A Grateful Heart and the Friends Who Fill It Up

It’s taken me the entire month to sit down and write a blog to celebrate the season of Thanksgiving.  It’s not because I don’t have blessings to be grateful for, for there are many and I recognize and have a grateful heart for all of them.  

Sometimes I’d sit down and start to write and ten minutes later realized I was still staring at a blank screen because I didn’t seem to have anything to say.  Other times I would sit down to write and I would have a hard time pulling up the feelings of gratitude that I knew were there but seemed to be playing a game of hide and seek in my heart.  Sometimes I was ready to write but had too much homework and had to play at being responsible.

I am blessed.  I am blessed to be a mother, a daughter, a sister, and a friend.  I am blessed to be able to go to school.  I am blessed to have three beautiful children who grew under my heart in love.  I am blessed to be able to live in country where I enjoy the freedoms that I do.  I am blessed with good health and I am blessed with the knowledge that there is a God in the heavens and that He knows and loves me.

So, where are my thoughts most wandering off to right now?  I am feeling overwhelming gratitude for my friends.

I’m a bit of a contrast.  On one hand, I can be the life of the party when I am comfortable with people I know.  On the other hand, it takes me some time to develop close, intimate friendships.  When I do however, they mean a great deal to me and there is almost nothing I wouldn’t do for those I love and care about. 

The Suitcase

Throughout our lives we all pick up baggage at one point or another. It’s inevitable. We take our experiences with us, sometimes they even influence who we become and how we act and how we see the world and ourselves. Some of us don’t even know we are carrying baggage. Or some may see it and try to act like it’s not there. Some people don’t know what to do with it and so they do nothing and it becomes their constant companion. Others try to drop it off somewhere along the way but get either get sidetracked or find that they have grown comfortable with it and choose to keep it with them…they have gotten so used to carrying their luggage around that for better or for worse they can’t imagine life without it. They have become attached to it even if it is heavy and burdensome.

I have been unpacking my suitcase for the last couple of years. Every so often I would reach in and find something I no longer needed and toss it off to the side. I threw away pain, anger, sadness over a lost marriage, bitterness, disappointment. All of it served a purpose for a time for there is a cycle to grief but I knew those things were not something that I wanted to be part of my life. I found my suitcase getting lighter over time and it felt so good I would want to get rid of more items…..sometimes I was tossing things right and left and at other times certain things were harder to get rid of. But I kept working at it, kept unpacking and before I knew it, time had gone by and I could see the bottom of my suitcase and then I thought it was empty.

Junk In My Trunk

So who's got a little extra junk in their trunk?

I know, I know. You thought you were going to get a blog about my posterior region.  As much as I'd like to wax poetic or philosophical about my bootie, I will do my best to contain myself. So sorry to disappoint.

I have junk in my other trunk!  Let's get one thing straight. I was mislead when I purchased my vehicle. There was no sticker on it that informed me about the problem I am now facing with it. The salesman assured me I had received an excellent deal (that should have been my first red flag) and he was smiling and waving at me as I drove out of the parking lot.  If I could have read his thoughts at the time it probably would have sounded something like this. "So long, sucker."

There should have been a disclaimer in the agreement when I purchased the car that said, "Anything left in the car overnight, will thereby multiply itself or reinvent itself into another object which will then spawn other objects.  Some of these objects will be recognizable and others will look as if someone broke into your car while you were sleeping and dumped their assorted unwanted objects and lame wedding reception gifts into your car."

Here is my own DISCLAIMER:  if you are one of those people who always have a spotless car then continue reading with caution. The following material may bring on nauseousness, heart palpitations and cause you to break out in hives.

The Wall Chronicles

So let’s talk walls. Have you really ever thought about how many different kinds of walls there are? No? Then it’s your lucky day! The next time you’re out having dinner with friends and someone starts talking about walls, as they usually do in dinner conversations, then you can share all of the vast knowledge you will be gaining from this post. Trust me. Nothing says “I’m an intelligent, well rounded person,” more so than talking about walls. In my next couple of posts I will be talking about walls.

So, what does a wall do? Well, it creates a boundary or a barrier. Walls keep things in but they also keep things out. They make us feel safe, or protected. Sometimes they do just that and sometimes that safety is an illusion. Sometimes we “hit walls.” Sometimes we’re thrown against walls. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, we can’t seem to climb over it to the other side. Sometimes we smarten up, find a ladder, and climb over that wall to the other side. 

Walls serve a purpose sometimes. When our heart has taken too many beatings we will start building a wall around it. Someone said something unkind that hurt you. Hey, here’s a brick. Someone you love made a choice that brought you pain. Have some mortar to lay that brick with. You dared to let yourself dream that you could be happy and have the life you desire. Wait, hold steady while I hand you a few more bricks. You lost someone close to you and can’t go through that kind of pain again. And so the building of the wall begins. 

Midnight Drooling, Snoring and Flatulence (no, not me!)......in No Particular Order

     Okay, something’s going on. I know what it is. The problem is how to get a handle on it. Maybe the problem is not a handle but a doorknob. Let’s not stop at just any old doorknob. Let’s make it a bedroom doorknob. My bedroom doorknob. On the other side of that doorknob is a bed. My bed. I’m not in it.

Why not? Where am I? I’m sitting on my living room floor in a late night semi-trance as I watch an ant trying valiantly to haul off the remnants of some food item that one of my kids left behind. Why do you ask, would I rather be watching an ant at one thirty in the morning with drool starting to run down my chin, eyes glazing over, than in my soft, comfy bed that I have all to myself. Hmm……..all to myself. Maybe that is the problem?

     No, I don’t need a pity party. I've gotten rather used to sleeping by myself. I even have a list of perks that only come from sleeping by oneself. How does one sleep by oneself anyway?? Unless you divide like an amoeba in the middle of the night....... Oh sorry, getting off track......Anyway I've got it really good. I don’t have to listen to anyone snoring, mumbling or flatulating  in their sleep. I get to hog all the covers and put my cold feet anywhere I want. I get to wake up with my eyebrows shooting off in all directions like my Uncle Stanley with no one there to notice. I don’t have to wake up to someone's morning breath. Now come on, is this not the life or what?

     I won’t say what I do miss about having someone else in my bed. This is a PG rated family-type blog and if anyone has to think too hard about that than, well…………geez there’s nothing I even can say! And no.......it's not all about the "S" word. You know.....snoring :) And yes, I can say sex. Just did!

Card Carrying Estrogen Member

So we all know we do it. It's a hormonal thing. We often times divide and conquer obligations in our relationships by our estrogen and testosterone levels. It's true that there is more cross over now when it comes to the "standard" responsibilities of the sexes. I've discovered there are men who love to cook and many of them are much better at it than I am! I've also discovered that I am even more capable than I previously realized of taking care of the more testosterone loaded responsibilities around the house. However, there are inherent things we tend to do as males and females that are generally unique to our genders.


Part of the requirement of being an estrogen card carrying member was that it was mandated that I, just by having sole ownership of that card, frequent Bath and Body. On a somewhat regular basis. Any estrogen card holder knows this experience comes with ownership privilege. I would come home with an assortment of products for the sole purpose of taking baths with bubbles that called themselves Coconut Lime Verbena or Amber Woods, and body creams that smoothed and softened my dry Utah desert skin.

At the end of a long day (which was generally most days) I would get the kids to bed, run a hot tub filled with sweet smelling bubbles in my lovely garden tub, take a book, and ah....................I would soak the cares of the day away.


Fast forward a couple of years and one of my favorite past times has been severely inhibited. I walk in my little closet....oh sorry, I mean my bathroom. I look at the tub and longingly remembered the days where I could soak in the tub without my knees being pushed up to my chin. I look down at my reading material for the evening and sigh. The History of Islam would generally not be my first choice but I have a paper to write. I look around for all of my female bath paraphernalia and see my bottle of bubbles lying on the floor of the tub, emptying its last couple of teaspoons down the drain. Someone knocked it over and didn't pick it up.....again.

I notice I'm out of sugar scrub and wonder if I can make some. Surely I could! So I do. I really feel like pampering myself tonight so I go to scrounge up some candles. The only ones I could find were a half a dozen tea lights, but hey, in a pinch those will do! So I take my text book, light the candles, turn out the bathroom light and sink into the tub. All six inches of it. I lay there wondering if I could have a better experience if I bought a kiddie pool for the backyard, let the water warm in the sun all day, and run a little toy boat around in it when I take a bath so that it will create some bubbles.

I try the sugar scrub. Something was wrong with my sugar oil ratio and I'm left with sugar hardening on some parts of my body while other parts are streaked with oil that I just can't seem to get off....maybe the water wasn't hot enough? So, I try to read while I pretend my sugar scrub is an all over body mask. Hey, I couldn't have gotten the same treatment at the spa for 75 cents! I had just gotten to the most engrossing chapter on Islamic law when the air conditioner turned on and whooshed out my little teeny tiny tea lights.

So there I am. Laying in six inches of now cooling water in the dark; trying to dangle my now stiff from under my chin legs over the side of the tub so I don't stay in a permanent Quasimodo position. I am crusted (or would that be encrusted?) and oiled over at the same time. Yes, I have special talents. And I am thinking to myself. "Self. One day you will laugh about this. One day you may have a bath big enough to soak in without having to become a contortionist. One day, you may actually remember why you used to have normal size candles in your bath and bedroom. One day you will have a tub to take a bubble bath in that holds more than six inches of water at a time."

In the meantime, my estrogen card is going in the time out corner.

Kristin

The Nest Will Empty

MY GOOD FRIEND VERNIE CHAPOOSE WAS KIND ENOUGH TO CONTRIBUTE AS A GUEST BLOGGER:


It’s a given. You know from the moment you see a little face change color and scream, that God has let you borrow a child. We call them our own, raise them as best we know how - but in the end they leave you to live their own lives. It’s a moment we live for, threaten to celebrate, hope comes sooner than later, then the day comes when you’re cleaning up after them for the last time and find water leaking down your face.

I look around the room - the rooms, he called his own and move the scattered piles of memories folded or piled in heaps and see in them his life as I knew it.
A dozen and a half years ago he came to me, welled up into this world out of an incision and became a part of my world. Nine years later he was mine and mine alone forsaking and forsaken by his mother.

Sitting in his room(s,) surrounded by all the years’ accumulation of clothing, gear, cards and pictures, I feel like a part of me has gone out and left there now, is an empty hole that is sucking the energy out of me. I know he’s not gone, as all the world knows gone, dead and gone. He’ll be back, but when he returns he’ll be a man - not my little boy who needed me.

Eight years. Eight years of holding everything together, being the pillar of strength for this little family. Eight years of being the Father, the Mother, the maid, the laundry girl and every other thing, teacher, counselor, chauffer and mechanic. I can’t say never, but rarely did I let the teardrops fall - and my boys didn’t see them on my face.

The problem, as I see it, with raising children, is that if you do it right there is no need for them to come back to the nest and ask for your help. Four sons I’ve raised from childhood to fathers themselves. The oldest have their lives, their children and their wives. They are making it in the world and sometimes come by to visit. But none really need me to hold their hand as they go on in the world. Yes I’ll pat myself on the back, there is no one else in this empty house to do it for me.

So I’ll pack up the house. The children's home for their entire lives, mine after the divorce, but theirs since their inception. I’ll pack up their lives and move some of it into storage, send some to good will, haul much of it to the dump, and pack me up to another life somewhere down the road. I know that life is more than the stuff we gather to ourselves. That beyond this life are riches beyond measure. But being a Dad, and living just to be a Dad for all those years…

I sit in his room, surrounded by the scattered remnants of memories lived and discarded as a boy traveled the road to manhood.

And I cry.