A Free Day

Memaw with her baby birth sister, now able to be a carefree teenager instead of a caretaker, a Varsity cheerleader, not a mother figure anymore, that's my job.  Nearly 8 years ago she, Memaw, had arrived here at age 10, frazzled from tending to three younger siblings in an emergency shelter, a place she'd twice had to live, this after several difficult separations from her siblings, foster homes, and the various places her birth mother had left her for many years.  Now she's had 7 1/2 years of living in one house, going to one school system, one church, one soccer park, the routines soothing to her once very traumatized soul.

I intellectually understand, I suppose, the concept of stress.  This wonderfully vivid  graphic helped me this morning certainly, but I still haven't gotten totally on top of it, even though my life has dramatically eased up these past two years.  It's the trauma that has been so debilitating, so hard to crawl up and out from under this crushing rock, but I am trying.

Never in mid-September has my garden looked this fine, especially The Big Back Gardens, where I've managed to keep on top of the weeds except within one bed that's long been extraordinarily infested with crab grass rhizomes, another bed is leaning towards a scary poison ivy takeover, but there's some 25 beds out there, so the percentages remain in my favor.  This lessens my inner stress surges, just walking out there to look around makes me smile and feel downright satisfied.

CW again went out to battle the tall grass in The Upper Gardens, the chiggers have been enormously prolific, leaving red bite marks on our ankles and legs, but as I look around at all we've accomplished this past year, I'm fairly happy about it, after two decades of unrelenting stress, back breaking challenges, and sometimes terrifying issues.

I read about this admirable woman, at age 75 she's the oldest body builder, then scrolled through the slide show of other older people accomplishing their dreams.  I battled at little bit of envy, realized immediately that such a negative emotion isn't helping me any, and got a grip once again.  But the man in the boat, rowing some 12 hours a day, well that was my favorite.

My 30 something year old daughters were again trying to tell a resident teenager about just how clueless she is at the moment about life, blissfully sitting here with all her bills paid, all her needs met, the only thing she has to fret about is her two second job of cleaning the kitchen counters each day.  She stared back blankly.  She's a very intelligent young lady, but I could see it in her eyes, her thinking that these two girls are old school.

Deep sigh.

Maybe it's as incomprehensible to her as it would be to Marissa being told there's no more doll babies in the world, it just wouldn't compute.

Allen had gone to his girlfriend's church for a lock-in, doing a service project which was cleaning out the UGA Stadium after Saturday night's game, something we've done as a family for a couple of years, but not this year, as other non-profit agencies had scooped up the opportunity before Emily's adoption agency could apply again.

I saw Allen for a minimum of two seconds yesterday as he tiredly shuffled past me with a towel heading to the shower, this staying up all night takes its toll.

I have no appointments today, rain is forecasted which makes me stare anxiously and very happily toward the western skies.  I'm gonna go toss some lettuce seed I'd harvested and saved in a new bed I'd dug, then I'm gonna clean the house which will subsequently bore myself to pieces, but its gotta get done.

I'm just glad for the free, uneventful time in which to do it all.