The times when, maybe I should be blogging the most, I seem to disappear.
I have too many words, and I just can't put them all down. My brain spends all day putting emotions into thoughts and, by the time I find a moment to type, it's exhausted. I can only stare at the screen and feel blank.
Exhaustion.
It's not that things are bad.
Things are just different.
We spent a quiet Christmas at home--just the two of us--then had dinner with friends. It was lovely, really, very sweet and quiet.
I spent New Years Even in the hospital then at home. You see, I FINALLY had that dermoid cyst taken off my ovary. HUZZAH!!! As I type this, I'm recovering in bed with a movie marathon and my two orange furries snuggled next to me. It's a minor surgery with a quick recovery. I hope to be back to my old self in a week, two tops.
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| Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from us! Whoot! |
A week and a half before Christmas, we were in Florida for seven days.
I don't know if it's home, any more. I call it "home" out of habit, but it's slowly just becoming, "Florida." We visited the family we loved, and I even had a chance to see my old students and friends from my school and catch up with one of my oldest, dearest friends over brunch. We had a lovely time. I loved the time with my family and missed them the moment we boarded the plane to fly back home. "Home," you see, is becoming the little townhouse in California, with our little church and our little town and our furballs and our friends. It's so odd how things change.
Florida is a place that is bizarrely familiar and foreign all at once. We step off the plane, and I can smell the humidity, the moisture, the damp, sickly-sweet smell of green in too much wet. My elbow has an odd, reminiscent itch, and I find a mosquito bite. I haven't had one of those in nearly a year, but they found me. The little blood suckers found me. I recognize the faces, the voices, the conversations. I miss them. I miss them dearly.
But it feels more like traveling and less like a homecoming.
It has nothing to do with the people--they all make us feel welcomed and loved and we hate to leave them. I think it's the fact that we are settling in, becoming our own people in our own place with our own routine.
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Annual Christmas picture with my family! Whoo!
Catherine, me, Chris, Matt, Ellie, Davie, Mom and Dad |
Going back--even just for a visit--came with its own uncertainties. I seem to always find things to worry about, to over-think.
I was afraid of meeting Chris's nephew. Isn't that silly?
I was afraid because I'm not really a baby person. I always seem to hold them in the breast-feeding position which frustrates them and me. They cry, and I find myself near panic.
I was afraid because I knew how much Chris's clan has begged for a grandchild and, now that he's here, he is the star of the show. No, really, he is the STAR OF THE SHOW. I suppose that's normal, but I don't know.
I wasn't close to my extended family. I don't remember how they reacted when my baby sister was born seventeen years ago. I don't fully remember how they reacted when we brought Davie home ten years ago or Ellie seven years ago. I didn't know what would happen if I didn't go berserk over him. If I would offend or hurt people. It's not him--he's adorable--it's me. It's my own issues, it's my own uncertainties around miniature, newly processed humans.
I think I did all right. I held him, talked to him, talked about him. I don't think anyone knew I was freaking out internally.
But, yeah, he was almost in the breastfeeding position. That was awkward.
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Photo courtesy of my sis-in-law
Eric--Mel's fiance as of Thanksgiving--Melanie, Chris and his nephew, Reilly, me, and Julie in front of Chris's parents' GINORMOUS Christmas tree.
Seriously, that sucker is like ten-feet-tall. |
