Feeling a little...

 

Some days are like that.  So up and down, roller-coasteresque that you spend the whole day just trying to figure out if you are headed into or headed out of danger.    Not the kind of danger where your life depends on the next decision, but more the kind that eats away at your sanity.  The kind that feels like being nibbled to death by ducks.    And on those days I tend to ponder “Is this what I signed on for?  Is this what I wanted?”  It’s really easy to forget why I started down this path in the first place.

 I just read a book in which a character asks “I must know; As a child is this the woman you dreamed of becoming?”  In short.  No.  Lately I’m kind of tired of being me.  

What no one ever explained is how the children, husband, marriage, job, career you wanted with every fiber of your whole being is also the same thing on any other given day that feels like the exactly one thing holding you back from your true pursuit of happiness.  

The first time I felt this way I was scared out of my mind.  I had a brand new baby and I realized that, try as I might, I was not going to shower alone for a very, very long time and certainly not on any daily, or even planned and reliable basis.   And you know, I felt like the world’s worst human being for about ten crap minutes, and then called someone I trusted and after they stopped laughing at me, and I stopped crying, they explained the sheer truth of it all.  “Mama, you are going to hate them sometimes.  And in the next minute love them just as much.  You’re just scared.”  

This has been such a life-saving piece of advice and at the time, I didn’t realize both home important, and how hard to share, that little nugget is.  It’s takes serious courage to tell someone you don’t always want what you have but have chosen to ride the ride through all of its stops.  It takes courage to admit that sometimes you don’t feel all unicorns and roses about your spouse.  That your children have not been making you shoot out shiny rainbows and stars lately.  That your job, your responsibilities, your health care regime, or your ugly-ass shoes are making your soul cry little tears of purple poison.

Today, as I drove in the rain, I had a film run through my head.  I remember driving these same roads in my early twenties, planning the renovation on the gorgeous farm-house I wanted to buy and envisioning the ducks that would bob gracefully on my future pond.  I envisioned wine-laden dinner parties on the patio facing the orchard.  My guest list included people I could not imagine my life without.  All things were possible because I was young and idealistic.  Down to a detail, the whole scene came about differently.  My life does not include this gorgeous house, nary a duck to be seen, and the orchard has kindly requested I stop bringing wine when I pick apples in the fall, so, well… there you go.

The planned guests at my party have all moved on in new and different directions.  Some to other locations, some to other jobs, some to a different spouse, some to other spiritual planes.  I miss them.  I miss who I was with them.  And with sadness, today, I realized that I miss dreaming.

 Is it just my age?  Is it another unspoken reality that at some point you stop dreaming? Or that you realize that these things are likely only dreams of what could be on any other day under different circumstances?   I need the updated version of the rule book that explains these things, for otherwise I think it is only me that feels this way.  And I worry that I missed the secret formula that makes things come ‘round right.

So today, I put this out into the universe because I’m a little betwixt and between.  I need a good cup of coffee, a good cry, some decent meditation, and some good advice to start me on the next steep learning curve.  I’m not asking for validation of the life I’m living, because on any other day I know that this is not too shabby, and everything is only temporary.  I just need to know that somewhere out there you are going through this too, or have been through this, or are afraid this is the territory you are headed into as well.   I’m looking for that kindred “I’ve been there sister, and it’s ugly, but here’s how you get through it…”

So please, bring your bottle of wine to my imaginary farm table and let’s sit under my imaginary stars and watch imaginary fireflies.  Lay your wisdom on me.  And I will thank you with real, and deep gratitude.

Bathroom Humor

So we go into a local fabric chain store to buy a zipper and bias tape.  Easily find the zipper, then have to assess 18,000 varieties and persuasions of bias tape.  (Who knew there were, or that one might need this many options?)  Sister Middle has to immediately go to the loo.  Assures me it cannot wait.  I hurriedly grab the closest bias tape in "It Will Have To Do" Pink, and pay the personality-less cashier.   (NOTE: Sales associates everywhere, if you see  a Mama with three children, one of whom is clutching the business district of her clothing, for the love of all that is holy, let them use your bathroom.  That Mama will not only bless you, praise you, and mention you personally to management, she will likely spend additional time in the store and double or triple her initial intended purchase.  Husbands should disregard that last part completely.)

 Carry Little One on one hip, butting the door open with the other and scramble down the sidewalk with two big kids following.  One of which is holding the bag of hastily acquired notions.  We locate a bathroom in a nearby department store, only to find that only one stall is remotely functional.  In we go, with Sister Big declining the invitation.  Through the closed door I can hear the whistle of plastic shopping bag being swung in an ever increasing rotational speed and request nicely that it cease.  It does not.  I ask once more, with less gentility, and still to no avail.  Finally I trot out my best crazed person voice and hiss that it "better stop this instant!"  It does, but at exactly the same time that I realize we are no longer in the facility alone.  (It's very challenging to peer through the crack of a restroom stall and not look creepy.  I'm reasonably sure I didn't pull it off.)

The newly arrived individual gives all the audible cues that she is there for an extended period of time, but cannot get down to business until we leave.  A demure defecator, this one.  The repeated throat clearing, sighing, and handbag itemization are all registered on my end.  It's not that I don't get the signals, but I've my own issues in stall three in that Sister Middle can't/won't go with Little One looking at her and is trying to argue with the toddler about her need to turn and face the wall, away from anything happening at the potty.  Alas, Little One is fascinated with the potty, (as long as she does not have to use it!), and is unable or unwilling, (or both) to look away.  I have been forbidden to open the door and stand on the other side because it would be too scary and someone might see her privates.  So here we stand in complete eliminator gridlock.

Sparing you the details of all that transpired, we are finally able to leave the restroom and I for one feel many things, but not rested.  I take the bag of supplies from Sister Big and realize that it is suspiciously lighter than previously.  Sure enough, the zipper is missing.  Nobody has ever seen it, nor knows what a zipper is.  We backtrack the parking lot, to the restroom, and back to the sewing store where we ask Ms. Personalitectomy if we could have left it behind.  She assures me with brevity that she too has no idea what a zipper is, nor has she ever seen one.  SO helpful!

I purchase the zipper (again), and grab the elastic and ribbon I didn't have time to pick up before our emergency mission.  The cashier and I exchange no words at all.  (My favorite way to spend my money actually.  Please, please, do not in any way acknowledge that I am shopping in your store and supporting your paycheck's arrival each week.)   All and sundry load into the car and we depart for home.  Mercifully, the wee one is sleeping soundly enough I can possibly slide her into the crib and finish this project today, this nap time even!

Well, all I can offer is that somewhere in my Vera Bradley bag lies a magic portal into which sewing notions go never to be seen again.  I emptied the thing, turned it inside out, even tunneled through the compartment that holds the cardboard sleeve that give the bag a bottom structure.  Nope.  Nothing to be found.  So to date, I have purchased two zippers, two packages of elastic, one package of bias tape and one spool of ribbon and all I have to show for it is one unfinished toddler dress that Mr. Unscripted has pointed out would have taken some child in a sweatshop less than thirty minutes to make had I chosen to simply buy a dress.

So, the next time you are out, if you find a small trail of sewing notions, looking ever so much like Martha Stewart and Hansel and Gretel have had a wrangle, please know that I am nearby somewhere, probably peering through a crack in a wall and trying very hard to appear well-balanced.  Please feel free to leave the bag on my car's windshield.  You'll know it's mine.  One door will be only partially closed, with a seatbelt protruding from it.  There will be no fewer than nine pairs of shoes on the floor, and possibly one lying on the pavement outside the door.  And, the interior will be liberally seasoned with goldfish crackers.  Or, feel free to look for the Mama who appears to be about lose her bananas publicly and the children who are respectively singing One Direction, The Wiggles, possibly telling a poop joke, and throwing their shoes to the street whilst screaming "No!" 

Come to think of it, that sweatshop is looking better and better all the time.