I came home.
Oh man, did I come home. Dave watched me get out of the car, laughed as I ran over to the house and kissed and hugged it. Home. I kissed Dave all over his head, told him he has no idea how much I love him. I jumped straight back in the car and picked Max up from school and kissed him - just a bit, because he was at school. He got into the car and I clung to his bony little body. "Max I missed you so much! My beautiful sweetheart guy!"
He laughed. We went to the chocolate shop AND the lolly shop. We picked Rocco up .... he looked up from his dinosaur, saw I was there, and ran around and around like a spinning top, so excited to see me.
We all just loved on each other. I told them all I was never leaving them again. I told Tim I was going to be the best female nurturer in all the land.
Rocco did a big poo in the bath. It had corn in it. I scooped it out with his toy watering can, took it straight outside to the wails of, "It's MINE! Mummy that's MY POO. Give it back to me, he's miiiiiiine!"
I wiped down surfaces, scraped congealed bin juice, changed toilet paper rolls. Folded clothes, went grocery shopping, planned meals, helped with homework.
All the stuff - it's my job .... my main job.
I think I freaked out so much last week because, if I have no children and no husband with me, who am I?
I will find that out, when the time is right.
::
I love it - all of it. Except when Rocco did another poo in the bath the next night. And except when I dropped my iPhone in the toilet today, as I was wiping it before I sat down because it was so darn filthy. That pretty much sucked.
But I loved everything else. Thanks to my recent stint in the wilderness ... I am full to the brim of love and compassion and gratitude.
I'm so lucky. Life is miraculous. I'm deeply fulfilled. If I were to leave this earth tomorrow .... I would deem my life a success.
Finally.
I'm glad you're back and grateful to be there. Sometimes we need a break to be able to see all the awesome stuff in amongst the poos in baths.
ReplyDeleteLove. Compassion. Gratitude. Now there's a book title!
ReplyDelete"if I have no children and no husband with me, who am I?"
ReplyDeleteYou.
You're the same person with them OR without them.
I haven't learned much in this life [though I'm currently going through one big bloody learning curve at the moment!] but one of the few things that I HAVE learned is this : people, events - they don't define you, who you are, what you do. You will be you regardless of any of them. Revel in the YOU.
Why?
Well simply Miss Eden - YOU rock.
xxxx
I have thought about what my life would be like if I were alone, and while there are days I crave it, the image of it snaps me back to reality, and I almost (ALMOST) enjoying the goo that comes with life in a family of 4 men.
ReplyDeleteThe iPhone in the toilet...that really sucks. Hope you have potty insurance.
"Give it back to me. He's miiiinnne!" Hilarious. The only way to deal with poo in the bath. Now if only I had a strategy for making Rocco stop that. Other than changing his bath time...
ReplyDeleteYou are the same person all the time - vacations give you a chance to be someone else for a little while. It's hard for me to articulate this concept properly, but I think it's rare for people to be someone that they don't want to be. You may think that you're the cleaning lady in your household and hate it and think that's not you...but really, you're the person in the house who hates cleaning but does it anyway because you're also the one responsible enough to know that it must be done (or else there will be rats, rickets, scurvy, MRSA, whatever). I guess maybe I'm saying...learn to relabel properly? You're not the cleaning lady, you're the organizer/disease preventer? Examine your motivations rather than your title? I don't know - I just think that there are things you like, things you don't like but do anyway because they're necessary, and things you don't like so you change them. And most of us focus on the last two, thinking they overshadow the first.
What is it with boys and poo?
ReplyDeleteThe other day, Dylan insisted that I drop everything (which involved about 4 things I was in the middle of multi-tasking ... you know that point where you are teetering on the edge of dropping all the balls and having to start all over? The classic "NOT NOW" moment) ... to come and flush the toilet (the handle is not working well and it requires a bit of bicep to flush) ... so that he could go in it. That's right. No co-mingling of his waste products with products of unknown origin.
"Buddy, just go. I'll flush it later when I finish what I'm doing." !!
No. So I had to drop everything lest he refuse to use the unflushed (I tell you I may as well sew my mouth shut for all the good my talking does around here, yea?) potty ... lest he refuse to use the toilet and have an accident ... the clean-up of which would be the greater of two interruption evils.
Welcome home!! Hope you are well. We all have trouble with the "I am not my job, my job is not me." I actually think taking care of family is a crash course in that wisdom. Find a way to ground yourself or go mad, you know?
XXOO
I agree with one of the previous posters -- you are who you are, with or without family. That said, a little questioning of who you are every so often probably isn't a bad idea; in this particular case it gave you a lot more appreciation for what you have and who you are. I think the first time you do this can be really disorienting and unsettling, and being without family or a role you've had for a while kind be kind of dizzying.
ReplyDeleteBut you have a different appreciation of things now and probably have moved forward in ways you don't even realize to a new role that may be something you haven't even imagined yet.
And as my grandma, a wise woman who lived to 101, used to believe: everything in life is an experience. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. But it's all experience and it all has value. FWIW
Welcome home. The Poo Story was hilarious. What is it with you and words anyway...you have a wonderful gift of taking them and putting them in an order that is so beautiful. I have to say I haven't run across that too often - and I read (lots of peoples writing) a ton!
ReplyDelete