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?
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