Sunday Morning Coffee: It Isn't What I Expected

Good morning all. Yes, I really ought to be in church but truly I have been listening to some sermon or another since about 8am this morning.  Bess courteously turned to TBN where we listened to Father Cedric Pisegna...and so started the morning of worship, which was following a rather dicey Bible reading and prayer time.

Dicey?  Yes.  Josh snuck into my bedroom this morning and said "Let's read the Bible..." so I proceeded to read him Psalms while he puttered about the room and before I'd finished his Mama had come in.  He'd interrupted my prayer time which became more a scanning of prayer needs and a silent prayer that indeed God would know my heart for each concern.  I managed a chapter or two while he and his mama went to check on the new chickens they brought home yesterday.  Then they came back and Josh crawled into the bed, Bess brought in the smiling baby, and they got in the bed and then in came Sam who also crawled in.



I was never a mom who wanted my kids to sleep with me.  No co-sleeping for me!  Not that it was remotely popular at the time.  We were old school parents who firmly believed a baby rested best in its own bed, as did mom and dad. However, as Katie and Sam got older, especially once we'd moved into this home, it was not uncommon to have one or another come into my room when I was alone and curl up next to me.  Here they poured out their hearts or tears or simply snuggled near and took solace in my presence.  They were at that time, taller than I and hugs weren't nearly so satisfactory when you were a head or more taller than Mama.  But snuggling in to my side and laying a head upon my shoulder was entirely possible if I was sitting up in bed.  For half a moment this morning, I missed those days.  I am not one to regret the natural passage of time overmuch.  But now and then I do miss moments we've shared.

Josh's presence in my bedroom this morning reminded me strongly of Granny.  Suddenly herself filled the room and I felt as she must have felt when I was in her room with her.  Most mornings after breakfast, when I visited as a child, we made the bed together when I was Josh's age and a little older.  And then, once the bed was all made, we climbed into it, sat with our backs against the headboard and sang church hymns together.  Granny never fussed over a mussed bed.  She never told me she didn't have time to sing.  It became a little ritual that we shared.  And this morning, as Josh sat next to me in bed, with his back against the wall, asking me to read the Bible, I was there in that bedroom with her once more and I saw the legacy she'd left me and felt her happiness for me.  Not surprising, since I've thought of her often and often this week,  as I looked at Iris and blooms in the yard and the year springing to life all about me, or listened to a little boy roaming about the yard singing happily as he played all alone and felt perfectly safe and content.  This week, she's stood beside me and watched and looked and reached me in ways I've not experienced in a long while.

Today was meant to be my day alone.  I'm not naturally.  John told me it would be so but it's almost alone and good enough for just now.  Sam decided to stay home from church but he went back to bed to  sleep.  He's complained of being over tired and why shouldn't he be?  He's worked hard at work, pressing to do things in double time and then come home to work on the house.  He's shared himself with his family and he's done things here to try to ease my way.  All this next week he will be solely devoted to making his house fit for his family.  There's a lot to be done.  I expect my time to be filled full as well, hence my desire to be alone for a bit, to reclaim a portion of my sanity and to sort out my worries and frustrations in my own head so that I don't bring them to bear down hard on others.  Yet here I am, not quite alone but alone to all intents and purposes and doing the best I can with what I have.

I started early this morning, not going back to bed when John left but sitting down with check register and bill box and planning out our harvest, paying bills, totting up the checkbook, etc.  I slipped to my room when the baby began his morning chatter, attempting to wake his brother and tell him all he'd planned for the day or dreamed the night before.  And I so hoped I'd get an extra half hour to myself but you heard how full my bed became before I began my prayers...

So there was a long busy break before Bess and the boys went out the door to church and Samuel wandered back to bed.  In the meantime I stripped the bed, and did laundry and cleared up the kitchen and set out the non-perishable foods for our dinner and then settled to begin writing work but you know how it is...I wandered into the kitchen to put laundry to dry and wandered outdoors to gaze at the pots and see what is blooming or what is returning and gathered some oregano for our dinner dish.  I wandered back in and settled to balance the checkbook and finish the bills I'd left partially done and picked up a few toys scattered here and there and prepped an item or two for dinner and then wandered back to the computer.  All while sermons have played in the background and filled the house with good teachings.

I'm torn with a situation with Mama.  She declares each time I visit that she wants to be independent for as long as she can be.  I get it.  I've heard the same words from great grandmothers and grandmothers and now Mama, my whole life long.  The women in my family take a certain amount of pride in their ability to care for themselves, financially and physically.  It doesn't seem wrong to me that Mama wishes to remain so as well.   But when problems rear their heads in her life she immediately begins to tell me what she must do...and does nothing at all.  I start to feel pressured to do something for her to help relieve the situation.  She steadfastly declines every suggestion or solution I might offer.  This morning, as I wrote out bills, I thought over the latest bit of worry.  Mama's situation with my brother is not working out for either one.  I knew it would not.  I told her as much at the time she set her plans.  I begged her to reconsider and to return to her original plan.  She absolutely refused.

So here she is now with the very real possibility that she will be living alone.  She can likely stay where she is, in a house that is dark and lonely and not really well suited to her needs. She can return to her old home, which mostly needs cleaning.  That will mean that likely I shall have to devote a day a week to her to tend to errands and groceries and doctor visits.  She has a good lady here who can keep house for her.  It's far more handicap friendly overall for her as far as getting in and out of the house.  And it's closer to me for helping.  However, it's not where she wants to be.  She could go into a senior apartment complex, ideally one where she could receive the progressive sort of care that she will undoubtedly require as time goes on.  This would allow her to live in the area where she wants to live, which is near doctor and acquaintances from her work days and restaurants and grocery and is easy driving for her overall.  Personally I think the last is the best option for her overall happiness but she is adamantly set against that option.  I dare not suggest that returning to this area would be the most convenient thing for me.   Mama would immediately refuse that one should she realize it!

So as I reasoned out what was most sensible and likely, I recognized a very real fact:  there's no solution for her refusal to DO nor to her rebellion at every suggestion.   While she says she wants to remain independent, she is also saying that she won't make any decision at all.   She's competent and fully able to make her own choices.  I realized that my best option for my own self is to listen to her but not take it on personally.   She will eventually have to make a choice, or be in a position where a choice has to be made for her.  In the meantime, I cannot carry along that worry.   It's just a useless rock thrown into the pack on my back at present.  Best set it down and forget about it.  There are plenty of rocks along the path...

John insisted yesterday that we clean house when the kids left to go off on their day out.  I had not expected the day free.  I had told them months ago I'd keep the children for them on that particular day to visit a home exposition, not knowing of course, how hard this was going to be on me overall.  However, once I give my word I do try to keep it.   So when they announced they were going to take the boys with them, I looked at the day ahead and saw peace and quiet and a messy house.  John and I had already discussed my having today alone (ha!) and said "We'll clean house....Otherwise you'll just do it all by yourself tomorrow and be over tired.  Besides I'll lay odds you never get any alone time."  For someone who is always telling me he isn't intuitive I find he's often right on the mark when he makes statements about outcomes.  I scoffed at the time.  I'll just bet he snickered when he read my text this morning saying I wasn't quite alone!

So we mopped, and dusted and vacuumed.  We did laundry and dishes and made the bed.  I emptied trash and fed dogs and two hours later we sat down and breathed deep sighs.  The house was clean.  It was quiet.  It was lovely for three hours following.  And then the explosion of returning overtired boys and strained adults took place.  We began again.

After Bess and the boys left this morning, I contemplated life overall.  I stripped the bed and thought of a statement of a planned trip in July when, it was mentioned between them but never asked of me, that they might leave the boys with me for a week.  A week!  And I can't even make it through a day just yet!  Well never mind, I thought.  It's not yet July.  A lot can happen between now and then, a fact I remind myself of often when I find myself dreading what hasn't yet happened.  I thought about how much I'd looked forward to having my family near by.  How I long to see my Katie return here so I can get to know Taylor better and how much I wish Amie and Jd too might be nearer by with their children.  I realized I also want very much to enjoy this life of my own, a life as near my own as I've had ever in my life.  I thought about the years of childbearing and rearing I'd put in and the many dreams laid aside as life happened over and over again.  I thought about the roads I couldn't take, more than I'd thought of them last week when John was opening his heart to me.

I thought of the plans I'd made for the season when the family is in their own home.  I don't want to return to my life as it was with them securely and snugly there and me here and nothing between.  But neither do I want to feel I haven't any life of my own at all!  Here I've just begun this venture of a business of my own and I'd been planning a plethora of writings I feel strongly led to do and I want to experience a bit of my own life now that my family is grown and the income is growing a bit, too.

I recalled all the other aborted dreams and plans and the making do with what I was given and could wrench loose...and I wondered what I might have been had things been different...Had I not had all the emotional baggage and the lack of confidence and the too early marriage and the children while so young and the losses and lacks and the...Well you know.  Life.  It happened and I rolled with it and I really have tried hard to make the best of it.  So yes, I waned life on my own terms for a bit.  A bit of everything thrown in together.  Family time, travel, writing, gardening, working my business and recreating my home.  I want it all...but I want it the way I want it.  I want what I want.  Pretty much my rather selfish way of looking at all of the past and thinking I've made do quite long enough.

But again....isn't that life?  Isn't it always a bit of what we want and a great deal more of what we hadn't planned for, expected, thought might happen?  So it is.  So it is.  So it shall be what it will be.  And I'll happily accept it.  I will.  Because I've learned that blessings come when least expected, too.

Time to get dinner ready.  Talk to you again when I can.