The Lonely

I'm so tired of treading water.  The last five months have drug on to the point that I am at my wit's end. My house is wonderful, I have amazing children, a loving husband, great friends.......... But I can't seem to feel any of that right now.  What I do feel is a hole in my chest that won't heal.  I feel alone in a sea of people.  The sea around me moves and goes on about the business of life and I'm here, treading water.  I want the option of having someone else say prayers with the kids at bed time once in a while. The luxury of another grown up to direct the endless questions that come from my kids would be amazing right about now.  

    Mom guilt is making me feel terrible for wanting a break.  I'm using my go-to strategies for summer.   Thirty minutes of reading time per day-check, two math worksheets per day-check, chore chart with allowance incentives-check, planned outings-check, play dates-check,  all of that is easy.  It's not even the kids that I want a break from, it's the lonely.  The lonely.  The no one who doesn't watch TV with you, and you can't laugh with.  The lonely is why the noises in the night become my responsibility to check out.  The lonely took all the warm away and left cold feet and a cold heart in it's place.  It's the quiet after bed time, it's the noise that doesn't fill the room when I try to sleep.  It's the lonely.

     Sweetness is great, and he tries.  He has been moved to night shift. Night shift means one call around six thirty in the morning when he gets off work for a minute or two.  A call for the kids before bed, then I call before I go "to sleep" for a minute or two.  Talking on the phone has never been one of Brad's best skills, add to that people coming in and out of his office, radios calling him, or a yawn every other word and there just isn't a chance for much conversation.  

     I am stuck lying in the bed we made.  We left "home" right after we got married.  We fought like cats and dogs for the first few years we were married, while trying to figure out just what being married meant.  We  learned to depend on only each other.  There wasn't a mom, dad, brother, sister, or grandma with in a thousand miles, so we learned to hold on to one another.  I won't lie, learning that wasn't pleasant, but it was so good for our marriage in the long run.  The bed we made has become being the outsiders.  We aren't a part of either of our families the way we once were, and that is OK.  There is no way to remain that close once you leave- you can never go home again.  So home has become where ever my Sweetness is.  Where ever we have our kids and lay our heads is our home, except that's gone now too.  

      Brad keeps telling me we will look back on this separation and laugh, I know he is right.  I just can't see day break on the horizon when my head is slipping below the water.  I can do all the work, that's not a problem.  I can maintain the yard, rip out flower beds, clean the house, do all the chores that we used to share.  Work is not what I'm running from.  I lean harder on work when I'm sad.  I try harder to throw myself into physical exhaustion when the lonely is calling for me.  I will work out, shovel, rake, mow, edge, vacuum, mop, wash, and clean, my fingers to the bone to run from the lonely.  So my house is beautiful, but the lonely is always there waiting.  

     Hopefully we only have a few more months of this to get through.  Hopefully summer will be easier than I think and it will fly by.  Hopefully learning to live together the second time around will be a much happier experience,  hopefully the lonely will leave.  

Adrift

 Life for me has been full of "Well, never thought I'd have to ___________."   Sweetness has been gone since late January and my list of never thought I'd have to's is filling up as a result.  We are all learning the rhythm of his absence.  The excitement as his arrival day nears, the  quick as a blink time together, the dull ache after he leaves, and the variable tantrums that bridge the gap before he returns again.  We are all dealing in our own ways.  Thank goodness my Sweetness is strong for me when I need it, and I try my best to fake strength when I see him waiver.  

    Today I am prepping my own breakfast in bed, never thought I'd be doing that.  What I want for Mother's Day is to pout and be a bad sport because the man who promoted me from wife to mother isn't going to be here.  Tomorrow my kids want to treat me, so I'm helping them.  I want their memories of Mother's Day when Papa was gone to  feel like a success.  So my toaster is out, coffee is premade, the English muffin has already been cut.  The skillet is out and has been sprayed, eggs are on the lower shelf in the fridge.  They will make me an amazing scrambled egg on an English muffin and I will love it.  I will wish the coffee were hot and that I'd be waking up next to my husband, but this situation will have to do for now.  I want the day that is mine because I have children to be good for them, they have always been good for me, after-all.  

      I'm now the good and bad cop.  I think it's what I get for ever complaining that Brad was always the fun parent.  I now see that being the "fun one" is certainly not as easy or as fun as I once thought it was.  It takes a lot of energy to bring joy.  My husband is the king of joy in our family and I am scrambling  and struggling, trying to fill his size twelve empty shoes.  I didn't realize how much thought he  put in to surprising us and making the weekends seem fun. A lot of prep work goes in to turning seemingly ordinary days into life long memories. 

     The kids are dealing with Papa's absence in their own ways.  Their moods vary as much as my own from day to day.  By far, no matter how sad and selfish I am feeling I can still look outside of myself and see just how much  this affects the smallest TBC.  Tater is such a Papa's girl.  They have a bond that I just can't replace.  Since Papa left she lashes out at me, she is more emotional, and she argues with her brother more.  She just can't deal with her feelings.  I completely understand and I ride those same waves of emotional confusion with her.  

   Turner is my strong little man.  He misses Papa, but he shows it in different ways.  He locks the house up at night, he shuts down the TV's and lights, he tries to keep the grass mowed, he takes out the garbage.  He too is trying his best to fill those un-fillable shoes.  

   Our house is out of balance.  We are lonely, but we worry for Papa too.  Who is taking care of the husband I made into a father?   I hate the thought of him alone with no one to drive him nuts.  I hate that no one is smiling at him when he gets home.  We have our routine down pat.  We wake up together, I make his breakfast, I pack his lunch, he kisses me good bye and all is right with the world. I miss it.  Sweetness is such a big man, he gives so much.  He deserves to be taken care of and I just can't do it from a thousand miles away. 

      What I want for Mother's Day isn't cold coffee and stale toast, I want to get to be a wife again.  I want to cook for my husband.  I want to be irritated with his mess.  I want the TV too loud and the house to be a wreck because he is his own tornado.  I want him to get the kids all stirred up right before bedtime.  I want man size clothes to fill up the washing machine.  I want clods of dried clay in the carpet when he walks through the house in his work boots. I want to watch him mow the grass.  I want him to take the kids' side and let everyone stay up far past bedtime. I want the chance to take him for granted, but I promise I will never take him for granted again. 

     Four months is a long time. I hope it is long enough for the lesson God is trying to teach me.  I'm blessed to have friends who have adopted my family. We are with them for holidays.  They have hugged me when the tears I can't hold back roll down my cheeks.  They have my kids over to play. Their  husbands help Turner with baseball. They are our cheering section, support group, family, and my sanity.  If God is showing me that family can be found anywhere, I understand. If He is trying to make me appreciate my husband, I promise, I understand. I am scared it's patience He is trying to teach me...... He has brought me to this lesson before. I've always tried to hurry through it.  I'm scared of God's timing. I know I am supposed to trust in it, but I just don't know how to. Our life is so up in the air, I actually thought I was doing OK. No roots, no certainty, it was OK as long as it was the four of us. Now our anchor is gone and this ship is adrift. I miss my anchor. 

Trampolines and Earphones

Life has taken an odd swing at the Currier household in the past two weeks.  Brad went to work two weeks ago on a Monday morning, just like normal.  I dropped the kids at school and as I was headed to Crossfit Sweetness called me.  He said "I'm on my way home, and I'm being sent to work in Kentucky tomorrow."  A lovely twenty-four hour notice that my husband was moving to another state, and so goes the life of construction.
    I hate separation from my husband.  Even when we are arguing and bickering I need him physically close to me.  We are ten kids of messed up/co-dependent with each other, and that's just how I like it. In the past twelve years of marriage we have learned how to depend on each other.  There's no other family around for hundreds of miles so Sweetness, along with TNT, make up my entire family for ninety-seven percent of the year.
     We haven't seen each other in two weeks.  I have cried more in the past two weeks than I care to admit.  We've been separated when we move for a couple weeks before, but I always know when the separation will be over.  This is an open ended engagement.  He will stay in Kentucky until another job happens.  It's so hard to explain to folks with normal jobs, who've never moved farther than a stone's throw from their parents the how's and whys of this life when I don't know the answers myself.
       So, how has life changed?  On the outside it hasn't.  Our routines are the same, dinner still happens at six, I don't really have any added chores.  On the inside it's vastly different.  My children are more clingy to me than usual.  They need two parents and that need comes out as pulling at me in new ways.  My insides are a mess.  I'm sad, moody, and hopeless feeling.  But I have to keep my outside self on track and normal so the kids feel safe and secure.  That, my friend, is exhausting.
        I miss having no conversation with Brad, just sitting together and enjoying him playing with my hair.  I miss him bringing me a glass of wine on the weekends and making me sit down and relax.  I miss cooking his breakfast and his scratchy beard on my forehead for a goodbye kiss every morning.  It's all of our seemingly unimportant rituals that I'm missing most.  Some things you just can't replicate on the phone.
      I am thankful for Face time, it helps some what.  Sadly, Brad and I have never been good on the phone.  The conversations always feel forced and empty.  Just a recall of the days' happenings, no emotional connection.   I am hoping we become better at just talking to each other.  It seems like it would be so easy, we've been speaking to each other for fifteen years, surely we should have the hang of it by now?  I hope we come out of this better at listening, better at bearing our hearts to each other.  I hope my loneliness doesn't turn me bitter towards him.  This is just hard.
     I have awesome friends who have been so sweet and considerate.  With out them I probably would have lost my mind already.  I'm trying to make myself keep up with being social.  Go to lunch, go to church, have the kids' friends over.  But it all feels weird with out Sweetness.  He's been the only constant in my life for the past twelve years and now there is an empty space at the dinner table, in his chair, and in our bed.
     The kids have been fantastic.  God knew I couldn't handle much so He blessed me with resilient amazing little people.  They are pitching in, they give me hugs, they are putting on the bravest faces.  I'm trying to do the things that Sweetness does for them- be fun.  I'm not the fun parent.  I'm the parent that cleans up the fun when it's over, and that is fine with me.  Papa is always building fires and bringing home marshmallows to roast.  He's the one who knows what movies are playing, who is always wanting to take the kids to see something new.  I am always full of reasons to not sit outside when it's cold, and not wanting to stay out late for a movie.
    Today the kids and I having a low key day at home.  No friends over, nothing going on.  We went to church, had a nice lunch and are chilling out the rest of the day.  The problem with this is they want me as their constant companion.  There is no one to switch off with.  There is no Papa to sit outside and watch them do flips on the trampoline while I get dinner ready.  So I'm trying to give them the same amount of attention that they would usually get from two parents.  But here is my bad mom confession: listening to them yell, argue, laugh, and scream constantly for two weeks grates my nerves.  I have never been able to zone out when noise is involved.  I hear and process every word of it.  After my daily quota is met I just can't handle anymore talking and noise.  Today on our "relaxing day at home I did the best I could.  I went and sat with them outside to bear witness to a game they have made up on the trampoline.  But I couldn't take anymore unending noise.  So, I plugged in my headphones and listened to music so I couldn't hear them.  I watched them, with out tuning them out, but I had to not hear them for a little while.
     I'm not sure if other mothers have to "not hear" their children for a little while or not?  I'm just trying to come up with ways to get through these next few weeks.  Maybe headphones and trampoline time are a great combination for us for in this situation.  I'm trying to look at my children and let them feel my love through my gaze, but I need moments where the music is louder than my thoughts and their voices.   I pray I'm not messing this up.  We are all praying daily for a job to start up here so Papa can come home.  So he can sit outside and watch the kids bounce.  So our dinner table won't have a big empty space.  So he can play with my hair and I can feel his nearness.  So there isn't an empty spot in every day and in all of our hearts. 

Growing pains........

         Why on earth is life so fast?  Here it is Christmas time again.  How did we just blow through another semester? Can I hit the slow motion button please?

      I went to the kids school today to help with Christmas crafts for Tate's first grade class.  I couldn't help but notice how much more grown up all the kids were compared to this time last year.  They all follow directions so much better, they are so much more skilled at painting and taping than the kindergarteners they were.  It hurts my heart.

     Before leaving school I popped by Turner's class just to give him a quick hug, let him know I thought of him while I was at school.  Last year I would have walked right in the classroom, hugged him, kissed the top of his head and walked out.  Not now.  This year I asked him to step into the hall.  He's older, bigger, and growing apart from me ever so slightly.  I will always take what hugs and kisses I can get, but it breaks my heart.  

      Each of my children saved my life in two different ways.  Turner B. came first, and he took my breath away.  I'll tell you a secret, although I knew what it meant to be saved, had been baptized, and professed to have Jesus in my heart I didn't understand the depth of this until I met my son.  In the first week of Turner's life I learned just how much my God loves me.  Turner introduced me to unconditional love.  Sure I loved my parents, my sister, and my husband, but my love for my son opened the world to me.  Turner saved my life by helping me really value the salvation Jesus gave me.  Turner made my heart softer and he gave me my purpose.

      While I fell in love with my sweet boy I still battled my own inner demons.  Depression pulls at me.  The voices I hear telling me if I only weighed less, if only my stomach was flatter, if I could only learn to eat less, then I could be happy.  I have always obsessed about my weight, my size, my shape.  Food and I had a terrible relationship.  I loved it and loathed it, never enjoying a single bite.  It tortured me to eat, made me feel like a failure to give in to hunger.  Then my shining light, my bringer of joy, Tate came to me.

       I never worried about my eating disfunction affecting Turner, he's a boy-surely he is immune, right? But the minute Tate was born I was determined to do everything I could to protect her from the monsters that whispered to me.  As Tate became a toddler I knew she watched and mimicked my every move, and every bite.  I had to let go of skinny.  I had to find a way to focus on something good.  Working out and concentrating on how strong I can be instead of how I can starve myself worked for me.  I finally quit weighing and logging every gram of food I ate.  I now try to not judge myself based on what I have or haven't eaten today, instead learn be at peace with what small accomplishments I have each day.  Tate is my tiny mirror.  Every choice I make is reflected in her.  I have to be good to myself, value myself so she will value herself too.  Having her saved me.

     Watching my kids grow up is painful.  Each day I can protect them less.  Each day more of the world is put on their shoulders.  I want to keep them little.  I will try to focus on the minutes that matter.  The way we talk each morning on the way to school.  Listen to what they pray abbout.  Help when I can but also try to be better at letting them do everything on their own, in their own time.  Doing all this is painful.  I think the phrase "growing pains" is more about the heart ache of watching your children grow up than it is about actual cramps.  The pain is also accompanied by infinite joy, if it wasn't no one would sign up for parenthood.  The joy of watching Turner, confident on the football field,

almost made my heart burst.  The joy of watching Tate shine during her gymnastics class is inexplicable.  Joy and pain, its a beautiful life.  

My Moments

     

     Memories are living things, at least mine are.  I have very vivid memories of my childhood, exciting times, vacations.  The special ones are my moments.  I have a very few, very special moments.  I can feel and smell and be in these moments at any time, because they are magic.  One of my very first special moments was combing a dying mans' hair.  I was ten years old and my world, my grandffather was dying of colon cancer.  Everyone has that one special grand parent, and he was mine.  He was magic, he was like Dr. Seuss's mischevious better half.  Cancer is evil and jealous and it wanted all of his amazing life spirit.  Not long before he slipped away from me he called me his little nurse and asked me to comb his hair.  He was still making magic and pretend for me.  He laid on his couch and let me comb his hair and he was mine.  

    I surveyed with my dad when I was sixteen.  His partner died unexpectedly, and he asked me to help him finish a few jobs.  The jobs kept coming that  summer, so we kept working.  He got me my very own machete, and he taught me how to use it.  We worked the hardest job I had ever had that  summer.  Cutting line through swamps and through rivers and mud, I think it was about a hundred acres total.  We sat on the tailgate of his truck, hot as hell, sharing water and Vienna sausages for our lunch.  I have never been more proud to be his daughter.  He is my shining example of what a Godly, hard-working man should be.  I can still smell our sweat, feel the sun bearing down on us, and my dad was all mine.  

      When I was thirty I had the good fortune to have a blood clot.  I thought I was strong and capable and God showed me I am but a fleeting piece of humanity.  A surgery that was supposed to be a three day hospital stay turned into a twenty-three day ICU ordeal with too many complications to name.  I became so worn down, so weak.  My Sweetness stayed every night, would go shower and see the kids for a couple hours and come back to take care of me.  When I was at my lowest, in walked my Sweetness with our kids' travel DVD player, a bucket of microwave popcorn and a chick flick.  He smiled and told me " I came to take my best girl on a date".  I never saw the movie, my lung collapsed shortly after that and I was rushed off to surgery.  But that smile,  those weary eyes full of worry, the confidence he faked for my benifit.  That was our moment and he will forever be mine.

      I love to work out and I have found my tribe. I joined Crossfit Fortify about a month ago and was asked to be a fill in on their team for a competition.   This past weekend I had a moment at that competition.   My nerves had me almost paralyzed as our team was called to get ready for our first heat.  My coach was up first and I watched him rip through his sprint and weights, terrified that I was next. I know it was loud but I couldn't hear anyone.  When my turn came I ran.  Once I was back I had to complete a set of twenty seventy-five pound thrusters.  I have never pushed myself so hard physically that my emotions overpowered me, until this past weekend.  I think I have always done just the opposite, I work out to work through my emotions and handle them.  Saturday I pushed my body until it stopped.  I actually felt tears spring into my eyes when I had two more reps to do.  My lungs and my entire body screamed at me to stop, then I looked and saw my kids.  I saw them worried.  I finished  because Turner and Tate willed me to.  Sweat running into my eyes, pain and pride running through my body, and my childrens clear blue eyes watching me.  That was my moment.  Seeing the two who I made, knowing I am forever thiers.  

It's just a bus.....

    My kids are riding the bus home from scool today for the very first time.  Children all over the world do this every day, so it's fine, right?   My endless praying and pacing around, "what if-ing" myself to death  is not necessary, right?  The bus beats us home every day, their friends all ride on it, they asked to ride home on the bus, so why am I freaking out?!?  Easy: I am a control freak who is desperately hanging on to my kids for dear life.  Turner and Tate are both the reason for my insanity and the only cure for it.  I get driven nuts by them both on a regular basis, but any time they are out of my sight I am a hot worried mess.
      Last week Turner had a doctor's appointment right before lunch, since we had an excuse I decided to take him on a date and skip the rest of the school day.  Papa came and met us for lunch, we even splurged on desert.  Sweetness went back to work and Turner and I had the day to shop together.  We went everywhere, got him a new book on the sea and all it's many creatures, some training equipment to use for football, and even went in and had coffee together before picking up Tater.  He held my hand, opened my car door and talked to me for four straight hours.  No video games, no phones, no noise just me and my boy.  He's funny, he loves music because it speaks to his heart and moves to the rhythm of his soul,  he thinks of others and is possibly the most curious person I've ever met.  To have him or his sister out of my comfort bubble is unbearable.
      We  have always lived away from family, so no grandpas or grandmas to pick the kids up from school.  We move frequently enough that by the time we "make a family" out of our friends, we are telling them goodbye and saying hello to another city.  So, every single day the kids and I go through our routines, which are all intertwined together.  I don't like new routines, but this to shall pass, right?
       It's that time of the job when I am feeling all out of sorts.  The job is ending, we have no idea where or when we are going, like a feather floating on the breeze waiting to see where we land.  Even though we say it's not stressing us out, it is.  Do I start packing?  No.  Do  I start worrying about the kids school year being interrupted?  No.  We may not move for six more months,  so why worry now?
  God is constantly trying to show me that I am not in control, but man I am bullheaded and stubborn, so it's a hard lesson to learn.  God's also been trying to teach me patience for the past 12 years, but I have been in too much of a hurry to learn it.  Brad and I have never known where we are heading, just that we are going where ever it is together.  
       I am trying so hard to take deep breaths and enjoy this journey.  Why worry now? My kids are still little, still sweet, and still innocent.  The world has not gotten it's hands on them, yet.  My husband and I are still young enough to be healthy and enjoy this great gypsy life.  So I'm going to make a cup of coffee, say a prayer that my kids get home safely and keep telling myself it's only a bus.  I will worry about something all new tomorrow.

It's there, you have to look for it.

   I have been LAZY about blogging as of late.  Our time in Texas has doubled from its original six month projection. When we said our tearful good bye to Georgia, I promised my boy that we would go back for a visit.  Life got busy and a school year came and went. Summer fast approaching, we began to try to plan a Macon trip. 

     I'm not about to lie, I was a little nervous to go back. More than a little nervous to have my family of four invade our neighbors' family of five's house for five days. Fish and company stink after three days you know?  But this was Turner's one time in a year to see his very best friend, shorter just wouldn't do. I am such a creature of habit that it's hard for me to step outside my carefully crafted facade of normalcy and sanity.  Tickets in hand  we sailed across the skies to our former home. 

       As soon as I saw Amy walk out to greet us with that beautiful smile on her face, everything felt right. Right like we could still walk across the driveway, right like the sound of a basket ball dribbling, right like  borrowing an egg, right like finally seeing your family again after a year apart.  We managed to spend five whole days together, and it was wonderful.  The kids never once argued, heck they never once looked up from playing together. We got to see so many of our friends, share meals, laughs, a few drinks and so many memories. 

      Our trip lightened a weight that has been pressing on my heart for the past year. I have worried that our gypsy lifestyle was going to break my children's hearts. I thought being moved across the country from their very best friends would put irreparable cracks in their lives.  After seeing how happy they were in Georgia and how equally happy they were to return to Texas I know that I was wrong.  The moving away from and the distance apart from our Green family didn't break Turner and Tate's hearts.  It did make cracks, but those have only served as space for our new friends here.  

        I'm hoping this gypsy - go where the wind blows us- life is teaching my kids acceptance.   So far I  believe it is.  Beyond that it, it is teaching us all that happiness doesn't reside in any one place.  It's any where you look for it.  It's in different states, in different shapes, in different cultures, and within so many different people.  I hope when my children are grown they look back and know that they have friends and happiness spread all over the world.  I want them to not think they will live and die in the same town, but venture out and try out many different kinds of happy.  My happy is in running trot lines on a pond with my dad,  it's in looking across the valley as the monsoons of Phoenix roll in, it's in watching softly falling snow in Utah while holding my baby, it's in looking down a cherry blossom lined street, and it's on the gulf coast basking in the sun with my Sweetness and digging in the sand.  I want Turner and Tate to know that no matter where God sends them they will be happy, as long as they look to find it.