down south

Two more weeks in Southern Texas!

                                                                          Not that I'm counting.

grown children

This morning Chuck and Ray and Elliot and I went out for breakfast. Elliot sat on my lap instead of in a booster seat. We went to Ernie's which is a small diner/cafe on East Walnut in Columbia. Elliot and I missed the story time at the library, we will hit it next week because I will be back in town before making the long drive to San Antonio, to work.

The thing about children is that they grow up and as I was sorting through the detritus which I have carried with me from place to place to place to place, I asked Chuck what we should do with it all. "Give it away or to the Good Will", he said.  He was right, of course.

The beauty of growing older, for me anyway, is this shedding of skin, this releasing of "things" which have been carried around for years. Then, there are the children's things which they long ago forgot. Mementos from childhood, pictures, and art projects stored in Sterlite boxes, as if the past could be resurrected by opening a Sterlite box. These I will keep.

It is difficult to let go sometimes, to move on. The piece of furniture that was in my parents house that I had a boyfriend, at the time, drive up and help me load into the back of his pick-up to haul back to Columbia...it is a piece I thought I would one day re-do. It too will be let go of, discarded and eventually, forgotten.

There are very few things to keep. The iron bedstead which I have had since college and which will last me until I die, it is that sturdy, and a cedar chest which my dad gave to my mom for her nineteenth birthday and which holds quilts which were given to the children by my grandmother and which they will take with them when they establish houses of their own, and of course, the family pictures and those sterlite boxes.


Elliot sat on my lap this morning at breakfast while I took a few pictures of the boys, reminding them that when they were his age I held them as much as possible, realizing that too soon, the time of holding them, would be gone.

cool mornings

It is cool in the mornings, or, this morning is cool and I want to remember this coolness as the neighbor's air conditioner kicks on, whirring loudly, heard through the patio slider which is open.
There is a unique tempo to the days in this time of life. The early mornings spent unloading and reloading the dishwasher, putting clothes in the washer and dryer, folding, putting away, making beds, sweeping floors, pulling weeds which have pushed through the patio cracks and sweeping off the patio. Setting out trash and the recyclables.

Dylan sleeps in as my brother-in-law and I talk over coffee in the living room. He spent the night in the guest room. His mother is in the ICU at the University Hospital. She was left to lay on a basement floor for fourteen hours with six cracked ribs and a contusion to the back of her head. His father tried to move her and did not know what to do and is sorry that he did not call 911. He tried to make her comfortable. He made a mistake. Two old people, both in their eighties, living alone. This is what happens sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes.

He is gone now and the house is quiet except for a bird singing outside and the rhythm of the dryer.  This is a good time of life where more time is freed to do what one pleases and financially there is a measure of security (false security perhaps, but security). It is a time when one looks ahead and can either see nothing but darkness, a waning of days to decrepitude or one can choose to see lightness and have hope, why not.
As much as I will miss the boys and the busyness that surrounded those days, they are days which are gone, never to be retrieved and what do we have? Today. And today is a good day, no, it is a glorious day and right now, it is the only day I have.

"Commit everything you do to the Lord,
Trust him, and he will help you." Psalm 37:5

is that all there is?

Our lives are such that the boys and I still get together for meals and periodic travels and that sort of thing, but it all becomes less and less as they establish their lives more and more. As they create their own lives I find my interests extending and expanding farther and farther outside the context of our "family".

This morning is another breakfast morning with the Chuckster at Ernie's.
Then a class at the gym.
Then a drive to St. Louis to work on my resume with my sissah, and while I'm there, maybe I'll pop in to the Shoe Stop off  Brentwood, just down from the corner of Manchester,  to peruse, and talk to the ladies and try on some shoes.

"The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases." Carl Jung