Dancing in the Rain

I wrote this Sunday morning from my front porch, where I sat with my feet propped up on the railing while I watched rain softly fall and listened to distant thunder. It was a gray, dreary morning, which was perfect, because the grayness and the dreariness of the day perfectly matched the mood that I was in.

It’s been so incredibly hot and humid this summer that I haven’t spent as much time on my porch as I typically do. However cooler temperatures tagged along with the morning’s rain shower, so I took my coffee and book out there not long after the sun came up. Reading on the porch before my household wakes up and comes to chaotic life is right at the top of my “Favorite Things to Do” list. As I gazed out over the crunchy brown grass and droopy almost lifeless pots of flowers and inhaled the scent of rain on sunbaked concrete, I couldn’t concentrate on my book. After I read the same paragraph three times, I finally put it aside and decided to just go with the flow of my thoughts and let them take me down whatever rocky river they chose to flow. 

First of all, I thought about how hot and dry it’s been…so hot that even the weeds have shriveled up into things that not even the plethora of rabbits that inhabit my yard can munch on. My yard looks worse than it has ever looked in the 19 summers we have lived here. Of course, we typically have extremely hot summers with very little rain through the months of July and August. But normally, we keep the sprinklers going to maintain some green, and we joke about how the heat kills everything but the weeds. Well, this fine summer, since we have had virtually no rain at all since April, we are on water restriction and unable to sprinkle the yard, and the heat has even killed the weeds. This is what my lawn looks like right now:

Secondly, back to my thought of  “going with the flow,” I  remembered a pact I made with myself back at the beginning of June when we took our mini-vacation to Lake Erie and Lake Michigan. The day before we left Sandusky, I was awake well before dawn on a beautiful Sunday morning. Still in my pajamas, I took my Kindle, my laptop and a Styrofoam cup of hotel coffee to the beach, parked myself in one of these lovely rocking chairs

and watched the sun rise over Lake Erie. On that morning, watching a new day slowly brush over the night in a swirly palate of pink and purple and orange that reflected onto the glittering lake, 

I made a pact with myself that I am going to make more time to write when the mood strikes me. So often, something pops into my mind that really needs to get out, but I push it aside and carry on with whatever task I feel is more important at the time.

But, I realized something that morning. For me, writing is important…just as important to my well-being as eating and doing laundry and taking care of my family and their needs, and when I don’t do it, I feel scattered and out of sorts.

So back to early Sunday morning.

When I realized the rain may be hanging around for a while, I carried a couple of my baskets of flowers from the porch to the yard so they could get rained on, and they seemed to turn a more vivid green almost instantly. I imagined them breathing a sigh of relief and saying “Ahhhhh….that feels soooo good!” (No, I didn’t hear it…I know I’m crazy, but not that crazy. Yet.) It was as if that cool drink of rainwater revived them a little bit. Or, as if the rain washed away a thin layer of dust that had faded some of their brightness.I thought to myself, "Hey, my flowers are dancing in the rain!"

And then, as it so often does, my mind wandered, and I wished it was that easy for me to bring back some of the brightness my life used to have--I wished it was as easy as standing in the rain and letting the water wash away the dust that has layered itself upon my soul as my life seems to slowly crumble around me, like an old city building that was once loved and well-tended but is now losing small pieces of the brick and mortar that once held it together and made it beautiful and admired.

Sigh. Me and my dumb analogies. I can’t help it; they just invade my head sometimes, unbidden and definitely unwelcome.

I am coming upon the two-year anniversary of beginning to write this blog, and I am thinking of giving it up. Back then, I felt my life had so many things wrong, and I naively thought that by writing here and forcing myself to focus on the good things, to dance in the rain, all of the bad things would magically wash away in that rain like the dust on my sun-scorched plants. You know, count your blessings, we are what we think, blah blah blah…yet here I am, almost two years later, and while yes, I have done a mostly good job of focusing on small things to enjoy and appreciating them, and I have come to love writing about both my struggles and joys, it really has changed nothing. And I am feeling discouraged. In many ways, my life is even worse now than it was back then, in ways I would never have imagined at the time I started this blog.

So, while last month I made a pact with myself to write more often, unfortunately, the things I usually feel driven to write these days do not fit with my original blog mission of dancing in the rain while waiting for the storms to pass. Honestly, it makes me feel like a hypocrite.

Maybe instead of giving up writing here, I should change the name of my blog.

How about this one? "Stomping in Mud Puddles." That has a fun ring to it, no?

So now that the last two times I’ve written it’s been about depressing things, I guess before I totally give up on being Miss Susie Sunshine with a plus sign for  positive tattooed on my forehead, I should still do what I set out  to do and focus on some good things..

On that note, here is a Joyful Simplicities list for the past week.

*Homemade ice cream.

In honor of July being National Ice Cream month, I have gotten out my ice cream machine that sat gathering dust in my pantry, and I’ve made homemade ice cream twice. Salty Caramel and Cheesecake. Can I just say “YUM?” Even if I can’t, I just did, so :-P

*The first fresh tomatoes of the summer

I’ve been eating them on everything from pasta to tacos to blt’s. And even one or two or ten just by themselves still warm from the sun, sliced and sprinkled with sea salt and pepper. Can I again say “YUM?”

*Peaches

Since we had such a warm spring, most produce has been ready a few weeks ahead of schedule, and I’ve bought my favorite Eckert’s peaches several times. We’ve eaten them over ice cream, I’ve sliced them into salads, and of course, I’ve made peach pie.

*Rachel’s friends view of our family that made me smile

Over the weekend, we were faced with an epic problem with Rachel, which should have come as no surprise to me, but yet it did, and it sent me into a tailspin that I still haven’t recovered from. As a result of this, we confiscated Rachel’s cell phone and then spent an evening debating the merits of sending her to the Missouri Military Academy while we read text messages between Rachel and her friend Lindsay. Yeah, I’m terrible and nosy like that, but in my defense, the issue involved Lindsay. I don’t think I’ve ever been so furious at one of my children, or more disappointed/disillusioned. I was reading through the messages, steam coming out of my ears not only because of the things they had written to each other, but also because of the horrible things that had flowed from my daughter’s fingertips onto her phone keyboard. (Let’s just say the child will be extremely lucky if she gets texting privileges back before she graduates from high school). Anyway, I came upon a conversation between the two of them, and Lindsay said “Rachel, you are an idiot. You have such a great life! Your biggest worry and thing to get angry about is why your mom will not buy you a new pair of shoes! Grow the hell up! Realize there are kids out there with MORE IMPORTANT PROBLEMS THAN YOU!!! You are retarded. Your parents love you and would take a bullet for you. Your house is so fun!! Your mom is awesome!!! Why don’t you know how lucky you are to have all that???? WHY do you think I want to be at your house all the time????”

While I don’t care for her calling Rachel and idiot and retarded, and I am so furious at her along with Rachel and ready to ban her from my house forever, her message made me tear up. And made my desire to want to go choke her a teensie bit less intense. It also made me feel like I must be a pretty damn fine actress to be able to portray that image when all I really want to do is change my name, clean out my meager bank account and run away somewhere no one will ever find me.

Well, so much for ending this on a POSITIVE note, huh?

Right now, I am thinking again about my lifeless, brown lawn. I know that the harsh weather conditions will soon be a thing of the past, and as the temperatures cool and we have a few more rain showers, it will be nurtured back to life. I only hope that the harsh conditions that are battering me will also soon be a thing of the past and that kinder, gentler conditions will nurture my soul and bring brightness back to my life.

How many whacks does it take to break open a pinata?

Yesterday afternoon, I was feeling lazy and watched a movie on Lifetime. It was a dumb movie, and by the time it was over, I wished I would have found a better way to waste two hours of time, but once I started, I couldn’t turn it off.

This has nothing to do with the plot of the movie, but one scene showed a little girl at her birthday party, and one of the activities was breaking open a piñata. Sometimes, the blindfolded birthday girl missed the piñata altogether while other swings met their mark with a quick thud that made the zebra swing and twirl at the end of the rope it dangled from. One final hard blow caused it to break open and fall, spilling all of the candy and trinkets onto the grass. The scene reminded me of Rachel’s 7^th birthday party when she insisted on having a piñata at her luau themed shindig. The darn thing would not break…girl after girl dressed in grass skirts and bikini tops swung a baseball bat at it, yet it did not break until my brother in law took the matter (and the bat) into his own hands. Once the piñata broke, each of the places where the bat had previously hit the piñata was clearly visible as dents and cracks even though they weren’t noticeable until that final violent blow sent it shattered to the patio. And once the piñata suffered that final violent blow and fell to the ground, it broke apart at all of the tiny little places that hadn’t even been visible before yet obviously had weakened it.

While I pretty much hated the movie, when I saw that blindfolded little girl haphazardly swinging at that piñata, I couldn’t help but think about how my heart is starting to feel just like that piñata…taking many little blows that on their own don’t do any visible damage to the outside world. And I can’t help but wonder how many more whacks it will take to bust it wide open. I pictured those who inflict those little blows to my heart like that blindfolded little girl—I doubt they know how much those little whacks and blows are putting tiny little cracks and dings on my heart because they cannot see them. I doubt they know that one day, it might be too violent and hard of a whack that hits just the right (or wrong) weak spot for my heart to recover from and everything might come spilling out into a messy heap around me. And just like a broken piñata, or Humpty Dumpty, it won’t be able to be put back together again.

I read something not long about the resilience of the human spirit—how we can recover and heal from things that we think will break us. I’m not sure I agree with that. Just because the scars aren’t visible, doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Just because to the outside world, we look fine, doesn’t mean there is not a part of us that truly is broken.

And broken things cannot be unbroken.

You can’t un-break a piñata. You could probably stuff everything back inside and glue or tape it back together, and it may even look fine from a distance. But get too close, and the tears and breaks and tape will be obvious. And, once it is glued or taped back together, it won’t take much of a whack to break it wide open again.

You also can’t un-break a broken spirit or a broken heart. The tiny cracks…the larger fissures…the still larger holes will always be there. So will the tape used to repair those cracks and fissures and holes. Maybe they won’t be visible to the casual observer but they will be there nonetheless. And once the “repairs” are complete, it will still be a broken heart or spirit that is now more fragile and susceptible to being broken again.

Years ago, I read something in a book by Richard Paul Evans that had such an effect on me that I wrote it in my quote collection. I think of it often. The hardest shells often protect the softest hearts.

Sometimes, I wish I could grow a harder shell. Unfortunately, a hard shell doesn’t just keep out the bad stuff. It keeps out the good stuff as well.

This is a really depressing thing I have written. It’s hard to not write depressing things after my family once again let me down…showed me that my kids and I are really not all that important to them. The details don’t matter. It’s just the same shit, different day. Same whacks to the same soft heart. Some days, I'm not sure there is a shell hard enough to protect it. 

I will switch gears now and end this on a positive note.

A month or so ago, we bought Justin a new phone from Best Buy as a graduation present. There was a special promotion going on at the time, and he received a $50 Best Buy gift card. I told Justin after he used it that he had to keep it and give it to me. I have kept it propped up in my kitchen window sill ever since.

Is that not awesome?

Since I spend a great deal of time in my kitchen, I see it multiple times a day; it is a good reminder to me to keep my thoughts where they should be.

So, I got the whiney, pathetic, depressing thoughts out of my head, and will put the focus back on the good things about Justin’s party on Saturday. If I ignored the dark cloud that hung over the day, it was a great party.

I’ll just make a list of them!

*All of the friends that he wanted to come, did. They stayed all day, ate tons of food, played Frisbee, ate more food. It was nice.

*Justin’s best friends’ Sam/Sarah came with their parents, Karen and Mario. Those two are so wonderful--they have grown to love Justin and treat him as part of their family. Karen had tears in her eyes at one point when she said how lonely they are all going to be when Sam goes off to college and Justin joins the Navy. I can tell that she is genuinely going to miss him, and wow, that did my heart good.  She also told me that when Justin went to their house to tell them he had enlisted in the Navy that Mario immediately shook his hand and said how proud he was of him. Karen said, “I wish you could have seen the look on Mario’s face. It was that of a proud dad.” I cried.

I’ve cried a lot the past couple of days, but those were definitely some happy tears.

*My cousin and her family came. I don’t see them often, and I wish I did. I love her dearly and her husband and girls, too. They stayed late and we laughed and drank some wine and watched our French student teach her little girl some hip hop dance moves.

I cried when they left.

There’s a pattern here…

*At nearly 11 Saturday night I was exhausted, yet my house was still full of kids. I was so tired I wanted to cry. Instead of crying, I went out to my porch, cracked a window in the living room and listened to the happy laughter and chatter of the teenagers in my house making a mess with their second round of cake and ice cream in the kitchen that I had just cleaned up not an hour before. And I cried again because I know that these days are numbered. I cried because even though it was a day of feeling down about the way my family treats me, it was also a day that Justin thoroughly enjoyed, and I told myself that was the most important thing of all.

*Sunday morning at 5 am, Tony, Justin, Erwan and Lauren left to drive to New Orleans. I went out to help pack the trunk, and they all piled in the Chevy Malibu that Tony leased for the week, and I again found myself becoming teary eyed for no reason at all. The kids were packed in the car with their pillows, blankets and iPods when Justin suddenly got out of the car, gave me a hug, and said “thank you so much for the graduation party. It was awesome!” After that, Lauren and even Erwan got out of the car and gave me a hug. And guess what I did??

Yep. I cried AGAIN.

I feel like a 13 year old going through puberty.

I don’t know how to end this. I don’t want to end it on the depressing note that I began it with, that’s for sure. I guess it’s okay to be happy and sad at the same time, right?

If you give a girl a paintbrush....

She’ll use it to paint her living room a beautiful shade of dove gray and the ceilings and baseboards a pristine white.

Then, she’ll realize that the freshly painted, pristine white baseboards and ceiling make the white spindles on the stair railing look dingy and dirty, so she’ll decide to paint those, too.

 But, she is lazy and she won’t want to paint around the wooden railing, so she’ll just paint the whole darn thing white.

 When the stair railing becomes a crisp white that matches the baseboards, she’ll notice that the front door now looks dingy and not very fresh, so she’ll paint that next. Only, she will be sick of white paint by this point, so she will want to paint it red.

 After many coats of red paint, she will love the new door, but she will think, “Hey, this door would look even better with a colorful wreath hanging on it,” even though she has never before had a wreath hanging on the inside of her front door.

 So, off she will go to Hobby Lobby to purchase a wreath and flowers.

 When she has covered the wreath with a spray of colorful fake flowers,

she will realize that the table that sits inside the front door is looking very shabby and not quite up to the standards of the rest of the room,

 so she will paint it black.

Once it is spray painted black, it will need some new knobs on the drawers, so she will go back to Hobby Lobby to buy some pretty red glass knobs.

When the living room and hallway are brand spanking clean, it will hit her one day that while the walls in the kitchen don’t really need to be painted, the white trim and doors in that room look awful and scuffed and dirty. (And she will not want to show a picture of THAT!).

 So she will scrub them clean and paint those next.

Next, she will decide to paint the walls in her son’s bedroom since it is the only children’s room that hasn’t been painted recently.

If the walls are going to be freshly painted, then she will know that of course, the baseboards and doors must be freshly painted as well.

 When the room is finally finished and the walls are a soothing shade of blue that evokes memories of warm Gulf of Mexico waters and the furniture has been returned to the room, she will want a new bedspread for the bed, even though the old one matches just fine.

 So she will buy a new bedspread.

 She is frugal however, so she will buy a $40 bed-in-a-bag set from Walmart that includes a comforter, set of sheets, and a pillow sham.

Once the new bedspread is placed on the bed, she will suddenly realize the white blinds covering the windows look terrible against all the new white trim, so she will go to Home Depot to buy 2 new blinds.

 When the room is finished with all new and old things back in place, she will pour herself a cold glass of wine, stand outside the room and admire all of her hard work. She will think to herself, “Whew, everything is finished now!”

And then...she will sigh a big sigh, wipe the sweat from her brow, glance into her bedroom and realize that she really is very tired of the yellow paint and green flowered wallpaper border in her bedroom that have graced it’s walls for the last 14 years.

 THEN...she will go pour another glass of wine, grab a stack of Better Homes and Gardens magazines, settle into her favorite rocking chair on the front porch, and scour their pages for bedroom paint color ideas.

And then she will realize that if she is going to paint her bedroom, of course, the doors and trim and ceiling will also need to be painted. And so will the bathroom walls, doors and trim….and then the bathroom will need a new curtain...

Emptying the Nest

Saturday, a plastic electrical outlet cover made me cry.

 Let me explain since that sounds totally loony tunes.

 This past weekend, I decided to tackle a renovation of Justin’s bedroom, and I was not expecting to feel as emotional as I did. The room hadn’t been touched for about 11 years, so it was long overdue. We have a student from France coming to spend 3 weeks with us later this month, and one of the requirements is that he must have his own room. We don’t have spare bedroom, so Justin offered to give his up since he is the one who begged me to have a French student spend 3 weeks with us. It seemed like the perfect time to spruce up the room because quite honestly, it was an embarrassing mess. (NO, I will not be showing photographs!)

For some dumb reason, probably because the world is full of procrastinators and I am the Queen of ALL of them, I waited until now to take on this project, even though I have known for months I was going to do it. And I paid mightily for my bad habit of putting things off. The last few days of June were the hottest June days on record here in the St. Louis metro area, and Justin’s room is the hottest room in the house. Since I had put it off for so long, it had to be done now, hot or not. But let me tell ya…steaming 12 year old wallpaper from the walls on a 106 degree day is most definitely NOT my idea of fun, and I hope I never have to do any such thing ever again.

While sweating in that hot room that was a hot mess is what I was expecting when I got started Saturday morning, what I wasn’t expecting was the flood of emotions I would experience as the day wore on.

The emotional waves rolled in when Tony took Justin’s bed out of the room. Behind the bed was an electrical outlet cover that is still speckled with the pink, yellow and light green paints that had once covered the bottom third of the walls in that room. Tears welled up as I remembered how I lovingly decorated the room when I was pregnant with Lauren.

After having two boys, I was making her room as girly as I possibly could, and I painted the top of the room a sunshiny yellow, the bottom a sponged mixture of bubblegum pink, minty green, and the same yellow the upper walls were painted with. When I was expecting Lauren, I made my first-ever quilt…white eyelet threaded with pink and yellow and mint green ribbons. It was trimmed with a white eyelet ruffle and backed with a soft flannel pastel print fabric. More white eyelet and pink ribbon topped the windows

I digress…those were my initial thoughts when I saw that silly outlet cover. In a just a few short minutes, I vividly remembered how much fun I had decorating the nursery for my first baby girl 17 years ago this summer.

As the day wore on, perhaps the extreme heat in that room affected my brain, but the tearful waltz down memory lane continued.

I thought about how 3 of my 4 children had used that room as their nursery. We moved into this house just a few weeks before Justin was born, and I was so very excited to prepare a room. I had done nothing at all to get ready for our new son’s arrival…not only were we waiting for our new house to be built, but I had just been released from 8 weeks of bed rest the day before we closed on it. My doctor knew we were moving and gave me explicit instructions that I was to do nothing but sit on the porch and boss people around. I had no problem doing that, but I also couldn’t wait to prepare the room that our new baby would soon be occupying. I did not have the time to really decorate the room, but I bought new bedding in primary colors, filled his dresser with new baby clothes as well as those passed down from Brandon. I hung a very special framed cross stitch print on the wall…special because I had passed the time during my scary weeks of bed rest stitching it. I have saved it all these years:

 

 The day after the room was ready, Justin arrived.

That room was his little haven until he was 13 months old. By then, I was expecting Lauren, and I was ready to turn it into a room fit for a little princess. As I scraped yesterday, I got to one corner of the room that still had the little brass hooks in the ceiling that once hung a mesh sling full of her stuffed animals and dolls. I uncovered patches of that old yellow paint…and uncovered more memories…

 Rachel was the next and last baby to make that room her home. As I happily prepared for another little girl, I made a new quilt and bought a new dresser and bookshelf and painted a new “big girl” room for 2 year old Lauren to move into. When Rachel was 3, she and Lauren wanted to share a room. The boys, who had been sharing a room, wanted to have their own rooms, so I turned the nursery into a little boy room. I took down the water-colored pastel border and painted over the pink/yellow/mint sponge painted wall. I painted the walls a boyish tan with a red stripe in each corner, and I put up yet another border that was full of baseball gloves, basketballs and hockey sticks. I found a rug that looked like a baseball, bought a St. Louis Cardinals bedspread, and I once again had so much fun decorating that tiny room.

It remained untouched until Saturday. Now, I am readying it for a 17 year old boy from France. While it is still Justin’s room, and he wants to pick the new wall color (navy blue!), I told him it has to be a color that I like since in a few months, he will be leaving for the Navy. I envision turning it into a proper guest room. We have never had one, and over the years, any guest we had either slept in one of our beds or on a couch. It’s kind of ironic that now that I can have a guest room, we never actually have overnight guests.

In a few months, half of my children will be leaving the nest, so perhaps it is only natural for me to reminisce the way I did. After all, each one of my children except Brandon has spent their entire lives in this house. I have given them something I never had…a childhood home they can remember always. We moved so much when I was a kid, and I had many childhood homes. One thing I always told Tony I wanted for my kids was stability in one home and school while they were growing up, and while it is nice for them, I guess it makes it more likely that I am going to have a hard time when they leave here. We were having a conversation with the girls this weekend, and I told Lauren about how I remembered decorating the room for her and how much fun I had. That led to her asking “what are you and dad going to do when we all leave?” Tony jokingly said, “Buy a condo!” and Lauren and Rachel both looked horrified. Lauren said, “You can’t! I want to have this house to come home to!”

Tears…

I’ve done what I set out to do, and soon the process will begin—the process of my children leaving the nest that I have done my very best to make cozy and loving for them.

I discovered two things this weekend…one…any overnight guest I do have in my first real guest room will sleep in a room that has held many happy memories…and the laughter, tears and paraphernalia of 4 wonderful children. Two, I realized that if a cheap plastic outlet cover makes me cry, I’m not going to be a very good empty nester.