My Esteemed Spouse is playing golf today, which means Simon is crying and looking for him. Better get used to it, Simon. Daddy has three golf dates scheduled for this week. Sigh. It's not like we do anything when he's at home. Yesterday we just sat around. We kept asking each other, "Do you want to do something?" But neither of us could think of anything we wanted to do. I was reading, and he watched golf, and of course, we napped. We're both feeling the pressure of the new semester coming at us. It's like watching a movie where a train is coming, and the person walking on the railroad tracks can't hear it for some reason, but the audience can see it and hear it, and the tension is ratcheting up higher and higher, until at last, the walker looks up, and.... well, sometimes the walker jumps off just in time, and sometimes the train hits the walker.
I'm feeling sad and anxious and guilty for all the things I have not done this summer and won't have time to do now. At least I'm not feeling as bad as Tassina. She wrote in her blog about feeling suicidal. I remember when Stephen was little, and my marriage was a victim of my husband's workaholic nature (he was working 16 hours a day, 7 days a week), and I was suffering from agoraphobia. I would not even answer the telephone unless I felt I knew who was calling. (We didn't have Caller ID back then.) There were times that I thought the world would be a better place without me. Looking back, I'm so glad that I did not give in to those thoughts. I would not have had all these incredible experiences that I've had since then.
Sometimes we feel sad because we don't have the life we wish we had, that we could have had, if only [fill in the blank]. When I was a kid, I used to ask Mama, "What if such-and-such happened?" and she'd say, "Well, that would just be a what-iffer, wouldn't it?" The point is this: none of us, not even Chelsea Clinton or the most famous actor in Hollywood, has the life that he or she imagined. We only have the one we have. We can accept it and make the best of it (which is hard to do sometimes), or we can change it. Some people think by running away, they can run away from their problems, but most of us know that problems stick with us, no matter where we go or what we do. My younger son thought California would somehow be the "fix" he needed to make his life good, but it wasn't. Now he's back among friends in Missouri, and is (I hope) ready to do something with his life.
I have a flag hanging in my office that says "Bloom where you are planted." It's not a message to the world as much as it is a message to myself. It has taken years, but I've finally grown to accept that my life is here in Michigan, or at least it will be for the next decade. We may or may not retire elsewhere. Who knows. But we know we don't want to move back to Louisiana. In fact, it's getting harder and harder to make ourselves visit Louisiana, especially in the heat of summer. If it weren't for my mother-in-law, I'm not sure we would have made the trip this summer. I love my family, but sometimes I think I love them more from a distance, when I'm not being expected to solve everyone's problems. (Am I expected to, or do I just think I'm supposed to?)
The "dog days" of summer seem to have a depressing effect on Tassina, but they also have a depressing effect on me. I can't blame medication, since my medications still work just fine for me. It's not the heat or the humidity, but the sense of impending craziness associated with work.... In short, I just don't want this lovely summer to end. But it will. And life will go on, and Tassina and I will both experience great joy, and great sadness, and curiosity and anger and all those other wonderful emotions that come with being a thinking, feeling person in an imperfect world.
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