Yet again, I find myself unable to sleep. Was it the subway Italian B.M.T. Sandwich that keeps me up, or the glass of Coke? It could be the recent activities within the family, or the prospect of seeing the partial lunar eclipse in a few short hours. In all reality, it is probably none of these….just the loud snoring of my life partner. It has been a long 23 years sleeping with him. Oiy vey!
So what does a person do at 4am? I play on the computer. If the weather was warmer I would be sitting outside and watching the sky, if the mosquitoes were few in number, that is. I remember, as a child, my Dad waking us kids up and taking us outside to watch some satellite cross the night sky…or to look at the Northern Lights. As amazed as I was with the phenomenon occurring miles above me, I was more amazed that my Dad knew about it. He’s a pretty awesome Dad.
I woke Heidi up once to watch the Northern Lights. She willing jumped out of bed and followed me outside in the cold darkness and looked up at the sky. She was in her shorts and t-shirt….shivering in the October cold air, so I wrapped her in my bathrobe with me and we stood there on the deck looking at the faint glow of green in the Northern sky as it shimmered and waved. She is my fellow scientist. The other two kids wouldn’t budge out of their beds, never even acknowledging my exhortations to “Come and See!!” Heidi will jump up and run to my latest discovery, be it Aurora Borealis or Tree Frogs on the sliding glass door.
Here in my basement, I hear the house breathe and groan in the morning cold. The temperatures outside are in the single digits, I’m sure, but inside we are warm. The heat comes on and warms the house, and the house groans and creaks with the warm air travelling through its airways. It lives, with snoring, laughing, crying, and barking……a house, this house, lives. It is my warm, safe place.
Funny how a family enfolds you. I hear my children move around the house, I hear their laughter, and watch them grow. I am them and they are me. We all become one entity……an entity that will eventually move apart. Parts of “US” will become parts of “THEM” as the children grow and move away. Eventually they will each fall away from each other as their own circles….their own families, enfold them and become their own “US”. It is like a dance, and we are the dancers in our own ballet. We are in and out of the lives of others as the ballet goes on. Sometimes it is sad when we have to twirl away, but the dance will always continue. The dancers change, but the dance goes on.
I guess the lesson is to enjoy the dance, because it will change. Love who you are dancing with now, for the dance you dance together today will not be the dance you dance tomorrow. I have been dancing with “The Snoring One” for close to 23 years now, and it has been wonderful! :)
When mine makes noises and annoys me, I poke him. It works for about 5 seconds then I have to poke him again.
ReplyDeleteI used to poke Mark....but then he growled at me and I got scared. LOL I just complain about him on the internet now. :)
ReplyDeleteWait a minute... almost 23 years? What took you so long to start popping those kids out? LOL
ReplyDeletePractice makes perfect! LOL We "tried" for 8 years to have kids.... we didn't get it right until 1997! :) It certainly wasn't due to lack of trying.
ReplyDeleteApparently you figured it out very well after. LOL
ReplyDeleteLove your writing Pam.
ReplyDeleteI went through the adoption process then became pregnant. We were married 7 years - trying, before our first daughter was born. 7 years isn't long now, since lots of women don't want babies right away, but it was way back then.
Thank you.
ReplyDeleteWe started looking into adoption...but for one reason after another it just didn't "fit" us. We've always been kind of "late" with everything we've done....when we married I was 27 and Mark was 35. When I had the three kids I was 36, 37 and 39. We don't really fit the traditional mold... LOL Everyone we know with kids our age are much younger than us. Oh well. LOL
There are also plenty of older moms. I'm glad I'm not one of them. I know in some cases, it was hard to conceive but there are others where it was by choice. My father was adopted. I only learned last year while doing family research online my grandmother had a baby girl before my father was adopted. I don't know if she was stillborn or died soon after or what. Then my aunt was born like 6 years later.
ReplyDeleteThe genealogy research I've done is pretty interesting...we've found out about a few family members who didn't survive the first year or two. :( We also found out about family members that lived with people with other surnames. ??? Maybe lived with an Aunt or something.
ReplyDeleteYeah, my g-g grandfather and my g-grandmother lived in a boarding house or something.
ReplyDeleteOther than DNA testing, my mother has finally found who her father is (besides a name) and someone had done a big family tree on rootsweb, goes all the way back to 1600's and Ireland. She even got a few pictures from a cousin. I recently sent him a message on FB to see if he knew who was who but I haven't heard back from him. You can see the family resemblance though in the pic. My oldest (half) brother I think looks a lot like my grandfather and my mother's baby picture looks like him, too. I'll post the old pics on the board, but I don't think I have the one of my mother anymore she emailed me. I also think my mother has resemblance to one of the ladies in the photo - which one can assume would be her aunt.
Oh, and they're from Minnesota. :p Hennepin county.
ReplyDelete