I leave the house at 7:05AM, and go to be in the mass that is Oklahoma City traffic. There are many types of Oklahoma drivers. The insanely slow, The I gotta have 50 car links between me and the person that is 6 miles away, the race car driver, (which is me :) the makeup lady who does everything on the way, and all the while texting and drinking a cup of coffee. My nav says arrival at 7:30, but in reality I will not arrive till 7:48.
This is my everyday, Usually. This morning I started thinking back on the girl I use to be. What I wanted out of life. I have breached that line of a new chapter of my life. I like to call it "Who in the hell am I"? I started out the only child of an absent loving father, and a stay at home mother who was very strong and independent. She had to be. I like to think she has made me the woman I am today.. But needless to say I went on to be a very unhappy preteen, to a mostly happy teenager. Then I call it my pre-adult, I thought I knew where I was going, and then life happened and reality set in. Not enough money, bad relationships and fear: "Insert of whatever". For the most part, I am what I wanted to be. I am in my early 30's now, and I have a wonderful husband of 6 years. I have a very handsome and intelligent 3 yr old son. We are in year 7 of our mortgage. We have everything we need, and very little debt. I still have this feeling though that something is missing. I have maintained, that I am still the same person that I have always been, but after giving it some serious thought, I am not. Maybe it is becoming a wife, and a mother, or maybe it is just getting older.. Sometimes I wish I still had the ambition I had when i was in my early 20's or maybe I still do..
In no way am I disappointed in the direction my life is going. I am just concerned I sometimes may be less than what I want, if that even makes sense... I feel my house is never as clean as I want it to be, and with a 3 year old I am in no dissolution's of immaculate home at least not without serious help lol.
I worry maybe going back to work to bridge the income gap of our household is at a detriment to my son. I worry that he is not getting the time and attention that he deserves. I worry that I am not giving myself enough down time, and pushing myself to the outer brinks of exhaustion.
I worry I am not spending enough time with my mom and dad. As in other posts being the only child, once the mortality of my mother and father finally sink into my brain... I worry I don't have enough time with them. I am on a constant roller-coaster of emotion of everything is on an even kill and then the peeks and valleys occur. I worry constantly about everything mentioned above.
As I watch the generation before me age, I contemplate silently have I documented everything? If god forbid anything should happen has my Son spent enough time with the 2 people who made me what I am. Have I told them I love them enough. Do I call enough? Do I call too much. Do I get too involved in things I shouldn't? As I get older I see how young my parents were starting out, and how well they overcame many things that would have broke others. Myself included. I, like my Son... fight change. I fight against some change so hard that sometimes going along would be easier. Then other change I am very in favor for. I suppose I get that ambivalence from my mother.. Dad has always seemed to be impartial to it.
It maybe morbid, but I know as sure as I know I am sitting here, the death of my parents, my mother or my father will not be something I will be able to cope with the way I have seen others cope? This is not something that I ever use to think about, but it is lurking there in the back of my brain more and more as time goes by. After seeing what my mother went through when her parents past away, I somewhat think it jaded me. To this day I find myself talking and thinking about them wishing my Son could have met them. Here in the last few years my family has lost several people, and I see my aging aunts and uncles, and I think what a detriment to my son. I think about how much I am so going to miss them.. Being completely aware of this when I am around them, I tend to try and compensate and sponge everything I can. The death of my Grandparents on my mother's side was so traumatic that to this day 20+ years later, I find it hard to really think of them without missing them terribly.
Maybe it is losing my Grandmother on my father's side at such a young age. Around the same age as my son is now.. I have always felt left out, and lacking over not being able to remember her.. I feel.... I know, I remember loving her.. But actual memories of anything but her funeral escapes me. Grasping for any shred of her left in this world. I sometimes think I remember little things, but I am not sure. I do not want that for my Son! I can see the longing in my Aunts and Uncles faces as they talk about the woman who alone raised 6 kids. I greatly admire her, and like to think I get my strength from her too.
I know death is never easy for anyone, and tragedy happens. I want to protect my Son from so much of that, and I then feel helpless because death is apart of life. I just hope I can build his character enough, and keep memories for him so that he knows exactly how much he is loved. And how much I love them.
I made a post not so long ago that the gatekeepers to the stories of our family are leaving us. And as the new "keepers" of the stories of our family, and where we come from... I worry that the stories will be lost and our children will never know about the wonderful people that helped to create us and who we are. I say to my cousins: We are now the keepers of our family. We are now telling the story of this crazy family to our children! We are our own links to our roots! Let's not lose it.
So when you look at a working mother don't, for an instance think that 100,000 things are not going through her brain at any given moment..
No comments:
Post a Comment