A Road Called Memory

I was browsing through some old photos of myself tonight, and it struck me how different life is now.  It’s not my looks that have really changed throughout the years.  I’ve changed my hair color, as women are apt to do, but otherwise a lot is the same – including my weight (thank the Lord for small victories!).  What struck me is how utterly old I feel now.  And, I guess in some ways the mountains I have successfully climbed in life have aged my soul even if they have not aged my body.  I have started to further comprehend the ‘with age comes wisdom’ quote, though at times I would gladly trade back some of the “wisdom” I have learned the hard way through life’s many trials in order to return to the innocent freedom of youth. 

As my mind continually veered back through the years I came to rest on my first crush in junior high.  My 12 year old is going through some similar life events and first ‘loves’ (and I use the term “love” loosely here) that I did at his age.  Seventh grade was such a magical year, when I look back on it now.  Actually being in the seventh grade however was very, very difficult as my body rushed to catch up with the emotional advances that changed and fluctuated daily.  My feelings about Austin, though, never wavered the entire time I was in middle school.  Thinking of it now, I giggle out loud.   Little Austin.  And I do mean little.  I was the shortest girl in my class.  He was shorter than I was.  But boy what he lacked in height he sure made up for in cuteness!  The pure infatuation I had with that boy…I still remember how he used to flip his straight, brown hair and roll his pants legs.  (This was the 90’s, okay?  We ALL used to roll our jeans.  You always had to buy them longer, so you could flip one side over the other and then fold them up twice.  Gave them this nice little skinny leg appeal.  Even the boys did it.)  Although one of the most popular kids in school (if not THE most popular boy), Austin still had this home town charm and offered a politeness to everyone he met – all the way from the future prom queen down to the band geeks.  And yes, I am proud to admit it – in school I fell into the latter category instead of the former. 

How things change as we age!  I came into a beauty all my own the summer between high school and college, and Austin was long since forgotten.  Surprisingly though, the lesson of that first love never did leave.  The innocence of childhood does still remain such a powerful force deep within our hearts.  Sometimes all it needs is a little nudge to come forth into reality.  As I find myself an older woman, single again, I seem to travel back to those gentler days with more and more frequency as I remember the incorruptibility and the longing of things yet to come.  I can still taste the promise of so many open opportunities that were to lie ahead of me, and those past memories are juxtaposed with the harsh reality I have already come to know so closely and deeply.  As I begin to step a toe out into the dating world, testing the water to see if it is in fact warm enough to jump into, I think back to little Austin.  Those magical feelings I would so innocently experience as my heart would skip that beat when he’d walk by in the hall still brings a flutter to my stomach.  And really now is no different than seventh grade; I look forward to the flutter and tickle of things unknown that have yet to pass.

I looked back through those photos yet again, and although my body as well as my mind has certainly aged, I looked close – peered in – and I did see it.  The shimmer and glistening in my eyes of those things hoped for but not yet come to fruition.  I began to rethink the ‘with age comes wisdom’ quote.  Maybe wisdom is nothing more than adding the innocence of childhood to the experience of today – the joining of the optimism from yesterday and the joy of the present together in order to experience a hope for tomorrow.  Who knows, maybe my ‘Austin’ is still out there….

A Day in the Life of a Single Mother

• There will always be Cheerios hidden on the kitchen floor, dirty laundry in the hamper, and toys on the floor.  Always.  No matter how hard I try otherwise.
• I am always late.  No matter how early I wake up.  God has already given St. Peter at the gate notice that when I am called Home, he has time for a coffee break, because I will show up late.
• Silence and quiet are two things never in my house, at least not until both boys leave for college.  I have 17 more years to go, at which time I will probably have forgotten what silence and quiet are like and will go out of my mind attempting to make enough noise on my own to liven the house up a bit.
• A dinner is not always from a recipe, and sometimes not even from the oven.  In fact, suppers from a box or a McDonald’s happy meal does quantify dinner.  Gourmet suppers that take hours to prepare are a thing of the past.
• I never have enough time to get myself ready.  I just count my blessings that I manage to make it out of the house and remember to change from my slippers to actual shoes.  (As a side note, I actually got in the car one time still in my slippers.  Luckily, as I went to shift into reverse, I noticed and sped back in the house to change.)  My son is petrified I will show up at school unknowingly still in my pajamas.  I don’t promise him otherwise, as one day it might just happen.
• My house will never be clean.  Not completely.  Most days I have to dust the dust off of the Pledge before I can begin to clean.
• The days will always run together.  One evening I searched incessantly for a favorite television program.  Only after cursing the network for removing it did I realize that the TV show I was looking for is televised Monday nights.  Today was Friday, not Monday.  Somewhere I lost an entire weekend.
• On any given day, something is always missing, broken, or needing to be purchased. 
• I will always wake up exhausted, no matter how many hours of sleep I get.
• I will always second guess myself insofar as the decisions I make on my own that affect my boys and our future.
• ‘No’ is the most often used word in the English vocabulary, followed by stop and then sit.  At least in my vocabulary.
• Is single motherhood an Olympic sport?  It’s not?  It should be.
• I have resigned myself to never being able to go to the bathroom again in peace, and that I will not get a shower that is over five minutes for many years to come.
• Most men look at my life, smile, and keep going.  That’s okay.  It takes a strong person to wrap their arms around all the blessings I have.  I’m okay with waiting; my boys are too important to simply settle.
• Social life?  I’m sorry, what is that again?
• On any given day, my calendar and to do list have more items on them than the New York Stock exchange. 
• No matter how hard you try to explain it, people just can not visualize the life you lead and why walking around with dried baby milk on your shoulder just really isn’t a big deal, in the grand scheme of things.
• No matter how busy your day is, there is always room to dry tears, help with that really unbearable math problem, and tuck each little angel in at night.
• You will always forget something every time you leave the house.  As long as it’s not the children, it will be okay.
• ‘E’ doesn’t always mean empty on the gas tank.  Sometimes it stands for just ‘Enough’ gas to get the kids to school, drive through the bank to make a transfer, slide into the grocery to get more formula, before gently coasting to rest at the pump – with just enough room to get the nozzle in the tank.
• Although single motherhood was not my choice, I’ve come to embrace all that it offers.  What other life experience can cause you to grow in ways you never imagined and obtain strength when you thought yours was completely depleted?

Heart Rays

Life is a funny, bizarre journey.  The days can seemingly run into one another with the mundane, yet each moment is a spectacle all of its own.  If one is not careful, one will miss the complex intricacies of everyday living.  There are moments where we know we never want to look back; we never want to experience anything remotely similar ever again.  There are also the moments you want to freeze; to never forget.  You stop and gather in every sense, just to try and keep hold of something that you know is fleeting.  Yet no matter how hard one tries, life moves on – through the good, through the bad, through the spectacular, through the ordinary.  A life well lived contains a litany of emotions from the surreal to the painful.  Life is not life unless you experience the emotions; the undercurrents that sweep you away before you even realize you’ve left.  Embrace the current of life, my dear friend, and keep hold for the years move fast even when we are moving slow.  As time passes you will come to realize that the days gone by just may be the best days of your life.  Do not miss those little shining crystals of brilliance hidden among your path and concealed in your own heart and soul.  We each can shine like the sun if only given the chance.  Let your soul shimmer; the rays of the heart are a beautiful and unique spectacle meant to be shared.  Nurture the crystals you call your own, polish them until they glimmer in even the faintest of light.  For even in the darkest of moments your own brilliance can carry you through in order to find the lighted path ahead.  That is the delight of heart rays; they are present in our life to guide us through even when we may not be available for ourselves.  Capture your own heart and hold tight – it will guide your journey of life and will take you places you never envisioned you would go.  And, if you let it, it will shine like the sun never letting your path dim.

Hurricanes and Ocean Waves

It has been way too long since I have set aside time just for me - time to nourish my own soul so that I am able to support those around me.  Working from home, I have been so busy growing my business, keeping sales up, and figuring out why sales just dropped while still raising the kids, playing with the animals, and trying to maintain the house that it had all consumed me from dawn till dusk.  It had enveloped me to the point that I didn’t realize how much it had encompassed me, until I broke down a few days ago in a scrambling mess of insanity.  I woke up from this bad dream called life to realize my house though still standing was a mess – there was stuff – everywhere.  Even in the bathroom.  How did random stuff get in the bathroom? 

I came back to reality and it hit me just how exhausted I was, both physically and emotionally.  The past few months I had not even taken a reprieve in the shower; I would rush in only to emerge a quick few moments later.  The goal was to get clean in as short of a time as possible, so I could get back to whatever it was I was doing before I had gotten wet.  And the time I had spent in the shower (outside of using soap) was used to think about how I could grow my business, how I could get my oldest son more stability in the midst of the chaos he experiences at his father’s house, or a good solution to get the baby to stop screaming immediately every time he needed or wanted something.  Although I constantly tell my children to have patience, that I am only one person, I forgot to repeat that mantra to myself.  I was trying to be all things to all people in all situations, except the only problem was that I forgot about myself in all of it. 

The forgetting of self led to one late night where I literally stopped in the mass chaos of movement, looked at it all, thought about it all, dropped to my knees, and broke into tears.  The enormity of the situation and all I had to do completely overrode all I am and all I have to offer.  As the tears flowed freely, one of my cats carefully approached.  I grabbed that cat and hugged tight as tears dropped on to his back.  The poor thing was just dangling there – too afraid to move even though his back was drenched by this point.  Good for him, at least I taught him enough by this point for him to realize not to move in the midst of a crises.  After a few moments I let the cat go, not because I wanted to, but because I was getting tons of cat hair sticking to my tear stained face.  Even in a breakdown I did have some self respect.  Things probably looked bad enough without cat hair on the face.

As I began picking off the hair one by one, I knew something had to lighten up.  I just did not have the time to remove cat hair like that just because I had a breakdown.  Goodness, I had enough stuff to do that was actually important!  After the cat realized I had reached a plateau of being a bit more stabilized, he quickly (albeit calmly and quietly so as to not attract attention) slid into the other room.

Days later, I can now realize and point to the times during the past months when I should have stopped and taken a deep breath.  Even hurricanes have their down times in the ocean where they relax in order to pick up more speed to head back to land.  I am no different.  Just like a hurricane, I need time to step back and gain speed so I can conquer the land mass ahead of me.  Today is just as busy as last week, and there are still the same demands, but through my crises I did come to realize just how little time I was taking to recharge my own batteries.  The night I was crying on the poor cat I found my batteries to be dead.  No one – not even supermom – can function on a dying energy field.  So, just like a hurricane, the past few days I have found myself veering back out into the ocean to take some time to stop and gather energy from the waves around me.  Turning, I have headed back to land.  There are more land masses to conquer, and I need all the energy I can get!   

Secrets

"If we knew each other’s secrets, what comforts we would find."

An amazing quote from John Churton Collins, and utterly true. What we may think as private feelings or individual stories relative only to our own heart, are more than likely felt by someone else in close proximity to us, and they as well may also be keeping that same secret.