my nest of emptyness (& other mind debris) pt I
Well, I have survived the first 3/4 day without my little childrens. *sigh* Okay, so they're not so little. I tend to wax nostalgic these days anyway and let them go 800 miles away? Well that just turns it on hot and heavy.
Lately, I walk by and see those big bottles of bubbles...y'know, the kind you blow through the long plastic wand? And my mind flies back to the days when I could buy one of those and we could spend hours in the yard just laughing....me blowing bubbles while the kids chased them and played with various pets. I see coloring books and think how I used to buy them and we'd color and cut out the pictures or stick them on the fridge. How we made homemade clay once, and it was a big flop, but we had a ball squishing it on the counter. Then we got some REAL clay, and the boys made beads (a future necklace project that never got finished) and little men with oversized smiles and eyes....
Lord, how I miss those days. *sniffle*
I guess I'm with Kym and a few others I've talked with and read lately. We have new and slightly-less-than-new teens and we don't know how they got that way. We're suffering from the Where Did My Baby Go syndrome. The symptoms are feeling as if you were just holding your wiggly giggly infant a few hours ago, your laughing toddler's chubby hand mere minutes ago, and snuggling your six-year-old under the covers while you giggled about how the flashlight made your faces look just a few seconds ago. You could just swear it was so!
And now? You're there looking at not so much children as young adults, who claim to be, are supposed to be your BABIES!!! WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN?!?!?!?
I'm not through with my babies yet. *cry* How does a mother deal with the regret that she didn't spend enough time giggling and playing? That maybe she freaked about spilled juice a bit much? That she didn't take the children places because she felt so bad those days and couldn't? That maybe she wasted those fleeting, precious years?
CAN a mother deal with it? Obviously, most do since there are so many happy grammas out there. I just can't help feeling SOOOOO melancholy these days.
My little boys are gone!!! They are practically men now. (well, not Casey...he still has some pesky boy things going on....and lordy, how I'm struggling to "appreciate" them so I don't feel even worse when he's gone....)
....to be continued......