Coffee Chat: A Very Long Spring

Hello loves.  Come in and have coffee and toast with me for another early morning coffee chat.  It is VERY early and my house remains quiet which is unusual because normally by now there is a lot of screeching and screaming and stomping...and that's just the baby, lol, who is rather heavy on his heels but apparently has forgotten he was crawling a mere two weeks ago.  He's even learned that he can 'run' when he doesn't want an adult to take something away from him which is at least five times a day!

But yes, at present it's quiet.  And that is lovely.  I miss quiet.



I realized this morning, as I was looking ahead and behind that we're likely in the middle of this phase of our life and I am glad.  We've settled into a routine of sorts that works for us all.  I've had to learn to be stronger in my boundaries and to not just assume and let others assume that I am the go to/be all/do all person.  I'm learning that I can be firm and be nice.   Why have I believed for so long that I wasn't physically strong?  I am strong and I have endurance that reaches beyond that of a 30 year old.  I know this because I see it proven on a daily basis. I never felt I lived up to Granny's rather extraordinary strength.  Maybe because I was limited in what I could do for some time, I allowed myself to continue to feel it was true that I was still weak,  but that is no longer true.  I see now that I do have endurance beyond the norm.  I accomplish things. Every day. 

That I can be strong in my boundaries and be nice; that I have endurance and strength...these things are revelations to me and welcome ones. Growing seasons sometimes aren't about the growth we're making, it's often about how we've already grown but our thinking just hasn't caught up with it.  Kind of like a child who fits his clothes one day but the very next morning has no pants that aren't 3 inches too short.  He was growing all along but we 'suddenly' notice.  I'm only just noticing my growth.

Sunday morning I left home after doing two hours of housework and putting together dinner for our return from church.  I came home to finish off the last of the chores, put dinner on the table and cleared it away.  Then I rested a few minutes and went out to weed an entire length of flower bed and a corner flowerbed, as well.  Back in, I looked over what we had for supper, picked up toys, entertained Josh until others were up from naps or back from working on the house, put a meal on the table, cleared it away and then helped get children ready for night.  I did escape to my room after that because it was obvious I was not going to be able to come to a full stop unless I did...

But I cannot deny that I am tired just the same.  I miss my own routines,  I miss routine grocery shopping instead of these catch it as I can trips, and I miss having a fun day out. I miss being alone, I miss time with just me and my husband. When we're in the thick of it all, with screams and crying and whining and the younger adults testy with one another, and it seems like the daily grind is grinding us down beyond powder,  we fall into silence and we go our separate ways. 

John will take refuge in a nap, something I can seldom do.  Or he goes off to the front porch and sits alone, gazing across the yard.  Or he takes an extra shift at work.  If I can find a place to slip off to, it's usually the bedroom which the children and adults seem to consider sacred ground.  I sit next to the window and gaze out at the yard or I try to work on my business online or write a few words but it's never really enough time to finish things.  I accomplish much these days in increments.

At night, John says prayers in a voice so worn and weary I can barely hear him and strain to hear his 'Amen'...My own prayers are very short.    I read a page or two and then I am dozing over my book and I shut off the lights and after about thirty minutes or so my eyes fly open once more and I lie there and wait for sleep to return somewhere down the line.  Or I sleep two or three hours and then lie awake and wait. I remind myself that this is a season, albeit a little longer season than we're used to having.

Like Spring.  Spring is generally a day or two in duration.  One glorious day of blooms, then loads of hot days and green leaves blowing in the wind with the sound of rushing water.  But not this year.  This year Spring here for weeks now with lots of blooming things and the blooms still thick.   The iris have been blooming for a good 5 weeks and I noted today many new spears with fat buds atop.  The trees are putting out tiny heartbreakingly new leaves.  Even the pecans are beginning to unfurl their leaves.  Everywhere you look is new green and blossoms of some sort.  Azaleas are magnificent and make me long to plant them along the outer edges of the yard for the stunning masses of color they produce.  And dogwoods and redbud and crabapple need to go along the edges as well to punctuate the woods either side of the house.

I gaze longingly at the displays in stores and want to spend fortunes on plants which I cannot do but I am renewed in my desire to make my yard my dream garden as much as I am making my house my dream home.  I am just temporarily stalled.  It's a season of life.  A little longer season than planned.

As I remarked on the Faith tree's new leaves to Bess the other evening, she questioned me.  " Why is it the faith tree?"   I told her the story of the tree, as we've shared other stories of our lives here on this land.  How this place was a favored place to play as children.  How we came to have the 'three girls', the bird dogs we loved and grieved over as we lost them.   Listening to Granny whistle as she worked in the yard on Spring and Summer and Fall mornings.  Of long ago years when I was small and we seven grandchildren came to spend long weekends, or long weeks, with Granny.  Climbing the lovely old plum tree that sat in the north east corner of the house with a view right into the kitchen where Granny was often making a meal or washing dishes and how we children would line up on the branches and sing to her or chatter.  She called us her 'little birds'.   I've shared stories of Katie wandering about with the dogs for company to go pick plums in the spring or rambling through the briars and weeds to bring me wild pear blossoms that she took right back out to the same spot after they were discovered to stink to high heaven.  How her socks remained a solid gray on the soles because she refused to wear shoes but couldn't go barefooted outdoors.   How she'd call me to the door to look that it wasn't 'really dark yet, it just looks that way from inside but see, Mama, it's still light, let me play a little longer.'   Stories of Amie and Sam playing here on the place when they came to stay with Granny in those long years before Katie came along.   Of Sam burning his nose on a pot of black eyed peas because he leaned in too close to smell them.  Of Amie wandering about with a fistful of flowers and a dreamy look in her blue green eyes.

I've realized that I was planted here on this land long ago, beyond my own memories even.  Here I belong.  Here my roots were all those years I was forced to live away from here.  Even in those painful transplanted years when I returned, as my roots renewed their hold on this proper ground, it was my place.   This is my place in this world.

When we came home yesterday my heart twisted a little.  There, the toys in the dirt and there, the balls left in the yard.  A toy dump truck on the back porch.  A pacifier lying in the grass.  Evidence that another generation has come to put down deep roots here.   A yearning to see Taylor and Katie return here, a dream that is not mine to make come true.   A deep long held desire to see Josie and Lily, Ross and Rosa live here, too.  Another dream not mine to really nourish or hold too tightly.  But two have come and two will grow here if all goes as planned.  Two will roam here and feel the sense of belonging that comes with knowing the soil under their feet is their inheritance to come.

Inheritance is something I've thought of a great deal of late.  John asked me one day what will we leave our children.  Not much.  Our DNA.  That glimpse of us in their children  and grandchildren to come, the same way that we look and see our own parents and grandparents in our children and grandchildren.  We can do our best to insure that we leave them good character, strength in faith, perseverance in trouble, kindness, patience, love.  An ability to remark upon our own failings and weaknesses and determination to correct them into something more admirable.  Bits and pieces of history, a story here and there of how we came to be here, how we lived.  But materially?  Not much.

We have small lessons to teach them.  I've noted Josh has a competitive nature.  It tickles me no end to hear him, with his little three year old lisp sing out in triumph, "oh yeah!  I'm not a yooser!" when he wins a game.  Last week, when he was ill with allergies I kept encouraging him to drink water to loosen phlegm.  I hit upon the fact that his favorite cup has measurements upon it.  I asked 'Can you drink to this mark?"  And he did.  Again and again, he'd drink the requested amount of liquid.  As a reward, he received a lifesaver candy.   Later in the week, I offered him the remainder of a bottle of Dr. Pepper, his favorite soda which he's seldom allowed.  He took his water bottle outside and though he'd been told not to pour it out he discovered a way around it.  He'd take a great mouthful and SPIT it out.  We caught him in the act.

When he asked for Dr. Pepper, I explained that he didn't drink the water, though the cup was empty.  He'd have to start again and really drink it.  He was so disappointed.  And Gramma was, too.  "A cheater is a loser, Joshy.   Because they didn't really win, they just pretended to do what it took to win.  There's no triumph or skill in cheating."   Josh looked at me a long time and then said "Can you fill my cup up again, Gramma?"

This morning he stood before me with an empty water bottle in his hand, one I'd witnessed him drinking rather noisily down. "I'm a winner, Gramma.  I'm not a yooser."  He wasn't looking for a reward.  He'd learned that  cheating isn't winning.  That sometimes just doing what you should do is the way to win.  One small lesson that took hold.  There will be many more to come.

I feel so connected to Granny as I play with the boys, correct them, teach them, try to impact them in the time I have to be impactful.  I feel her near me as I look at the toys scattered about, as I gaze at the flowers in the yard.  I wonder yet again just how she managed all seven of us at once, and how she managed Amie and Sam a bit later in her years.

I'd get calls from Mama, who didn't spend time with the children and she'd say "Mama's awfully tired.  You really ought to let her know when you'll be picking up the children.  She's too old to do this..."  I know she must have been awfully tired at times but when I'd call and offer to pick them up early, she'd say "Let them stay..."   I'd tell her 'But Mama said..." and she'd tell me "This is my time with them.  Let them stay.  Let us enjoy one another for a bit."   Perhaps she did complain of being tired but it was her own desire to see the days out, to spend time with them while she could.  Her legacy to them wasn't as long a one  as it was to me, but she did bond with them.

I pulled out some old photos the other day.  I was specifically looking for a photo of Sam that reminds me of Josh now.  Sam was about Josh's age now.  They are remarkably similar in looks, though Josh began his life looking much like his Mama.  In the photos I found a picture of Granny with Josie, Amie's daughter.  Granny only visited with them but she was there to see that fourth generation started.  And she understood how much I longed to be part of my own grandchildren's lives.  I do really though I whine a bit about my schedule upsets and my time being lost. 

I want a balance of all of it, I think, something Granny managed quite well overall.  To be herself and do her own things and to tend to her mother and to us at times as well.  I want her peace about it all, but I don't know if my natural peace flows as deep as hers yet.  

John and I went off yesterday morning to get haircuts and had a quiet lunch at a favorite pizzeria.  Then we came home to find the house empty.  We crept to our room and took a quiet afternoon of napping and reading before leaving to go out to the Annual EMS banquet.  We drove the hour or so to the venue and said little as we'd said little all day long to one another.  We arrived with time to spare and marveled over the excellent parking we found.  We spent a lovely evening with the crew and spouses and ate a very good meal and then we headed home...

And we got lost.  It wasn't our own doing that got us lost either it was a silly map app that insisted in order to leave the venue we had to cross the state line (three blocks away) and travel into the next state to get back to our own state.  It was foolishness.  We'd found the route earlier when we'd arrived, while we had time to spare but the maps simply wouldn't cooperate and give us the directions we'd looked at previously, nor could we remember them or even think with traffic and dark all about us and strange streets on every side and not one landmark visible.  My directions kept insisting we go 'northwest' but gave no indication which direction was northwest...And at one point, despite typing in Georgia the map insisted I wanted to be in Louisiana.  It was really quite idiotic.  We turned around four times.  We pulled over on the side of the street several times.  Finally we found ourselves back at the venue site. 
I said "Forget putting in the directions!  Let me just sit here and look at the map a moment."  So I enlarged the map and looked hard at it and decided that we were two blocks from a main road that kept us in our own state, went directly to the road that led home.  Two blocks!  We took a left turn, drove ahead for two blocks and there was the roadway we wanted and which should have come up on the app all along.

I was nearly ill with anxiety at that point and John who loathes being lost more than most because he has NO sense of direction at all, was beside himself.  He tossed his phone into the backseat when we arrived at the right roadway and forgotten he'd silenced it...so we searched for the black phone in the dark car.  It had fallen face down so even the screen wouldn't light when I called it, hoping it would light up.  We remained civil to each other through it all but oh how our frustration and anxieties had drained us.   It was a storm of sorts...and just what we needed to break the dam of silence we'd been living with.   Because it was really stupid the way things had gotten so intense so fast and it was apparent that technology is not all it's cracked up to be.  We began first to laugh.  Then the talk began.

I discovered that we are both missing the same things.  It's not the clutter and mess that drives us down but the noise.  The sheer volume of it is overwhelming at times.  It's the realization that sometimes we both are enjoying the time with the little boys but we need our own time as well.  We talked over what we want of our lives in future.  It's the same things.  We're still on the same page.  Neither of us has changed.  We just haven't the time to talk to know these things.

It was very late when we got home.  The house was quiet.  I didn't bother to try to put oatmeal together for breakfast this morning.  Eggs and toast would do as well.  I didn't worry about the messy bedroom.  I could clean it this morning and I did.

Now I must go. I am hungry for a real breakfast, a hot bowl of oatmeal I think.  And ready to go out and determine what needs to be done for meals today and this weekend, to talk over our adventures with Bess and hear about how her long day out went.  It's been lovely taking time out to chat with you once again!