We stayed home from school today (i know) as we are all suffering horribly with seasonal allergies. My head feels like it is going to explode and the kids are up all night hacking, coughing and wheezing.
So, we stayed home. I had to run out on an errand and when i came home the girls had transformed the kitchen in to a lovely restaurant. Parker, toby and i were the customers. I ordered the orange juice and bagel with cream cheese and cucumbers from my lovely waitress, eliza.
Moments like these remind me how much i would love to homeschool. Remind me what a pleasure it is to be around kids with all their enthusiasm, energy and imagination.
My favourite thing about this little cottage i rent is my veggie garden. The girls and i spent a few hours last week weeding and laying out compost. We started some salad greens and they are already sprouting up.
I remember one spring when i was young my mom deciding to put in a vegetable garden. She spent hours digging up a huge area of grass in the backyard. I can still see her in her floral bikini top and shorts digging and shoveling and cursing. Coming in with a streaky sunburn on her back from my sloppy application of sunscreen. We spent that summer weeding and weeding and weeding. I think the weeds won out because i don't recall any vegetables except chives and pumpkins. In the fall that garden was reseeded with grass.
This is my second spring working this garden. I love it. For me gardening is the ultimate exercise in patience and reward. Having dirt under my nails gives me immense pleasure. It's satisfying work, it gives me time to relax and think while i squat in between beds pulling weeds and coaxing growth.
The other night i stayed over at shane's house because he was leaving in the very early hours on a business trip. The weekend was a long one at work because of a regatta happening at the local private school. I worked long and hard hours and was feeling more than a little haggard.
I woke up in the morning and followed my usual morning routine of coffee and desperately trying to shake the cobwebs out of my brain. I was sitting in my usual chair in my usual place in a house i lived in for four years, then left for eleven months, then returned to for eight, then left again. I sat there wondering where my memories were.
What happened in the last eight months? It's all a blur and in so many ways i don't even remember them. Being back in my house is similar. So many nights i sit and think "i don't remember ever leaving here."
And i sat in that living room in that chair and felt a little terror. Terror that so many months of my life have been lost to misery and sadness.
I had a long talk with the kids this afternoon because they have been very fragile recently. Tears in the morning when i drop them off at school, meltdowns in the afternoon, sad eyes in the evening. I told them that i was worried about them and that i wonder if they are having a hard time with all of this change.
They had lots to say. Mostly, they are happy. Sometimes, they are sad. Sometimes they are angry. They said it was so much fun - those eight months. The trips we took, the adventures we had. It was hard to hear. I am happy that they have those memories. I am sad that they are not the same memories i have. I am worried that they won't have those same joyful memories now.
I try really hard to be the best i can with them, but it is hard. It's hard to juggle everything. I have said before that i am a pretty slack parent when it comes to routines and rules and, well, school. I would rather keep them home when they are feeling sad than ship them off to school, but i can't keep them home every day.
I went to see the principal this morning after an especially rough morning drop off. I walked in and tears were running down my face. "I think my kids need to see the school counselor. I am worried about them. They are having a rough time."
"I understand. It's a bumpy road." And she gave me a knowing smile and said "It's going to be okay."
I remembered that all day. My kids have been to the smallest public schools, tiny private schools and gigantic public schools. In every single one of them i have found so much compassion and genuine purity of spirit. And so i come full circle with my bias against school and teachers - it all goes back to childhood, that i know because MY counselor told me so - and find immense support through those educators.
And i know it's going to be okay. And i know they will be okay. All of our memories are our own.
The kids and i planted our first seeds in the vegetable garden yesterday. The weather has made an almost alarming turn to heat. Hot, hot, heat. The kids have been rallying me for the first swim in the lake which i will probably attempt tomorrow after school.
I have been thinking about patterns in relationships. How the pattern, in my experience is more like a spiral. Starting at one perfect point and then slowly, unevenly, rotates outward from that. Usually, you kind of see that you're off kilter as you get towards the outside of the spiral and head back towards the center.
I think that my pattern of behaviour has been to jump ship. Abandon the sinking boat.
I've been wondering why i do that. The counselor would have said that it is all to do with something, some loss from childhood. A fear of being abandoned myself.
I'm not sure what it means to figure this out. I'm just trying to figure it out. It's been such a hard couple of years. I feel like so much time has been lost. So many possibilities destroyed. I just want to move forward understanding the backwards.
I have a bit of a cold which is making me sleep deeply, but crazily. It has been a bit of a strange week at work, mostly because of the chef getting fired one hour before service on wednesday and then launching a new menu last night.
My sleep Has been filled with workmares of the very strangest variety. The one i remember most vividly involved one of the tables being replaced with a washroom without doors. I walked out of the kitchen and was horrified to see a customer sitting happily on the toilet in the middle of the restaurant.
Odd.
There were several dreams of the usual variety which involve me falling asleep in the middle of service.
I don't really mind these strange dreams except that i wake in the morning feeling like i never leave the restaurant.
It has been a time of loss and grief on the internet. I am so saddened by the losses of both Maddie and Thalon. Beyond words and appreciating my abundant gifts at the same time.
I took several hours and moments over the past few days to enjoy my children, and also to try and capture a little bit more of them on video.
I don't know how to say what i need to say without hurting people.
The days are hard and the nights are hard.
Moments of clarity strike me with incredible sadness and braveness. I feel everything all at once. Reading to parker tonight, him smelling lovely and lavender after a bath. I was struck with my intense love for him and, at the same time, the sadness.
"I love you parker" i said in between chapters of Magic TreeHouse. "I love you too."
Our days together are such a grab bag of emotions. We flow through them. The kids cruising between intense emotions, expecting me to follow their abrupt changes. It is harder for me, an adult. I can't love and hate in a single minute. Their outbursts weigh heavy on me. And they come often and in waves. I am left exhausted at the dinner table. Trying to deal with it all, and deal with myself, and not lose my patience. And let's not forget that internal fear of not being the "better" parent. My house is a hovel compared to their other. I feel i need to make up for it in love and fun. Though i lay awake at night knowing that is crazy. That they are lucky to have two loving homes. Two parents whom adore them.
I lay awake at night wondering how all this happened. Writing entire novels in my head. Working it all out, making sense of it.
I wake in the morning at a lost for words because i am lost in words.
The prospect of dating looming in my former husbands mind and so far from mine. The prospect of another life with someone else is unfathomable to me. I feel lost in this.
It is beautiful out, really beautiful. Every year when spring finally shows up i breathe a deep sigh of relief. I made it. I made it through six months of grey, six months of being cold, six months of fighting back the demons in my head.
It's hard to believe that is has been two years since my last depression started it's debilitating crescendo. That i have continued on a positive path, mentally. That despite this being two of the most challenging years for me, emotionally speaking, that i have maintained an even keel.
There have been blips on the radar. But nothing major, nothing breaking.
Toby stayed home from school with me today so that we could work on his science project together. One on one. I have been worried about him. He has been moody, constantly shifting from anger to sadness with only brief periods of calm or happiness.
I often look at my children, observe their behaviours, and wonder who? Who will be like me? Please don't let them suffer like i have and if they do, please let them have love and support and let me be there for them.
And i worry for toby. He is so fragile. He is so intense.
We worry for them. They get the best of us and the worst.
And so we spent the morning together. We built his periscope and while we fumbled with mirrors and scissors we talked. We talked about feeling sad. That we all feel sad sometimes and that it's okay because the sad helps us to see the world a little differently. To better enjoy the happy moments. All these feelings we are going through in this house are totally normal. We are learning how to make this new disjointed reality feel normal. To make two houses feel like home. To be one family in two places.
I have had a great few days. Work was fantastic this week, busy restaurant, happy customers.
Home has been wonderful. The kids have been with me this weekend. We spent the day yesterday getting prepared to adopt a cat from the SPCA. We brought mia home late yesterday afternoon and she promptly hid so well that it took us half an hour to find her. She hasn't really come out of hiding yet and i am second guessing the whole rescuing an adult cat thing. We shall see. It's not exactly a clam and soothing house, more like total chaos followed by extreme sleep.
This morning we worked together to rake up the back yard and then went on a walk along the train tracks up to the village for lunch and ice cream cones. We feel happy. Happy to be together.
They are doing amazingly well. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the tears, for the questions. For now i am happy to just let this happiness sit for awhile.
I feel so much better, more whole, when they are around. Otherwise i sit alone long into the wee hours of the night. Pacing and thinking and making silly videos of myself singing along really loud and really badly to my favourite songs trying my hardest to avoid writing cryptic things on twitter or facebook.
I knew it was going to be an emotional journey, the first few months. Though i've been here before, separated and single, it is tougher this time. It is tougher because it feels final. Permanent.
The change seems permanent and i can't help feeling like a failure. I failed at marriage. I failed at trying to rebuild a marriage. The reasons it didn't work are simple on one level, but deeply rooted in pain and damage on the other level.
Shane and i have been getting along very well. Too well. We do better - we are nicer to each other, we love each other more - when we aren't together. Sigh. It's a complicated thing, always reminding me of the fine line between love and hate. Anger and passion.
I am trudging along, head toward the future. Small accomplishments. Getting the kids to school on time, making nice dinners, getting all the homework done. Managing the house, keeping the fire going for four days straight, keeping my children safe and warm. Turning on my happy self at work so that i can make customers happy and they, in turn, can make me happy by giving me enough money to buy some more wood.
Things coming around again and again that will push me through this transition.
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