Oh my, I had to delete that whiny post I had up; I just couldn’t stand it. I did get a comment from an interesting guy named Pistolpete though, so all was not lost.
I’m home. I picked Nate up from preschool where he bounded up to me, as usual, shouting, “MOOOMMMYYYY!!!” loudly, said good-bye to his friends, and we went out to the car, but not before he ran around a bit in the grassy area near the parking lot. The kid has energy to spare and then some! We got into the car and I realized that I desperately had to get gas, so off we went to Sheetz, Nate asking if we could also get a car wash. Sure, that’s no problem; the car could use a wash anyways. Today was a banner day at Sheetz. All car washes were $5.00, even the Ultimate. Car. Wash. — WOW!! It is really much more fun to appreciate a car wash with an enthusiastic child who can oooohhhh and aaaahhhh at the suds and colors and rinse and water much better than any adult can. Laughing and talking about the various stages that the car wash was going through was the beginning of some sort of balm for my cranky, bedraggled, beaten-down spirits.
Then we got home where I immediately unloaded to Frank — family stuff, other stuff. He understands, he’s my best support. I’m to unload on him, the therapist says, lean on him. “He’ll support you . . . if you let him.” Yeah. She’s right. I don’t know why I hold back at times. It’s a bad, old habit from what sometimes seems like a lifetime ago, a first really bad marriage where I learned not to trust, to always hold something back, to protect my innermost self. It’s still there to some extent even when I don’t know it. I’m truly not aware of it.
So I’m HOME. Home. It’s a haven, a respite from the rest of the world. A place where I don’t have to answer the phone if I don’t want to. A place where my favorite people in the world are. A place where my comfortable bed is. A place where my life is. Our place. Our family. Our home.
Nate always wants something lately. A brother. A sister. Another dog, but a small one. Now it’s hamsters. I say that I don’t know and he automatically assumes that we’ll get them. “HAMSTERS!! I’M GETTING HAMSTERS!!” “I didn’t say that, Nate. I was just asking you to think about some things. Where would we even put them. And what about Callie. She’s a hunting dog; she would want to eat them.” It doesn’t work. He has this confidence as big as a mountain at times. “YAY!! HAMSTERS! I’M SO EXCITED!!” Oh. My. God. I can’t believe this, I haven’t said a thing about getting them and he thinks he’s getting hamsters. How does he do this??!! Well, there will be NO new pets at all before our vacation in May, that’s for sure!! And I don’t know about after; I don’t even know what having hamsters entails!!
Home is where the bathroom is falling apart around us, but we don’t have the money to fix it yet. Home is where the carpet in the dining room needs to be taken up, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Home is where the biggest messes East of the Mississippi are, but maybe I just need to say, “Well! At least they’re OUR messes!” And Frank is starting to clean up all the clutter; it’s a big help. A HUGE help. I look at the huge messes of clutter and get so totally overwhelmed that I don’t even know where to start. He doesn’t mind working through the big messes. Once he starts on those, I’m better able to get to work on some of the rest of it. Things just somehow got out of control. Last year, I think, when family stuff got crazy and I was being pulled in all directions — my little family here and my aging mother and expectations from my siblings and just a general overload. Not easy. Not easy at all. Everything went by the wayside.
But it’s still home. Even if. Even if it’s so imperfect and shows how frazzled we really are and the cluttered states of our minds. It’s ours. Well, and the bank’s. When the weather is nice, we park my car at the end of the driveway, blocking off the driveway so Nate can ride his bike or his ride-on loader down the driveway and we have an effective blocking device so he doesn’t accidentally ride anything into the street. It’s so simple. Frank and I sit out there and watch him. It gets easier and easier the older he gets. He really just wants the company at this age. We have a chain out there for Callie too so she joins us outside.
It’s a small brick bungalow. Nothing fancy, nothing big. A small house. One car garage. Modest. In a modest neighborhood. Go down 1/2 block and there’s a busy street that takes you to major business and shopping either way you drive. Go the other way and eventually you get to the dying downtown area. But before the dying downtown area is an ice cream shop with the absolute best homemade ice cream ever and a specialty sundae called the Bittner that has vanilla ice cream mixed with chocolate, roasted pecans, and whipped cream. It sounds simple, but I tried to make it myself once and it wasn’t the same. I couldn’t get it right. And there’s just something about it that is so good that it’s probably their biggest seller.
I honestly don’t know why I’m writing all of this, except that I came home and things seemed better. I came home with my boy and to my husband and somehow just crossing over my driveway, some of the weight of the past few days came off of me a little bit. Because it’s home. And at it’s best, it’s my place of peace. Of rest. Of healing from whatever tough stuff the days have brought.
Home. Like the girl said, there’s no place like it.
