On December 4, 2010, the world changed. Who noticed? My fourth son, John Blaise, was due on April 24, 2011—Easter Sunday that year. Instead, I went into premature labor at 20 weeks, the first Friday in December to a backdrop of twinkle lights. Our little boy still had a heartbeat…
Have I cracked? Egg-stremely likely.
I’m starting out angry today.
I know that’s not healthy or good. But that’s where I am, and I’m not ready to let go of it. I’m hoping it might actually lead to productivity. Sometimes that happens.
I am tired. I’m pretty sure there’s a good chance that my being slack on my vitamins lately has something to do with it. My diet (as in, “what I’m eating,” not “what I’m not eating”) likely has been playing a part: little of it has been good. But really, I am still attributing most of my exhaustion to stress.
Yesterday was Easter Sunday. It didn’t feel right, as most big holidays over the past 5-8 years haven’t. I’m not sure any quiet holiday will ever feel right to me. Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and heck, even Independence Day, Memorial Day, and Labor Day — they all had been synonymous with “family and food overload” resulting in a full stomach and a good, much-needed, sound sleep that night.
Since moving 500 miles away from the bulk of my family, and something more like 1200 miles from my husband’s, family-filled holidays are few and far between. There is a kind of relief in the lighter obligations, but the fact is, I’m part of a big family. Without that, I feel less than myself. So, I try more and more to create new families. Not necessarily in the biological sense, mind you. But with friends. I’ve tried to “adopt” college students from out of state; having been one myself, I thought it a good thing. But as the age gap grows between the students and my husband and I, I guess we’ve become less relatable. And traveling out of town is typically too much for the short weekends retail allows (if any), the short gas budget, and the shorter members of our crew here.
All that to say I’m homesick.
Which is not why I’m angry.
The more I think about it, the less I want to post about it specifically. I feel like if I’m specific about it, it will work like “The Power of Positive Thinking” in reverse. I don’t need this to manifest itself more fully. But the vague gist is that the past couple days I have felt very much taken for granted. I have felt like I’m responsible for more than my share of the mundane. I have felt in-synch with so many years of my mother’s complaints.
…
On that note, happy Easter Monday!