This year has been one of those years.
I have a delayed emotional reaction where change is concerned, in other words I don’t break down or fully rejoice until after the event has been dealt with and is behind me, neatly ironed and packed away or hung up on display.
Someone has to stay level headed, yes?
Someone has to be the harbor in the eye of the storm,
not lose her head,
make important decisions,
move forward so that lives can be scattered like hands-full of confetti or picked up crumb by crumb.
And after all that,
time for my break-down, or merriness, which can take a couple of forms.
If I’m lucky it will be a flurry of seasonal digging and planting,
or a whirlwind of furniture and room re-organisation,
or a constant smile on my face.
If I’m not lucky it will be a cough, or a deep funk,
or a mixture of both.
Next to my parents’ deaths and the sorting of their estate while Hubs and I spent a year living in London re-discovering ourselves, this year’s upheaval scored a very close second.
However, since we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past (according to Virginia Wolfe) I am being visited by a brand new, temporary emotion called,
Indifference.
For one who is normally awash with ideas and opinions and wears her heart on her tree,
this emotion has released me from the constant nag of worries and what if’s.
I am able to focus on the blessed life I have enjoyed with my Creator at centre,
and be grateful for my loved ones,
Hubs primarily, enhanced by our children and their spouses/partners,
my circle of friends,
the faithful domestics (well-as faithful as cats can be) and
the unwitting avian singers who remind me each morning,
“To praise,
Praise,
Praise my Lord, above all!”
Despite the shedding of angst I still needed the physical release, the re-arrangement of stuff, the knuckling down to some hard, cleansing, manual labour.
I looked to the garage.
Possibly my most ambitious ‘furniture’ move to date –
everything was soooo heavy – and without my dolly it took hours of slowly walking metal file cabinets to their new locations.
This purposeful purge and moving around was symbolic.
It reflected the heaviness of my heart,
the weight of my shifting feelings.
The object…to pretend that the sweat and aching muscles would make up for the sudden quicksand of loss that clutched at my feet, dragging me down, making it impossible to run away and deny…somehow got lost in the re-shuffling.
Once the upheaval outside our backdoor subsided,
Once everything was thrown away or in its new place,
it didn’t look all that different.
Had I bought tall cupboards to conceal the miscellany of items we keep in our garage it could have pretended to orderliness.
But, there’s no hiding anything here,
it’s all on show like the lines around my mouth, the absent stare of my eyes and the frown, reflecting only too clearly what’s really going on in my fragile heart.
This is where I live…this is me.
And if sometimes I fall prey to gloomy imaginings I will summon indifference until today fades into the past and its complete emotions settle into the patchwork that makes up the fullness of my life.
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
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