog, a blog that talks about what they are up to and their life’s journey, and not the blogs which pertain to fashion updates or celebrity crucifying or Fox News or non-profits hoping for another donation…
So, I’m actually starting today’s entry with a sweeping generalization that everyone, meaning anyone, who has a personal blog has had a year similar to mine in ups and downs, wrong turns down one way streets, death, music, happiness, confusion, parenting, pets, flooding, sunshine, travel, wet socks when stepping out of a car during a downpour, excitement over a phone call from a friend, angry phone calls from a person within the family, loss of a guitar, laughter over wine, moving pictures (still photos that make my heart burst with love, and those you sit in the dark to see and create a reaction, mostly due to the soundtrack, but, on occassion, due to excellent writing, acting and/or editing. Ok, maybe a great director in the mix, too.)
I haven’t written a lengthy journal entry here in a while. But it’s been on my mind. On my mind A LOT.
Basically, life has been writing for me, and it has taken all my wherewithall to just keep my balance in the eye of the storm. Not to say storms are bad. I rather like storms. Which is probably why I’m still standing. Drenched, perhaps, but, for the most part, still learning that we have tools for emotional downpours—shelters, umbrellas, treehouses, cars, ponchos, rubbers, therapists, friends, family, God, weatherpeople (I’d like to thank them for warning us in advance of impending doom.)
Am I speaking metaphorically or realistically? Both. I think since it’s my blog, and my jibber jabber, I’ll just roll with what is flowing, and share all the stuff in my head, heart and eyeballs. You can read it all, or skip through, or go away. I won’t really know what you’ve done, if you’ve even been here (unless you leave me a note or email me or call me and say, “YOUR WORDS HERE AS TO WHAT YOU WOULD SAY TO ME AFTER YOU READ EVERYTHING BECAUSE I CAN’T SPEAK FOR YOU.” (You wouldn’t call me and say those exact words, although, knowing some of you, perhaps you might, and then I will DEFINATELY know that you read up to, at least, this segment.) See, I don’t have a tracker. I’m not spying on you, keeping tallies on visitors, gathering info for future e-blasts. This is just an open journal to the world saying, “Here I am. I have stuff to say.” That’s really all it is. That’s really what we are, people walking around, wanting to share what we are thinking and feeling, and now we have podcasts and blogs and FB and we are blah-blahing with spray paint on walls and leaving it post it notes on computer screens…we are all vying for attention in our own ways and….well, it’s a noisy world.
1) Moonlight is a feral cat that lives on our front porch and will not allow herself/himself to be touched. Even though we sit crosslegged and still, placing food and water, morning and night, out for this mangled, chocolate coated, teen-i-cy cat (it has to be about 4 pounds, full grown.) It is a dark Siamese with a General Patton holler, ” MEEEEEEEEEEE-ROOOOW!” Yes, the “r” is intentional. It will meow until the bowls are full, then semi-circle around you as if you are holding a machete behind your back, so, eventually, you stand up and watch from behind the glass window in the front door. I’m sad I shall never get to pet this cat, or hold it in my arms, and whisper, “It’s ok General Patton Moonlight, sir!” We will never be able to let it know we love it. It’s blind in one eye, and deaf in both ears (hence the loudest meow you will ever, EVER hear.) It wants to be heard. We hear it, we love it, and we are not going to abandon her/him/it.
2) School. Two kids in school, two different schools, two different school philosophies, both very, very good schools in that they are both eager to TEACH and create a solid, enthusiastic environment for children to thrive. Yes, that’s a blessing, and believe me, we are grateful.
School, for those who are parents, know what could be said here: it’s an amazing place to meet and befriend other parents, an instant way to create playdates between children; we can meet at the park, help with carnival, check on homework, mentor students who may not get extra help at home, pack lunches, drop off, pick up, help with other kids when their parents are (pick one/think of more): stuck in traffic, running late from the office, plane didn’t arrive, they just need time to cry, exhausted and could they please send their kids home with yours/or you yourself ask if your kids can go to their home for a while?
Those of you without kids can skip to three. Hmm..perhaps I could have put that as the first sentence, right behind the 2), but then you wouldn’t have gotten to read about what all the parents know. So, I guess I actually typed this segment just for you without children to say that a huge part of parenting is the Monday – Friday lifetime of 6:30 am-4:00 pm (plus after school extra curriculars) until your babies reach 18, an unselfish gift we give our children (if we have our heads screwed on right), and even on the days when 6:45 a.m. just seems too early, you get up, anyway. And, if you are blessed, you have a partner who gets up and helps get everything ready—breakfast, answering last minute questions (“Where are my SHOES!?” because no one seems to know except a parent), packing those aforementioned lunches, sending one child out the door to walk to school, one out to the car to be driven to school, and then cleaning the kitchen, the table, spreading beds, figuring out which school papers . Over and over and over and then Saturday comes, and there is soccer or choir or theatre or band practice or all of it or none of it…maybe a family trip to Enchanted Rock where one child goes in and makes it through the 1/2 mile pitch black cave on her own while you are trying not to become completely frantic in the thought they have been swallowed up by the slime and pitfalls and cave snakes and bat guano and find them, scraped and bruised, on the far side, standing, blurry eyed in the bright sunshine, and you hug them tight and in disbelief, stare at them, and ask, “How did you do that? Why didn’t you wait for us?” And they just stare at you and say, “I couldn’t hear anything but all these echoing voices, bouncing off walls, and I couldn’t hear yours, and I figured if I just kept going forward, I’d reach the end and be able to get out, but if I sat and waited, maybe no one would come…” And you want to weep and then you realize how much LOVE can make you almost physically EXPLODE into a thousand million spoons full of gratitude that this person you love had the authority of mind to take care of herself and not freak out, but somehow had the guts, the courage, to keep going, using only her hands to guide herself through this narrow, strange universe of unknown goo and sheer blindness.