People use the metaphor of a roller coaster for life all the time. It's probably among the most cliché comparisons...maybe ever. I've been using it quite often lately, but as I'm typing I'm realizing that its not correct. Life over the past few years has been more of a street luge experience. We've been hurtling down a winding, bumpy path, negotiating the turns awkwardly, picking up speed, sometimes losing momentum, picking up speed again, holding tightly onto the apparatus, straining to keep our collective body in alignment to make the ride as smooth as possible, and praying that we don't fall off, lose our balance, shift our weight just ever so slightly to the wrong side, or hit a bump that throws us far off the track, crashing mercilessly into a row of bushes, down a ravine, and into a pile of rocks.
My husband's health is the driver of this crazy train, and he's been out of the house since just before Thanksgiving. It's not a permanent situation, at some point he'll come back, but by the time he does, well over a month if not more will have gone by and then everything will change. In the meantime, I'm trying to give and show my kids as normal of a life as I can - making up for some of the time they've lost from their youth over the past few years - giving them as much of my time as I can, keeping life as simple as possible. I wish I could give them more, take them travelling, but I can only do what our resources allow, since most of them are funneled toward my husband's health. But considering our recent past, the ease and simplicity of a quiet night at home, playing a card game, or watching a movie, even just doing homework...without being on high alert for another fall, collapse, or seizure is a gift beyond measure.
So we make this work the three of us - my son, my daughter, and I. It's trickier than I thought. I didn't realize how much my husband actually did around the house, even with his health problems. And though his routine list wasn't long, the things he did do - like the cooking, keeping the house well stocked, getting the kids rides to where they need to go (he no longer is able to drive due to his health), receiving packages, paying bills, and being an adult at home when a repairman is needed - have thrown my tenuously balanced list of to dos seriously out of whack.
But we're managing. We don't want to get too comfortable because we know it's not permanent. But we know we will all be picking up more responsibilities once he comes home. Maybe some of us are even slightly dreading it. Maybe not so slightly. Maybe not some of us.
Back in September, my daughter starting dating a boy she met on the school bus. He's a good kid, polite, respectful and thoughtful - the kind of kid you want your daughter to date. He's become a bit of fixture in our lives in a relatively short amount of time, often spending good chunks of his weekend with us. He gets along with my son - which is a feat in itself, for all the usual reasons a big brother and younger sister's boyfriend may have issues about, but added to it that my son is a finicky kid - quite guarded, and a little bereft of social graces.
So now, though we are three in the house until the kids daddy comes home, I am typically hanging around with three kids on any given day - rather than two. Three is a magic number. And the three of them together make a lot of laughter. Laughter I love. Laughter that makes me breathe better. Laughter I don't want to stop.
Of course, I can't make any presumptions about how long the relationship between my daughter and her boyfriend will last, but he fits well with us and he balances us back, and they sure do seem quite fond of each other. I hope it lasts a while. People come in and go out of your lives for reasons - not just randomly - not the ones you develop relationships with. What will happen when we're back to four in the house? I don't know. I'm just trying to take each day for what it is. More to come on this...looking backward and forward.
Good night. Meet you at the featherball...
No comments:
Post a Comment