Adaptations

So we launched in. I made lunches and kids woke early and we somehow made it in plenty of time. People smiled. The kids shyly slid into their seats. I walked back to my empty car and drove away.

I think I expected to feel something different than I did, but it didn't come. I expected a sharp stabbing pain of loss - but it didn't happen.

Instead I woke on Wednesday feeling a little off and, after spending the afternoon in the emergency room for chest pain and shortness of breath, was sent home with the diagnosis of pneumonia. Because nothing can ever be easy. Not the first week of a major life change. That coupled with some things not working out the way I thought they would (only 3 kids attending school instead of the 5 I had planned on), and instead of loss and sadness I've been feeling a bit whipped around. A lot disoriented. Not sure what to do going forward, but also limping along with something new and strange and uncomfortable. I had hoped this would be a chance to catch my breath, a chance to claim some clarity, a chance to make some decisions with strength and decisiveness. Instead, I mostly feel pulled in a million directions, driven to distraction by information overload and the after shock of a major change.

In so many ways, we traded one type of complicated for another. I muddle through day after day here, each just as chaotic as the next and wonder - is this really better? And I'm not sure. From that first dash to get the kids out the door to the homework struggles amidst laundry piles later in the day and all the toddler preschool disasters in between, it's honestly just as nuts - maybe even more. The kids are doing so well although it has been and continues to be an adjustment for each and every one of us.

My Mama always used to say, "no matter where you go, there you are," and I think it applies here. I think perhaps I thought school might be the magic wand waved over my life that filtered things into neat little manageable piles. Instead, I'm still very much me. Chaotic. Tumultuous. High tempered and hopelessly disorganized.

Still, I'm finding a reassuring strength in trying something new. In swallowing down nerves and going to conferences with teachers and facing that hesitancy of putting my heart in their hands with gritted teeth and marked determination. Maybe that's the important thing? Parts of all of us are growing in ways we weren't before. At the end of the day, even when I didn't get to the things that I would in the ways I thought I should, I can count that as good. I'm stepping out and doing hard things I never thought I could before, just like my kids.

That's something, after all.




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