Iced Tea Chat: New Beginnings

 

Hello dears.  I have no idea if you're coming in with dry weather or rain.  It doesn't matter.  It's humid and it's August and we've rain nearly every day but lots of sun and heat as well.  Just come on indoors and let's have a cool drink and a long talk.  

This week, Millie and Caleb started school.  

Bess walked Millie into her classroom...But Katie said Caleb hopped out of the car and never looked back.  She said she went home and cried, lol.  I recall Katie stepping onto the bus that first morning of her school days here and she was just like Caleb.  Never looked back.  

I've been a bit anxious over these two.  Millie has never been with anyone except me, her Gammy and her mom and dad.  Never went to play school or had a day care, etc.  By her age, I was already an old pro at adjusting to sitters, day care, etc. and I thought nothing of being in a new environment.  

Caleb has had a troubled past with carers who had no children and no patience with a highly sensitive, smart and anxious child.  Thankfully his teacher has children of her own and is an experienced teacher as well.  

But I confess I have a measure of concern for both of these children.  I do hope things go well.  They've only got 14 years of public education ahead of them...

I was working in the kitchen and realized that two years ago I was giving myself a pep talk in the exact same spot.  Caleb was two.  We'd been through heck with nursery.  I was faced with keeping him full time and I rebelled and whined and balked.  I struggled hard with the idea of putting my own life on hold yet again in John's retirement time because of things that were out of my own arena of control.   I remember telling myself that it would only be for two years at the most.  Those two years stretched like centuries in my mind as I tried to peer into the future.

I kept Caleb here for a bit over a year with a brief respite here and there.  Of course, during that time he and Katie moved in with us so after that it was pretty much full time.  

Those days were long, often wearing and at times, absolutely difficult.  Every now and then, I'd stop and think, "Two years..." or "One more year..." and I'm telling you that time didn't look a bit shorter to me than it did when I first knew it was to be a season in my life.

When Katie and Caleb moved out, I began to keep Millie a few days a week and we helped with the kids.  I gazed ahead yet again and this time I said, "It's just for a few months."  It still stretched far ahead of me, but I was done with the balking and rebelling.  

And now...well here we are.  Two years have come and gone.  The children are all in school.  And I feel much as I did at graduation 47 years ago: "What now?"

What now? Indeed!  Faced with something nearer the freedom I'd been imaging for years, I have no plans.  None.  I don't have big projects or dreams.  I feel like I've fallen into limbo.  

The truth is, that while we might rebel and rail against the season of life, at some point we come to accept it and just get on with it.  And when we do, we tend to focus on NOW and stop thinking about what the next season is going to look like.  When I stepped in from caring for Caleb full time, to tending to Millie part time and whoever else needed me at the moment, I was just moving forward without thinking, following the stream that was carrying me along.  The stream has slowed to a trickle.

I know I'll still be keeping children here and there, but my days of full-time childcare are over.  I'm not going to say I'm sad about it.   I'm just saying that two years ago, this time in life looked like it was forever away and now, here I am.

I've always said a new school year always feels like a New Year of sorts to me.  And this year especially, it feels like a whole new season of life opening before me.  I don't have grand plans.  I don't have big hopes.  The truth is that some of the parameters that have limited me in the past still are limiting.  There's only so much money.  John's anxieties over getting lost have only increased.  I don't know that the dreams of traveling, even just in our own state, will happen.   I say this because the trip to Destin this Spring really pointed out up how difficult such travel would be.  The most I hope for is to continue to get to St. Augustine.  

I'm not whining.  I accept that this is the way things are.  John cannot help the money matters, nor can he help the anxiety.  He's a person who very much likes a pattern of travel and a pattern of life and he's not only reluctant but slightly triggered by deviations from it.  I have not lost hope of traveling.  I just know that if any occurs it will be infrequent and fraught with tensions.  I don't know if it's worth it.  

There will always be home projects, house and yard work.  I'm happy with our home.  I don't have major plans to change things.  We have talked over things we'd like to have done but no major renovations.  We would like to replace windows and the entry doors.  There's always maintenance.  I'd like to paint, and the guest bath floor, vanity and mirror will be replaced in the near future but that's not going to be a major renovation.  We'll buy a vanity at Lowe's, and probably do a peel and stick tile.  

I'm beyond thinking I'll ever have the yard full of flower beds I wanted.  I can't physically do that sort of work, and I can't hire the help.  So, I'll content myself with pots and raised beds and the small things I can do on my own.  

I guess this is the season of acceptance, which the previous season was preparation for.  Accepting that the things I wanted or thought I most wanted, simply aren't going to happen.  There is a little sadness about it, but not a heavy grief.  If I've learned nothing else in this past season it's that life doesn't always give us what we want but if we wait, it will still give us good things if we aren't so heavily focused on what we've had to give up.

So, no plans. I'll hold things loosely.  I'll look forward a month or maybe two but no further.  At this stage of life, it's unimportant where I hope to be, who I hope I will become.  Ambitions seem pointless.  It's not that I think my life is over.  My expectations are to live for many years, just based on the overall family history and my general good health.  I don't expect to become a stagnant person locked into a routine that must never deviate.  I just don't feel this need to be so driven any longer.  I'm 65.  I'm not going to become a master of any skill.  I expect to keep learning and moving forward and being interested in life but that hard drive to achieve great and mighty things is over.  I can even see a time in the future when I might retire from writing.  It's not imminent but I'm accepting that this too will likely be a part of the distant future.

In the meantime, while all of that sounds slightly sobering, I am not down or depressed.  I am, admittedly, looking at the season ahead with eyes wearied from the seasons behind that have been hectic, unexpected, painful and difficult.  Our family has been in hard places.  Some of them I would have thought to be beyond the average family's realm of possibilities, but here we are.  They happened and they were what they were.  So yes, I'm a little weary.  I'm ready for a vacation.  For a new beginning.

I want to start where I always plan to start. I want to clear out my house.  Not toss everything away but to declutter and let go of things that I've found myself wondering time again why I've kept them.  Things that hide behind doors or in drawers or in the depths of closets.  Things that do not fit the life I am leading at present.  Things that mean nothing to anyone.  Things that I once wanted but no longer do.  Things someone else wanted me to hold onto but didn't want themselves.   Just things.  So much stuff that makes me feel overwhelmed and then wonder at the fact that I've held on to it.  Why didn't I let it go?   It's time now.

I want to keep what is beautiful, what I know I will use, what fits the life I have now.  I will by no means rid myself of all the things.  I will never be a minimalist.  But I can at least reduce the amount of stuff I'm going into the future with.  

I'll take one room at a time, do one section at a time and work as I can around whatever schedule I have running.  I actually feel excited to get started.  I'm going to begin in the kitchen.  I've noted over the past few months that I'm struggling to open and shut drawers or cabinets.  There are items in the kitchen I have not touched in seven months since I unpacked them and put them in place.  

I'm looking forward to getting started.  I always find joy and peace in letting go.  I just tend to run out of energy.  That's why I'm going to try to make this a slow, well-paced progress.  If I find myself getting decision fatigue, I'll step away.  My ultimate goal is to go through every space indoors and out.  I'm not giving myself a set date to be finished by.  I'm trying to remove the pressures that have led me to start and then stop in the past.  It's taken me years to accumulate the things I have at present.  Just like losing weight, it's not going to disappear overnight.

While I'm decluttering, I plan to clean deeply as well.  Again, not a major fall cleaning done in a week's time but done a bit at a time, in each room, until I'm done.  Some spaces need more work than others.  I always find the kitchen is a big task, even though it probably is the most often cleaned room in the house.  I suppose because it's also the room that sees the most work every day.

Speaking of new beginnings, Bess is home.  I don't know what the future holds but she's going to counseling.   Her therapist has warned her that this is a lot of hard work, and most of it will be self-driven.  Borderline Personality Disorder relies heavily on therapy and is less responsive to medication, unlike bi-polar disorder.  I am not even going to pretend that I understand this disorder.  But I would appreciate your prayers for Bess and for the family across the way.

I am not saying that Bess is there to stay.  I don't know what the future holds, but prayer will not go amiss regardless.  I seem to hold prayer ever more dearly as the years pass us by.  And I do believe it has power, as well as comfort to offer, as well as a sense of how interconnected so many of us are because of the power of praying one with another.

Katie is miserable as well you'd expect her to be.  It's August and she's at that stage of pregnancy where there's little to no rest.   However, she's been focused on motivating Cody and his dad to get things done in the house.  Each time I go visit, there's something fresh that has happened, indoors or out, and that's a good thing to see.  

I have heard absolutely nothing from Amie or Jd.  John pointed me to Facebook last week where I discovered that Lily has bought a car.  And speaking of Amie, I'm bound to think of her oldest Josie.  I asked you all several months ago to pray for Josie as she was in a bad situation.  She is out of it!  She has moved and has custody of the children.  She's in what appears to be a healthier relationship.  Continued prayer for her would not be remiss but thank God she is no longer in an abusive situation!

And I guess that's about it from me for this chat.  One day...One day soon I shall sit down and not be rushed through a chat and we'll truly enjoy it.  But for just now, I am busy trying to sort out my home and my head and determine what gentle possibilities the future might hold.  In the meantime, please know how very much I appreciate all of you who take time to read, comment, reach out otherwise.  You've made life bearable in the hard times and always make me feel loved. 

Talk to you later!

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