Everything all at once

I am in one of those fogs where everything is swirling together, and I'm feeling lots of things at once, having pricks of insight, but I can't pick it all apart to express it accurately, so I'm having trouble writing. I feel too full of everything, there is too much I want to get done, so much I intended to do in this year with my children away at school, and I managed little to none of it.

We have had a long stretch of good humor, my husband and I, of lightness and laughs and not making too big a deal of anything. But now, there is trouble back home, his dad is not well, his brother is taking him to the doctor today, and now my husband has plunged into that brooding cave he goes into when something is troubling him, his tone gets terse, and suddenly I feel as if I am on a familiar precipice again. I always think, when this happens, that I did something, and sometimes I did indeed do something hard to forgive, but this time I know for a fact it's not about me, so if I can just keep myself from reacting to the chill that descends, if I can just keep reminding myself not to absorb the darkness, not to wilt in the silence, I will be okay and we will be okay. Mostly, I hope his dad will be okay.

I know he's worrying. His passport was on the verge of expiring and so he sent it off to be renewed, it is out of his hands, in flux at some government ministry. How long will it take to make its way back to him? What if he has to travel at a moment's notice? He isn't talking about any of it, but the joints of his body began aching yesterday, he's fighting something flu-ey, I know this feeling.

photo by karrin

Meanwhile, on other fronts, my son is a happy young man right now, not a care in the world, celebrating senior week with his friends. Just a few more days and my brother will be here from Jamaica to attend his nephew's graduation. And my niece will arrive from Miami, and my son's best friend, just back from a semester in London, will also drive up with us, and my two sister-cousins from the D.C. area are taking a road trip together to also attend. They're sharing a hotel room with my brother which should bring all kinds of hilarity, as we gather to celebrate my boy.

I am so proud of him, so full and beaming when I think of what he has accomplished. Despite how smart and intuitive and clued in he is, school was never breezy for him. He didn't ever truly love the academics, though he does love knowing the material. And he has the sort of mind that once he learns a thing, he holds it forever. Still, he felt the pressure sometimes. He blew off steam through track, sometimes he ranted at injustices (chemistry *cough*), but he never quit. He believed in himself. And now we will watch him march.