A Mom Story!

Several people have asked recently, "Now, that all three girls are in school, what are you doing with yourself?" Honestly, I feel like life is even busier now than before. The days are a lot longer, but different. Totally different. There are so many more silent moments built in to my days. The last few years silence and stillness have been missing ingredients in my life. There is nothing I would necessarily change about the last season we have walked through, I just see now how much I missed the silence. I thought maybe coming home to a quiet house after dropping the girls off at school would break my heart. It's not :) It's so refreshing to sit in the silence and be still. It is so incredible to sit here at my computer writing, without a monkey on my back, a child interrupting asking me a million school related questions, and having to stop my train of thought to go break up a fight. For years, "quiet time" (90 minutes a day where all the kids had to be in their rooms) saved my life. But the older they got and the more intense school became, "quiet" went out the window. If my best photography friend was here she could do a lifestyle photo of the before and after. Before would be the one with me writing at the computer with four children stacked all around me. And the after would be the one of me sitting all alone at my desk, with AJ passed out in his bed. It really is a slice of heaven. I am hoping the silence will produce richer writing from me, and more opportunities to write, and really, I would like to work towards writing with fewer mistakes, but until I hire an editor, prepare yourself for my messed-up-ness. :)!

This post has been brewing since we left Kansas.

The Saturday we loaded the Penske, we spent the night at my dad's house. We had not had a slumber at Poppo's since we had moved from Virginia to Kansas in July of 2009, two years almost exactly. We spent tons of time at my dad's in those two years, but we had no reason to spend the night there because we had our own home to crash at. That night as we got ready for bed a lump formed in my throat and I got sucker punched from no where (as most sucker punches go) tears began to build, I realized that this would be our first sleep over at Grammy and Poppo's, without Grammy. Reality. Later in the evening as everyone was a sleep I needed to find some toilet paper. My dad keeps his toilet paper in the basement, so I quietly opened the basement and tip-toed down the stairs to find it, but about half way down the steps I felt the presence of my mom so strongly I almost couldn't finish walking down the stairs. Mom and Dad's basement is filled with boxes of a life time. Boxes from a marriage of almost 40 years, boxes of with the remnants of raising five children, boxes from a long legacy of love literature, and loving people. And boxes now filled with memories of mom so potent you almost can't breathe.

I reached the bottom of the stairs and wept. I could smell her. I could see her when I tightly shut my eyes. I could hear her, and I wanted so badly to ask her one more time, "Mama, are we making the right decision leaving Kansas?" My whole family had been so supportive of our move. They of course did not want us to go, but graciously let us. My mom was always so good about verbally affirming our choices that stretched us, even though it made her ache. As a little girl, I wanted to say at home forever, but it was my mom who made sure I went to Kindergarten, even though I wanted to stay at the book table with my dad for the rest of my life :)! It was her that insisted I go to summer camp as a little girl, and even volunteered as a counselor to ensure that I would go. During some hard teenage years she would always encourage me to accept invitations to parties and events. And as a newly blushing bride, she reinforced the importance of me 'leaving and cleaving' to my husband as I moved a whopping 9 miles away down the road and thought I was going to melt into a sea of homesickness. And in the end, when second thoughts and insecurities were setting in, she was there to nudge me out door and send me on my way.

 Leading up to those brief moments in the basement I was still hesitating in accepting this invitation to a new life far from home.  It was like I could feel her soft hand grab mine, and I could hear her say to me as she had said countless time in my 31 years, "GO! You can do this. This is the right thing. This is good. There is precious life there waiting for you to live. Be brave! You have never liked being away from home, but you've always done just fine. Now GO!

And in the middle of me wrestling with my second thoughts and insecurities,  there she was there waiting for me, not at the front door this time, but nonetheless, waiting for me, to give me one final nudge out the door and onto a great adventure.
~Sara