Slow blogging: life raises its ugly head and interferes...

This afternoon was dedicated to getting my little guy ready for kindergarten.  No blogging allowed!

First, phone calls repeatedly to the doctor’s office – due no doubt to a busy Monday, I’m sure, but their office left a cryptic message at the very last minute on Friday about the health forms we need for registration.

Once I finally get them on the phone, I’m told my son needs an office visit for completion of the form and the only slot is at 3:45 pm.  After a 2-hour wait and much squirming and fidgeting, Doc sees my son, fills in the blanks and we’re out of there…

Leaving a scant hour to cook and serve up dinner, complete the rest of the registration forms, go to the school, fill out more forms before end of today’s registration deadline at 7:00 pm.

There’s a helluva lot of personal information requested on those forms, too, rather disconcerting to a privacy freak like me.

First afternoon in nearly two weeks I didn’t worry about anything else except the task at hand.  If you know what I mean.

Normal blogging may resume tomorrow, but only after completing the morning’s mission.  The little guy has testing for a gifted program mid-morning; I can hardly wait to hear the same spiel I’ve heard before intended for the newbie parents-of-gifteds.  Blah-blah.

Maybe I should draft my next blog entry while I play brain-dead during that presentation.

Nah.

8:56:34 PM    comment []

Up to the job?

I don’t know if I am.  If I was working full time, I’m not certain at all that I would be; I’d be stretched very thin.  But not working brings another set of problems; since I’m not emotionally and psychically bound up in workplace issues, I’m expected to be emotionally and psychically available for anything else.  I’m a sub-optimized tool on the shelf, waiting for duty.

Damn, it’s just not the case.  How can one really and truly make the hurt go away for someone else?  How can someone carry emotional, spiritual baggage for someone else?

I’m toting a full load of anger and anguish of my own, while watching vigilantly over my children to make sure they’re not acquiring any unneeded baggage.  I’m trying to make this look easy for them, give this balancing act a semblance of normalcy, while trying to avoid making it look like a plastic pastiche of fakery.  With all this going on in the background, will I really be of much help?  Am I a worthless spouse for even thinking this, writing this? 

But there it is, the load appears, dumped right in the center of the road where one can’t pass it or go over it.  No way but through it.

I try to prop myself up: How does one eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.  (May the cosmos give me the fortitude for this elephant.)

My husband tells the kids Sunday afternoon, If the phone rings and it’s your brother, get as much information as you can.  He may not be able to tell you much, but get what you can.  Find out where he is, how he’s doing. 

His voice cracks as he says this.  He’s trying to say this without blinking as he naturally would as he speaks.

The kids are stopped in their tracks, wondering what to do with this assignment.  My daughter looks at me, concerned and a bit aback.  My son raises a puzzled eyebrow in his inimitable, Who, me? look.

Now I have to step in and assure the kids they won’t be alone to handle this duty, just as they rarely have had to in the past.  Get Mom the phone pronto and we’ll be fine, it’ll be okay.

And I have to assure my husband we – the kids and I – will do everything to milk information out of his son if he’s not here to catch the phone.

Sometime Sunday evening and again on Monday several times I will have to assure my husband again that we’ll do everything we can; I don’t know what else I can tell him, knowing there’s little of nothing any of us can do.   I don’t know at all what more I can possibly do in this situation for him, falling somewhere towards the deep end of “for better or worse”.  I know he’s emotionally frayed, worn out, toasted to a crisp with sick worry.  I know it’s that his son has arrived in a foreign land and can’t call to say, Hey, I arrived, the flights were smooth, I have a great room with a view…not hardly.

I know it’s that we don’t know when he’ll call again.  Period.

11:43:17 AM    comment []