Mixed Blessings

August 3, 2009
When the house empties ...

It happens every time. I feel as if I am drowning in noise while they are here and when they climb into the van, they leave behind a vaccuum that I fill with tears.

Mud Mama is the only one of my children who still has young kids. And she has a passel of ‘em ... six all told ranging for almost two to just turned eighteen.

Usually life here proceeds by inches measured in silence.

When Mud Mama visits, the hermitage vibrates with shrieks from the pre-verbal Sprout who know exactly what he wants to say but can't form the words, gleeful noise from happy kids, and wails from one or the other when a hurt, either physical or emotional occurs. Then there are all the adult sounds that are also so foreign here. This time we had a birthday party on their last day, so Zoom and GC, Erin, Emma and Aidan, and the Arch Angel joined Mud Mama, Maurice, Sprout, Nature Girl, Wild Thing and Dark Mirror.

I feel as if my life went on hold for the week. I don't have a studio to escape to; my living space is also my working space ... and it was impossible with a toddler around to have paints and projects in various stages out where he could hurt himself or them.

Today I cleaned and did laundry after my little weep, and then I went to pick up some chairs Nature Girl and I purchased at a garage sale coming home from our three hour jaunt to Cumberland to get fresh corn for the party. I still have a line filled with laundry to bring in. By tomorrow I will be ready to start working on the two chairs I have started ... another wonky woman and another happy cat. In between times I think I will work away at the smaller projects I've been picking up ... boxes ... a bread box ... a shelf ... a mirror ... children's chairs ... a little pine bedside stand ... a wooden bowl ... more carousels.

My life is really too quiet. I need to see my kids and all my grandchildren, including these young ones more often. But it doesn't work to try to fit several months of absence into one short week. The stresses and strains of living together in a house set up for one old hermit and her dog, are not conducive to good visits. I think we are going to have to figure out a better way.

I am thinking of driving to Nova Scotia in September. I wish I could afford to fly people up for a few days so that we could have small sane visits. But I can't, so we will have to figure out something that will work.

Life will get back to normal by tomorrow ... my kind of normal, at least. I wish my life could have some kind of sane balance. I don't think it has had that since I left an eighteen year relationship in 1995.