This first week of August is a funny one.
It is the week we closed on this home we own. The place that let me give my kids a back yard and a neighborhood and a school we really loved. A little small some days and often more messy than I care for, but no one seems to mind. Even in the pandemic is was a place we gathered with our circles, where snack cabinets were raided, and faces I love wandered in and out. Some days it feels like we’re outgrowing this home and other days it feels like we could never leave this place. We just aren’t done yet.
Four years ago this day we took on a car payment to have a larger car so I could safely take all the kids all the places since we would have my stepdaughter for three weeks that summer… but then we didn’t. Things haven’t been the same since and I don’t think I’ll ever trust my heart there again.
Today is one of the days I enjoy most in the summer: Lobsterfest. A day that always accompanies the rushing in of August.
The first time we went, we were invited by my friend Melissa who had discovered this day and invited us to join her there. We were having a messy week. She was soul who knew all about it. We were two peas in pod with our ex-husbands who left destruction behind. There had been a panicked call by my oldest overnight at her Dad’s, Match keeping her on the phone and picking her up, a wellness check, and a week or so later there was a DCF worked coming to my home. So sunshine, a small beach, spray park, a huge BBQ, kids activities, yard sales, and free swag softened the blow. It made things more normal. It sweetened up the bitter part of life. I added some color to how washed out we were feeling.
The serendipitous way life unfolds some days can take your breath away. Yet, this week, it is not in that glorious inhale of something beautiful, but in the way you can hyperventilate. How words and memories and traumas and life affirming things all meld together. How I can remember that my Ex used to call us lobsters who mate for life and how one of my favorite days of the year is named Lobsterfest. Almost like a subtle nod to that untruth.
How everywhere there is shame and pain and people medicating it with vices… and how not alone I was in the frantic hording of the broken pieces, the secrets, and holding things together that were fine to fall apart. How just on the other side was this life I have now. Still complicated and messy, like all of life, but it isn’t mired in shame, secrets, or loneliness.
Today, it feels a little hard to show up. I’m worried about things that are small, but many: heading over later than normal, if they’ll be parking, all the needs of the little people today and that my to do list that is so long this week.
Yet, we’re gonna try anyway. Because sometimes the sweetness of life is hand-in-hand with the hardness of it. You just have to follow the rule of showing up and let the rest sort its own self out.
Hope you have the strength to do things despite your worries and the hardness today.
Love, Mom 