Summer is always a long haul for me. Aside from that one summer where everything was golden (and even that one was hard -my grandfather died that summer and my brother spent yet another stint in rehab), I have found most of them to be grueling in one form or another. Last summer was hands down the worst string of days I have ever managed to survive, I am still reeling from losing my father. But this summer has not been a breezy vacation filled with carefree afternoons of laughter whilst I frolic through the prairie grass with my kids trailing behind.
This summer I have realized that I can not live with my mother for much longer. When I say much longer I know I am looking at least another year if not two of this co-habitation thing. It’s not that she isn’t a lovely person, she is. But my children are not hers to raise and her control issues are not mine to pocket. We love one another and I have very much glossed over my feelings for our problems in the above sentences because I don’t want to spill all the ugliness out right this moment -if ever. Some families might be able to build a multi-generational roost, but right now I am looking forward to the day when I take my small flock and fly away from here. Also, my brother has spent most of the summer with us. For the most part it has been a really good situation, but -and there is always a but- he and my mom are peas in a pod and I have ended up on the outside looking in to a place where I have spent the last year working really hard to be looking out. It has always been like this with them. They have always been a team and my father and I were more alike, and now that he is gone I often find myself wondering where to sit and how to compose my face when my mom and brother unite.
This summer has also been a test of just how high and how fast I can juggle the kids and their needs. Loren’s social agenda is in full swing for most of the days. He has a drew of giggling girls who call him starting at about 10 a.m. and keep it up until almost midnight on some days. Until he lost his cell phone a couple of weeks ago on a movie outing with said girls, he was wracking up 600 minutes per week -and that is just anytime/anywhere minutes, not evenings and weekends. But luckily he has lost his phone and now must pony up $150 to pay for the new one before he gets any sort of air time again.
Then there is the fact that for the month of August Devon’s preschool lets out. Entirely. Yup. No school for 31 days. That means no three half days of tranquility for me. Or, er, for him to be stimulated and acclimated to being a normal child. September 4 cannot come soon enough.
But there are good things. This past week Matt’s birth mother came from Florida to visit Matt and the kids. I got to meet her and spend quite a bit of time with her. (It was the most time Matt and I had spent together in over a year and it went really well.) Her name is Sue and she is absolutely lovely. We have been communicating for the past three years and have shared some pretty personal things. I had told her how Matt and I had gone through the adoption process when I was pregnant with Loren and how he had talked me out of it – a serious golden point for him in my darker moments. I had a chance to spend time with Sue before she actually met Matt and the kids got to spend three solid days getting to know her. For them it was giggles and hugs. For me it was like getting to know a mother-in-law for the first time except without any expectations: she knows I am wildly flawed, I divorced her son, I bore him another, bastard, child and then left him again. And it doesn’t bother her! Now, I am not at all getting my jabs in at Matt’s mom, Pat -my ex-mother-in-law, but after being kicked around for the past 60 days and weathering my turmoil of family bullshit it was heaven to bask in some love for a few days.
August will pass. School will start and then I will likely look back on the summer and more easily recall some of the afternoons when Devon and I carried his picture books to the hammock and read while the breeze blew over his naked bun cheeks. I will remember Cassidy laughing at the pool as jumped into the water. I will remember the late nights when Loren and I stayed up and he showed me how far his editing techniques have come with his films. Then I will realize that it was not at all a bad time.
In a clockwise progression: That’s Loren telling exactly how lame he finds my picture taking to be. Devon so loved the rodeo activities that he even pitched in and helped feed the ponies. Cass and Devon on a railing at the rodeo, I thought Devon might be stressed out about the rodeo but he loved it. Devon’s finger painting efforts: not a mono color fellow, him.
Old Stuff
Blogroll
I’ve lived with both my mother and my mil for relatively short periods of time and my adult kids have lived with me.
Both ways almost drove me crazy. My sons weren’t so bad but two adult women in the same house?
Forget about it.
I love my mother but I could not possibly live with her. I lived with my parents for six months when I had my son but had to leave because they would not let me be the parent to my child. I’m 45 and my mother still does it from time to time.
It’s tough.