43
So tomorrow is the big day. The one I’ve been kind of dreading for 13 years. I realize that my mind is being irrational but the fact of the matter is that given the circumstances of my life, given the losses I’ve suffered, at times of deep despair it is hard not to feel like our family is cursed. We’re not, I’m not. There is much good in my life.
Still it looms. 43. Tomorrow. The age both my brother and my mother died. I didn’t know my father, and have no other siblings. So essentially, my known family died at this point in their life. I can’t imagine. There is so much unfinished, so much I want to do and see and accomplish and places I want to go.
I’ve spent the last couple months finding my mind wandering. A couple of times in church I’ve found myself considering what kind of things I would want to have at my own funeral. There have been moments of panic thinking that maybe something is secretly ticking away like a physical time bomb inside me. And there is the part of me that wonders of all years, why is it this year that I seem to be struggling the hardest ever in my life financially? Did I do this to myself? Was there some choice I made unconsciously that put me here in preparation for some epic revelation and change for my 43rd year on the planet in this skinsuit? Thoughts like that just take me back to the fact that the stress I’ve been under is the kind that literally takes years off our lifespan. Of course, then I stress about the stress…
My mind sometimes lives in a hamster wheel. Running in circles, never really going anywhere. I feel like in some ways my life is just beginning. That I have just started to really get to know and appreciate my children. That the good in my life so outweighs the bad.
I was feeling sorry for myself this morning. None of the kids had called to ask what I was doing tomorrow, or whether I would be home. It feels like my birthday is going by completely unacknowledged by them. So I took my little one to his Campfire meeting, and my 13 year old called so excited about me getting home tonight. I had to come as soon as possible. He just couldn’t wait to tell me.
I got home and he ran out of the house and to me as I put the car in the garage. He and his friends went out and bought my favorite kind of cake, (german chocolate), vanilla ice cream, and even a present. I was amazed. I was astounded. I was tearful. He is such a loving child. And he made my day special already.
Those are the things I am concentrating on rather than the death in my past. The little things. Playing UNO with Mark before his bedtime with cocoa and a snack. Morning hugs goodbye and welcome home hugs after school. Meals together, snuggling on the couch. Those are the things that matter, the things that will stay with us.
I was talking with a woman this evening while our sons were in their Campfire groups. We talked about going back to being a kid, or a teenager, and how neither of us could understand that someone would want to. I agreed so much, thinking that that had been a horrible time for me just because of all that happened, and how I grew up. But I also realized that for Spence and Mark, that maybe things wouldn’t be that way. Maybe they would look back on their growing up, and while acknowledging the angst that we all grow through as we mature, that through it all they felt good. They felt they had a solid, happy, secure childhood and that even in their teen years, things felt ok at home, enough so that venturing into the world they feel right with themselves and their place on this wide planet. I wish so much that I could turn the clock back just far enough to change the past in both Katie & Aaron’s lives to give them the same. To give them the loving happy home that I am capable of now. Since that isn’t possible, I do the best I can to give them all the love they allow me to give them now. I know that for me, that in itself is worth living for. To see all of my children find their place and their happiness.
That is what is my gift to myself this year for my birthday. The gift of the celebration of living, the every day knowledge of the preciousness and beauty of all that I have surrounding me, and the continued gift of growing and changing and changing the world.
