The last of our guests, my cousin from Trinidad, left yesterday. The three souls here have settled down for the last push before Christmas, with my daughter sending the first four of her college applications on their way. Three more applications are all but completed. These are the three schools at the top of her list, the ones that seem most real to her, although she refuses to close off any options. Now that she has sent off the first apps, she's moving faster on the rest, revising essays for supplements and finalizing her list at last. I think she's quietly excited at having finally pressed "send." Today I have to order and pay for her ACT score reports to be sent to the schools on her list. My girl is going to college!
I walked around the house this morning and everything was so quiet, hibernating almost. My son's room presented a very different sight from the explosion of clothes that covered all surfaces while he was in residence last week. With that tree shedding gold light outside his window, I felt a moody peace, standing in there. Still, I missed my boy, his aura and his possessions filling the room. The room felt empty, light enough to float away and I thought that perhaps I would paint the walls in a deep, bold color soon, to ground the space for his return. Who am I kidding? To ground
me.
His room is so much neater than my own today. We are drowning in books and papers and junk mail and magazines. And yet, there was peace there too this morning. If only I could climb back under the covers and hide there reading and dreaming for the rest of the day. But I can't. It's time to recertify Aunt Winnie's home care, which means mountains of documentation to deliver to the agency so they can lose it and say they never got it so I can go back there a second and a third time with the sheaf of copies I now know to keep. It's December, people. I miss my mom.
You know what I think you need, dear Angella? I think you need at least a week to yourself. Just for you. To do what you want to do. To eat what you want to eat. To read what you want to read. To write what you want to write. To think what you want to think.
ReplyDeleteTo sleep, to dream, to wake, to walk in the beauty that is you.
I wish I could give that to you.
Ms. Moon, you are so completely exactly right. It sounds like heaven. Thank you for wanting to give me that. Hugs, dear friend.
ReplyDeleteI concur. Get back under that duvet as fast as you can.
ReplyDelete"Melancholy Peace" is about what I'm feeling too today. I'm off work this week and the kids are at school. I have too much time to myself. And as you know, I no longer visit that special someone a few times a week. Maybe I'll take up knitting.
ReplyDeleteMark
Expat mom, i wish. but the weekend is coming!
ReplyDeleteMark, it's good you're off work this week. you're grieving. be gentle with yourself and if necessary, watch a lot of bad tv. you miss her and yet you release her. it's a very moving thing. i send love, dear friend. and i knit sometimes. it can be very meditative, actually. xo
I completely agree with Ms.Moon. Time for yourself.
ReplyDeleteI love the lighting of your bedroom. I have a thing with lighting, I like warm lamps, and I love to snuggle with too many books around me. My dream home is filled with hundreds of books, on shelves, on the floor, everywhere.
Anyway. Christmas is around the corner. How is your mom? Is she happy at your brother's?
Take care.
the empty boy bedroom; there's a big hollow pit in the stomach.
ReplyDeletei mut have told you this before, but i literally moved away from NYC the day after benjamin graduated from high school. that's how crazily invested i was in avoiding the empty nest.
Miss A, my walls are all white. I wanted that light loft like feel for a while, but now i want colors, deep rich ones. thanks for asking about my mom. it's complicated; she is so frail now. i can't write about it much. it will make us all cry.
ReplyDeletesusan t., the empty boy room. to make matters worse, he threw out much of his things, and we redid his room nominally. now i miss all his boy things in there; i prefer the room when he is in residence, his aura and things everywhere. hard to explain. it's too neat now. too spare.