Quick Morning Coffee: The Life That Got Away

Hurry right in.  It's cold this morning and the orchids are too near the back door.  John is often prone to stand at the door, leaving it open.  Last time he did, the buds fell off the orchids and now that I've one blooming and one nearly there I'm anxious to rush everyone in and out so they don't drop off once again.   It's my only bit of floral splendor at the moment aside from the Iris in the yard.

The boys are up an starting to make their usual early morning roar.  I've been sitting here for over an hour, not reading my Bible, not praying but trolling about on the internet leisurely and then it occurred to me Id meant to sit and chat and here I'd wasted the only hour I'm likely to have alone.  So come in, have coffee, I'll make you toast with butter and honey and let us have a quick chat.



Oh dear... I hear the washer starting and I haven't had my shower yet.  Perhaps I ought to run do that.  These are the sorts of decisions made each day.  Start one thing, switch to another as I realize window of opportunity is narrowed to a mere slit, sigh.  Every single thing I do is a choice.  With limited time, I can do this or I can do that but I can't do it all, nor can I manage anything close to resembling some. I feel at times as though all I do is sit about twiddling my thumbs, albeit because I'm watching the baby in the antique high chair which he frequently tries to stand up in, or because I'm holding a sleeping infant or entertaining a three year old who has lost TV privileges.  Again, I am well aware now of why being a mother of young children is for young women.  Gramma is tired.

I am not complaining.  All too soon (hopefully, lol) the family will be moved into their own home and Gramma will have time of her own once more albeit with a liberal dose of family time mixed in.  But just now...tired.

My title subject today is related to some thinking I did this morning as John chatted away.  First a bit of background.  I barely function first off in mornings, at least as far as coherent speech goes. I can go into autopilot with simple tasks but I prefer to go into a morning slowly.  John, on the other hand, does not even require coffee to begin a full on stream of chatter.  So on these work mornings, I get up, pack his ready prepared lunch foods into a lunch bag which already contains fork, spoon, non-perishables items, and make the ready measured and set on stove to wait breakfast oatmeal.  The milk and egg is ready in fridge.  The coffeemaker is on auto brew.  The only thing that isn't automatic is my response system.  So John chatters, I make breakfast.  We eat accompanied to his steady stream of chatter.  I blearily try to finish my coffee, he chatters.  Then he is gone and heaven help me, I sigh deeply, grateful that the rushing water of talk is done temporarily.   This is typical even when there are no others in house on a work day morning.

This morning's chatter stream was of a book John is currently reading and of life plans.  He sighed deeply as he shared his life dream which has very little to do with his actual life.   I contemplated these facts, which is frequently brought up in conversation and contemplated my own life dreams and thought "Well here I am.  I dreamed of just this: a loving husband, a family, to one day be with my grandchildren, to write."  My dreams are my life and while they have taken on twists I never dreamt of  because who ever dreams of problems and complications when laying out life dreams?

I never dreamed my mother would so totally disregard her grandchildren as they grew up though I never thought she'd be a second Granny, either.  Mama is far more content to take fleeting moments and then continue on uninterrupted in her own life.  I never dreamed I'd spend 33 years parenting. I never dreamed my grandchildren would almost entirely be hours and miles away.  I never dreamed my interactive time with first grand daughters Josie and Lily would be compressed into four short years  of Josie's life and less than one of Lily's.  I never dreamed Amie's next two would be utterly unknown to me except via the occasional photo or convoluted phone conversation.  I never planned that Jd's children would be 6 hours away at their closest time to me, nor that his marriage would end in divorce and the children removed further away.  I never dreamed Katie would marry and move hours away from home.  I never dreamed that Sam would spend a fourth portion of his life living in my home.  For all John's plans that we'd buy a house suited to our middle years, we have more often longed for more room.  But yes, all in all, my dreams have come true to a greater extent than any of John's dream did.

There's only one portion of my dreams that have yet to be realized: I've never had the gardens of my dream.  A few pots here and there, a flower bed now and then that is rapidly disintegrated into nothingness because of changes to house is the most I've accomplished.  Yet that is almost easily (not labor wise mind you) remedied by concentrated effort if I ever have time to devote to it now that the house is more or less settled, save the underpinning we long to replace.

So I wondered at my husband.  I looked back down over the 27 going on 28 years I've known him and the few years I knew of him and his life before that and I saw the dearth of his dreams, the heap of ashes he continually tries to blow into flame and at best generates enough heat to once again generate another small flame that quickly dies out.  Why should it be so?  Was God's plans for him so vastly different?  Was there something in him lacking that just wasn't really devoted to his dream if it meant discomfort?   Was his sense of duty far stronger than any hope of breathing life into that dream?  I know him to be talented and powerful in his ability but no, I've seen myself the number of times and ways the door closes firmly upon any glimmer of the faintest light of hope.  Why?

And what happened to me?  Did I truly achieve my dreams or did I merely finally decide to happily settle for what I had acquired of them?  I think many dream of fame and fortune, pursuing a life that they love but fame nor fortune comes to everyone.  Suppose I did settle for simply taking what I could get, albeit by dint of hardwork and pursuit through unconventional means?  I have been published online and off.  I have earned wages through my words but never enough to survive upon.  I have accepted that my children will travel to places I'll never see or visit myself, and forgotten almost entirely my own desire to travel the world.  I have taken my mobile home and done my best to wrest it into the charm of an older home, but it's a double wide just the same.  One day perhaps I'll manage to surround it with gardens of the sort I've longed to have but not without a lot of work and determination and frankly fighting my husband every step of the way because he thinks they are unnecessary and too much work for me (he refuses to lend a hand at all) and a botherance overall.

Did the life I dreamed of long ago get away?  Or did I find, after struggling mightily, that there were sweet things to be had in bitter places if one was willing to sweat a bit.  Salt cuts bitterness and enhances sweet and there is nothing more naturally salty than sweat and tears is there?

And now my battery on my computer is  dying...my time is run down figuratively and literally at the moment.   Thank you for joining me, however brief our time.  We'll get together again soon, I hope.