Humanity

July’s end

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I’ve been reading a lot. I’m waiting for the patches to dry and then I’m repainting the walls in the kitchen. I’m beginning week two of my daughter being at summer camp and I’m officially over it. My 18-year-old has been working every day and then evenings with his dad as they over there are preparing to move into a new house. lovely man bob is down with another heart thing (not open-heart surgery again so that is excellent) and i’m just done with all of it.

ALL OF IT.

i’m dreaming about escape to a waterfront cabin in far north maine, where I will spend my winters with nothing but books and a fireplace. fuck it all. let me nurse the wounds of leaving motherhood all by myself. maybe some bread, cheese, a weekly beer and a television that only works once a week. No need for a plow because I have nowhere to go.

the last time I was this fixated on escape, I was married with young children and had no company. that, I still understand. this time around? I don’t really understand it as much. I mean, I have a life, friends, man, job, and a great ability to find all the shimmer and joy that there is.

Now? it is loss, so much change of an internal, self-identity sort that I cannot process it all. My middle E, 18, was singing and playing the guitar on my sofa and singing, still in his lifeguard uniform, and I shoved him out when he was done because I was about to sob in his face. I’ve spent a lot of time pretending I’m fine. It’s fine. It’s fine.

I’ve started writing for myself again, journaling if you will, but what I keep circling back to is the need for me to reforge myself. I’ve been burnt already and now, since I am currently in a melted pool on the porch, it should be a straightforward process?

How do I make myself into the main character?

I was a good daughter, good grandchild, decent-enough wife (though clearly, not ACTUALLY enough), and then a mom, and in all those relationships, I was in service, or that is how it feels. and so now, when I am no longer approaching things like that, no longer serving others… I become an entirely different being.

I mean, don’t I? Do I?

more to come, more to come.

-lovelove

Humanity

its getting hot in here.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

once i gave my kid a card with that song playing. i didn’t really think it through. if you don’t know what i mean, that’s ok.

there’s a heat wave going on. I’m sitting on a velvet couch sprawled in a very unladylike fashion. we have no whole-house AC. and the upstairs, where it is, has started to blow a fuse every hour or so, which canna be good. I’m unplugging everything up there to see if i can make it work, but it’s one window ac for three bedrooms, so it’s the curse of an old house. I’m guessing.

boardwalk between tall grass
Photo by Ghost Acolyte on Pexels.com

I’m going to go to the beach in the next couple of hours. water. must have immersion. I know how lucky I am, yes. And two of my three kids are already there, and that feels like coming home a little.

It’s almost the fourth here in the U.S. We celebrate with cookouts and explosions. and a lot of alcohol for a lot of people who drive. a lovely friend of mine has explosions in her backyard, and so it feels like the most personal delightful exhibition. like, i’m MVP at a World’s Fair somewhere, back when that was just the bee’s knees.

I start a new job this coming Tuesday, and I’m sweating it, and also, know it’ll be fine. its a little bit of a first, but also not at all, so it’s complicated. sort of. I just want it to start, so i can stop planning. I’m spiraling a little bit with all the time on my hands. I’ve laminated, I’ve cut, I’ve packaged. It’s all good, we’re good. Its only a fifteen day program, though spread out over five weeks. And the buckos are preschoolers and kindergarteners. I mean, come on. This is my field that I’m working in, after all. (and funnily enough, i was making a farm metaphor, but it fell flat because of words. ) My soil I am turning?

words man.

i’m trying to write more. I’m hoping the summer will spark me up again. although this heat? not sparky.

(and I’m not typing “fireworks” shhhh, because my dog will be hysterical for several nights in a row, and I don’t want him to start early. He’s a hundred pounds and tries to be a lapdog this whole week. did i say anything about the heat? doghair clings…)

Plus, explosions are way more fun to think about.

right? get sparky with it.

have a fun and safely explosive time.

love, love,

me.

Humanity

changes

Lovelovemotherexpletive

If I hear fleetwood mac’s landslide i am going to crack into pieces and make an ungodly mess. because my icy heart will melt and be a mysterious wet spot on your floor. and that is the worst. the worst. except for maybe legos under bare feet, but thats not really a thing here anymore.

the feet are much bigger, and there aren’t so many roaming the halls.

it is time, it is the second child moving on and out that will be the breaking of me. and i’m here for it, watching what is happening and being full aware and immersed in it. there will be no surprises, my eyes are open and dusty, tears come to flush the system on a regular basis.

the summer after graduation has begun and he is living his best life and so, i have not seen him for four days. neither boy is especially good at communication and they get that from me, and so i roll in misery that is of my own self.

i remember when i split from their dad, he wanted to call the kids every night at eight and i told him it wasn’t sustainable (mostly i thought he’d be too sauced) and sometimes he fell down, but he kept it up, and he’s still on the phone with them all the time. and while i rested on my very dirty laurels and did all the work of the homework and the daily meals and the scheduling, i am now without. just, without. and yes, working on it, but i find myself balancing between wanting to leave them to their own lives, and wanting to hear all the things, and knowing i can barely stop myself from worry and interventions of words, and i don’t want to be kneejerk mom, when it is rarely needed. how do you communicate in that way, of distance, when you have created people out of your own flesh?

there is some mom stuff here, that is not male. sigh. the connection is blue lines that cut through mountains, like map lines, driving routes plotted . always there.

but what am i going to do now? How am I going to fill in the spaces with enough goodness and joy to float me to my end? or even get me through the lasts, whenever they happen….

i still have one at home, a whizzbanger, but the house is already yawning so big.

i need to know how you’ve done this, out there. how have you let them go?

-lovelove

Humanity

i’m sick today.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

i can write still, though. just take naps and sit quietly at the table in between ehem..

i have a teapot sticker on my computer. don’t remember where it came from but i love it. maybe i think it represents a person i am not, but i don’t care. its black with mustard yellow flowers and i think of a girl typing in a small cafe in a romantic movie. messy bun and glasses. so maybe i’m in there a little bit. i certainly have the glasses.

my college kid and i don’t talk on the phone and i’m not writing letters right now so i am feeling disassociated and i am panicking on the inside.

who am i? what do i have if i’m not the mother anymore? Moving into my sea hag era? woman whose kids are out in the world. yes, there is still a 13-year-old at home but last one, big house with just the two of us knocking around in it. things are different now. decidedly so.

so much of what i worry about will only have relevance if i die, (how will they remember me? it haunts me. the relevance, the invisible, the wealth disparity, where will they bring their kids) and so i want to weep a little for my inner turmoil because none of it is happening now, and when it does, i can always move further inward.

i have no retirement plan. i am 51. so there is that. see previous sentences about weeping and living in the present only.

there is a lot more on my list of things to do while i am homebound today, but i think i might take a nap. because sleep fixes a lot of things. sometimes.

Cogs
Humanity

sitting in the kitchen, blizzard edition

Lovelovemotherexpletive

There are over three feet of snow in my yard. specifically, in the driveway. the kids have shoveled but we have not left the driveway, for any reason. I shoveled out the dryer vent and tried to relieve the ice dam that is sending water into the living room. (unsuccessful).

Water is in my living room. There are buckets and towels and there really is nothing to be done except make plans for later.

Almost out of wood. Was planning to go out today to the wood guy, but then it started snowing. I have heat, but the woodstove makes a very big difference.

That is my car out there. for real, for real.

Those are the fingers on one hand. The other hand? I have not lost power once, even a little, so there has been heat and ovens to cook the nuggets. There is plenty of food, and enough even if the power does go, to cook on the stovetop.

I have a job now which pays me all year, even if there is a snow day making it impossible to get to work. Not having that would make me insane and fearful right now. It is critically different to not have that.

I’ve read some. finished a re-read of a Louise Penney book, The Cruelest Month. I do love how much I grow to love a town, a detective and feel the press of a dark winter in her books. Hidden, hissing emotions and a detective who can speak of them. (this was the third in the series, but I have read the previous ones already, plus some later, I think you could read it without knowing the series.) I saw Louise Penny once down at a book talk on the cape, and man, she was relateable and charming, and just an ordinary smart woman. It was lovely.

I am eating snacks that I got while I was in Mexico. Did I tell you I went to Mexico? Of course not, I know. I was in Mexico, at the end of the baja peninsula in Cabo san Lucas. I was not at a resort, but had the most wonderful time feeling the sun on my skin and being warm. We (anita and my sister and I) watched the sunset every night, and ate beautifully in our own kitchen. Anita lives there and is miraculously fluent, working her way to being a local, she is.

They call them Japanese peanuts, but if you go to Japan, they call them Mexican peanuts. So, a cultural exchange.

The book in my lap is Wally Lamb, The River is Waiting and I am sure I have not read anything by Wally before. and it is so good ad well-written, but I am afraid of the heaviness. Oprah, why? Why? Am I just being emotionally tossed around like a ragdoll? Will I recover? Can I bear it in this time of sequester?

Its all giving me vibes of Covid, and its a little disconcerting. I still can’t even believe that happened. Can you?

There is nothing super funny in today’s episode of Kate Writes. I’m sorry if I’ve let you down. IF you are local, I wish you lots of ice melt, and someone else to do the shoveling/plowing/blowing. (also i have heat and you are welcome here if you can get here. plenty of room) If you are not, please send your love to the sun, because she needs to remember her power.

wink.

love,

kate

Toes in the Pacific. First time ever. Also, for real.