I thought surely it was the coffee.
I hadn’t sucked down two giant cups of it quite like that in months.
Merely one step down from how a python would have done it – Entire mug shaped bulge stuck mid-way down my throat.
Or maybe it was my hormones;
(I am not getting any younger, you know)
Which is a thing my mom likes to remind me of every time I mention feeling sad or stressed for an indefinable reason.
She raises her eyebrows and clicks her tongue before bringing up a list of symptoms that could signal perimenopause.
It’s almost like she WANTS me to be in it.
Together, members of the
Sobbing Creped Skin and Clammy Face Club.
I had felt a pressure in my chest all morning as I texted back and forth and made phone calls in an attempt to schedule an upcoming vacation with my sister-in-law for the summer.
The thought of going ANYWHERE these days, both exciting and foreign feeling.
“Do these dates work?”
“What about these?”
“I don’t know. Try clicking it again.”
*repeat for all eternity*
The kids asked what I had planned for dinner,
and then played what looked like Disgusted Face Hot Potato, passing snarls around in a circle quickly, hoping that I would not see.
But what I had planned was the same thing I had planned since March:
Not a gosh darned solitary thing.
By the time my husband called out one of his most uttered phrases:
“Do you remember my password?”
I felt like I would snap from the pressure I had been feeling all morning.
It wasn’t just from how I don’t think in our entire marriage he has ever remembered a single password or username,
or that I have begged him to put them in his phone,
or to make them all the same,
but how for seventeen years he has been forgetting.
Why stop now, right? It’s just his thing.
This was something bigger.
This was from something more.
So, I snatched up a book that I’m sure I will never finish, but will surely spill several things on.
I headed out the door to go sit in the sun under the old Cigar Tree that I love with its
leaves big and round –
sprawled overhead like a feathered mother’s wing.
My chair has been incrementally moved there to that little spot over the last few months of sheltering in place.
Slowly scooting its way to find the perfect spot of
both shade and sun,
nested in a cove of green.
I sat and closed my eyes a bit,
just breathing in as I did,
trying to figure out what was going on inside me that was making me feel like this.
Tense and impatient.
Mad at the world.
I looked around at our tiny house, tucked away in the country,
and at the garden we have put all our quarantined focus on;
And what I looked at felt to me like a small slice of heaven when the world outside has felt wrong.
I realized then how much the last several months spent quarantined have surprisingly felt less difficult than I was first worked up about, and more like some kind of reprieve.
I’ve gotten used to my perfect shady spot.
I’ve grown to understand the value of
quiet and slow.
Now, these last several months have surely had their moments of frustration.
Telling the kids that’s WAY too many goldfish.
Forgetting even what season of the show we’re on.
I’ve missed my tribe of women fiercely.
I’ve missed their long, meaningful hugs that take all kinds of my pain away.
I’d love to just shop without arrows;
(The fact that I hate being told where to go is another thing my mom raises her eyebrows at, clicks her tongue and, and knows.)
But there is just so much I am not ready to go back to.
The scheduling, and the frantic pace.
The feeling of running to keep up with it all.
I realized that the weight on my chest that day had been my body reacting to the feeling of what used to be “normal” slowly creeping back in:
Guzzling coffee to make it until 3:00,
calendars, and password resets.
I remembered how often I felt exhausted.
I remembered feeling like I just couldn’t win,
and
I recognized, there in that moment,
all the things I don’t want to let back in.
There is something to scooting your chair back to find where the shade is best.
To a place where no one asks if your book is still unfinished,
and no one can judge your cover,
warped from all the things that have rested on it.
There with my feet up, and eyes to the sky
I contemplated that my perfect spot was part shady, part sun.
Not all scorching heat.
Not all dark, and cool,
and how if that’s where I choose to sit my body, that’s probably how my spirit most likes to sit, too.
There must be a balance in all things,
so I’ll stay under the trees a bit and not hurry to run right back in.
These last few months have shown me life feels better when it’s a little bit slower.
A little bit of quiet can bring forth your own voice.
I think the pressure in my chest was my own self resisting leaving this perfect spot I found
for all the noise.
This article was written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
