I'm an impatient person at heart. Watching the story unfold irritates me. I have been known to read books and magazines from back to front. I don't mind spoilers. I can concentrate on the art of the writing if I'm not wondering what is going to happen.
That said, there is no way to do this in life. It tends to make me a little snappish. I want the plot to move along, but so much of life is work-a-day and the plot doesn't show itself for years.
Sometimes I try to sit back and figure out who is the protagonist for this part of the story. Sometimes I just am done and want to run away.
These days I am somewhere in the middle. I feel like it's my story to establish and tell, but running away briefly sounds pretty good.
I'm still recovering from heartbreak, but I feel like it is all better. There are whole HOURS I don't think about him. HOURS! I'm trying to be patient with myself too. There is so much that can happen in the blink of an eye. All of a sudden the years have passed and the children are taller than you. All of a sudden the toddler is a young woman, a force of nature.
Patience is a virtue they say. So I am breathing into it and letting life wash over me. And I remember that the point of life is living and the plot only becomes visible when it's over and you can't get spoilers for your own future.
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Saturday, March 16, 2019
Talk about messy
There was a bomb cyclone this week in Colorado. Also known as an explosive cyclogenesis, this system creates a huge drop in pressure and creates crazy weather. We had 70 mile an hour wind gusts and hundreds of thousands of people lost power.
We were one of the households that lost power. We were fine Wednesday, snuggled up and watching movies. When the power went out I pretty much went to bed. Since then I have struggled to keep things together with the kids. They were off school Thursday and the house was like ice. I made the executive decision to take a day off and move us to a hotel. Our power was finally restored this morning. We were the last block in the area to be without power. I like to think my tweeting the energy company at 6am helped them figure some things out.
It has only been a few days, but I had to get rid of all my freezer goods. Everything had thawed and was refreezing. Hello, dangerous meat!
Then I started thinking about Puerto Rico and the water in Flint, Michigan. We had three days and were going crazy. I have enough money to get us to hotels. Other families had to go to shelters. We are lucky. All we lost was dangerous meat. The fish and hamster survived. Refugees don't get the options we had. Yes, we were cold and miserable, but it was brief.
The world is a messy place and natural phenomena make it messier. I feel like there are not enough answers and the US infrastructure is not in a good place these day. Some of the potholes on Denver streets are large enough to swallow small children and yet we voted against measures to fix streets. So much of this is the unwillingness on the part of some humans to help humans who don't resemble them so much. But all of us get sick from dangerous meat and all of us need water and shelter.
I have had a lot of conversations the past few days with people who lost power or didn't and we bonded. I hope that something as awful sounding as a bomb cyclone can leave us feeling more like a community.
We were one of the households that lost power. We were fine Wednesday, snuggled up and watching movies. When the power went out I pretty much went to bed. Since then I have struggled to keep things together with the kids. They were off school Thursday and the house was like ice. I made the executive decision to take a day off and move us to a hotel. Our power was finally restored this morning. We were the last block in the area to be without power. I like to think my tweeting the energy company at 6am helped them figure some things out.
It has only been a few days, but I had to get rid of all my freezer goods. Everything had thawed and was refreezing. Hello, dangerous meat!
Then I started thinking about Puerto Rico and the water in Flint, Michigan. We had three days and were going crazy. I have enough money to get us to hotels. Other families had to go to shelters. We are lucky. All we lost was dangerous meat. The fish and hamster survived. Refugees don't get the options we had. Yes, we were cold and miserable, but it was brief.
The world is a messy place and natural phenomena make it messier. I feel like there are not enough answers and the US infrastructure is not in a good place these day. Some of the potholes on Denver streets are large enough to swallow small children and yet we voted against measures to fix streets. So much of this is the unwillingness on the part of some humans to help humans who don't resemble them so much. But all of us get sick from dangerous meat and all of us need water and shelter.
I have had a lot of conversations the past few days with people who lost power or didn't and we bonded. I hope that something as awful sounding as a bomb cyclone can leave us feeling more like a community.
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
Messy
Life is messy.
Sometimes I think we need to be handed this on a card at birth. Life is messy. Don't expect tidy endings and complete stories.
People leave you and you depart from places and there is sorrow and grief and joy. You can shut yourself down or you can feel it. For those of us who feel it, we feel completely. There are days I wake and I am fine and there are days I wake and I am not fine.
I am currently awash in one of those inexplicable hiccups of grief. There is nothing for it. I breathe and I work and I keep moving forward.
Life is messy.
I am a tidy person. As a little girl I loved putting my toys away. I loved a clean room. I had the good fortune to share a room with a sister who taught me that life is messy. A clean room is nothing without the contrast of the mess. Mark, too, believed that a thing belonged where it landed, not in any specific place. So while my nature longs for tidy, I acknowledge that I am not going to get it. I respect the mess. I respect the contrast.
We will feel the mess sometimes more than we want to. I want to wake up tomorrow with joy on my hands and in my heart. I want to look at my little girl's room and be okay with the explosion she keeps in there. I want it all to be okay. I also want my messes to respect my desire for tidy every now and then.
Sometimes I think we need to be handed this on a card at birth. Life is messy. Don't expect tidy endings and complete stories.
People leave you and you depart from places and there is sorrow and grief and joy. You can shut yourself down or you can feel it. For those of us who feel it, we feel completely. There are days I wake and I am fine and there are days I wake and I am not fine.
I am currently awash in one of those inexplicable hiccups of grief. There is nothing for it. I breathe and I work and I keep moving forward.
Life is messy.
I am a tidy person. As a little girl I loved putting my toys away. I loved a clean room. I had the good fortune to share a room with a sister who taught me that life is messy. A clean room is nothing without the contrast of the mess. Mark, too, believed that a thing belonged where it landed, not in any specific place. So while my nature longs for tidy, I acknowledge that I am not going to get it. I respect the mess. I respect the contrast.
We will feel the mess sometimes more than we want to. I want to wake up tomorrow with joy on my hands and in my heart. I want to look at my little girl's room and be okay with the explosion she keeps in there. I want it all to be okay. I also want my messes to respect my desire for tidy every now and then.
Wednesday, March 6, 2019
The dead husbands club
Mark would have turned 50 this coming Saturday. My bank wished me a happy birthday month today because of it. I had to go into the bank to get that fixed. Apparently our birthdays had gotten mixed up.
I don't love the reminder. I was with Mark for a long time. He should still be here, sputtering and angry.
I am a member of the Dead Husbands Club. We met, a few of us, on Sunday to talk and laugh and compare notes. How are all the kids doing? How is your love life? What are the pain points?
There are too many of us in the club. We always wish it was smaller. But when me met in late 2015, it was being thrown a lifesaver. They are the only people in the world I don't have to explain myself to. We met in a grief group. We all had kids and our husbands (or exes) had all died by suicide. One woman was several years out. Most of us were fresh. Some of us had been divorced, but not all. Even those of us who were divorced talked about how close we still were with our exes. Many of us had anticipated the suicides, at least one of us was taken completely by surprise. We had ups and downs as a group, but often I felt like we were best friends when sitting in that room.
We have stayed in touch. Seeing people last Sunday was a breath of air. It felt good to talk about the trouble our kids were having or not having. It felt good to know that at least one of us had gotten married again. We discussed dating apps and whether or not to list ourselves as divorced or widowed.
We have always laughed too much maybe for a grief group, but it feels right. We are facing so much every day. The exhaustion of solo parenting cannot be explained easily. There is no us. There is only me.
I don't love the reminder. I was with Mark for a long time. He should still be here, sputtering and angry.
I am a member of the Dead Husbands Club. We met, a few of us, on Sunday to talk and laugh and compare notes. How are all the kids doing? How is your love life? What are the pain points?
There are too many of us in the club. We always wish it was smaller. But when me met in late 2015, it was being thrown a lifesaver. They are the only people in the world I don't have to explain myself to. We met in a grief group. We all had kids and our husbands (or exes) had all died by suicide. One woman was several years out. Most of us were fresh. Some of us had been divorced, but not all. Even those of us who were divorced talked about how close we still were with our exes. Many of us had anticipated the suicides, at least one of us was taken completely by surprise. We had ups and downs as a group, but often I felt like we were best friends when sitting in that room.
We have stayed in touch. Seeing people last Sunday was a breath of air. It felt good to talk about the trouble our kids were having or not having. It felt good to know that at least one of us had gotten married again. We discussed dating apps and whether or not to list ourselves as divorced or widowed.
We have always laughed too much maybe for a grief group, but it feels right. We are facing so much every day. The exhaustion of solo parenting cannot be explained easily. There is no us. There is only me.
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