Skip to main content

Miss Havisham, I presume

My computer has been telling me, "You have not backed up your information in 50 days..." 51 days, 52 days, 53 days...

My kitchen calendar was still on August and, I discovered this week, so was my office calendar.

This past Wednesday I finally finished reading a book, my first since 17 August. I think I get bonus points because said book was neither about child development nor breastfeeding.

I'm eating cold leftover steak out of a baggie and typing quickly, listening to the new sounds around which my life rotates... the grunts, squeaks, and sighs that mean I have only so many minutes before Daniel, my baby, wants something.

All the familiar markers of my life are completely disordered and, at this time, unhelpful. When each day is a blur of feeding, sleeping, changing, playing, trying to go to sleep, changing, feeding, and paperwork... I don't really need a calendar or even to back up the things that used to seem so important.

In a week or so, I will be going back to work, which means now I need to consider how to have some semblance of a schedule. The coffee maker that is on my counter is representative of all the friends and relatives who have come to help me. I don't drink coffee, so it only appears to give the caffeine fix to those who are living the schedule-less life with me. Now they have gone and I have to figure out when to shower (at 4 am when I know he's sleeping?). How to make sure the dog gets enough exercise. How to eat dinner in 5 courses... an apple at 5 pm, a porkchop a 5:30, mashed potatoes at 6:15, a handful of spinach at 7:30, half a bar of chocolate with a glass of milk at 8:45.

It's all new every day and I just wait to see what happens.

I did update my kitchen calendar last night. Moving ahead to October (skipping September) was more exciting than I thought it would be. It means there are only two more calendar pages until 2010. It's less than 80 days until Christmas (do you know where your sermon is?), but that also means it could be less than 100 days until my husband returns from deployment. We don't have a date and won't until two weeks out.

But the days are full of possibility, rolling over, smiling, sleeping 5 hours in a row... and as each day passes, Daniel, Ivan and I get closer to the date when we can be the family we were meant to be with Rob at home.

So did you call me and not hear back? Did you email me and receive nothing in return? Slowly, I'm coming back to the rest of the world. Slowly, I'm moving up to October. Slowly, I'm regaining strength. Slowly, I figure out how to be a mother and a pastor. And slowly, I move more fully into God's grace, though that movement has very little to do with me.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Religious Holidays in Anchorage

You may have read in the Anchorage Daily News about a new policy regarding certain religious holidays and the scheduling of school activities. If not, a link to the article is here . The new rules do not mean that school will be out on these new holiday inclusions, but that the Anchorage School District will avoid scheduling activities, like sporting events, on these days. The new list includes Passover, Rosh Hashanah , Yom Kippur , Eid al - Fitr and Eid al - Adha . They are added to a list which includes New Year's, Orthodox Christmas and Easter, Good Friday, Easter, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas. The new holidays may be unfamiliar to some: Passover is a Jewish celebration, in the springtime, that commemorates the events in Egypt that led up to the Exodus. The name of the holiday comes specifically from the fact that the angel of death "passed over" the houses of the Israelites during the plague which killed the eldest sons of the Egyptians. Passover is a holiday

Latibule

I like words and I recently discovered Save the Words , a website which allows you to adopt words that have faded from the English lexicon and are endanger of being dropped from the Oxford English Dictionary. When you adopt a word, you agree to use it in conversation and writing in an attempt to re-introduce said word back into regular usage. It is exactly as geeky as it sounds. And I love it. A latibule is a hiding place. Use it in a sentence, please. After my son goes to bed, I pull out the good chocolate from my latibule and have a "mommy moment". The perfect latibule was just behind the northwest corner of the barn, where one had a clear view during "Kick the Can". She tucked the movie stub into an old chocolate box, her latibule for sentimental souvenirs. I like the sound of latibule, though I think I would spend more time defining it and defending myself than actually using it. Come to think of it, I'm not really sure how often I use the

A Litany for Mother's Day

A: Loving God, You are everywhere the Lord and Giver of life. We praise You for the gift of mothers through whom You give us life. C: We thank You for their willingness to nurture life, for their trust in You to guide them through the labor of childbirth, the uncertainties of youth, the letting go of young adulthood. A: We thank You for all those women, who did not give us birth, but through whom You give us abundant life: C: We thank You for school teachers, aunts, grandmothers, sisters, pastors, elders, Sunday School teachers, supervisors, co-workers, neighbors and friends who share wisdom. A: We ask Your tender mercies on all those whose mothers now sing with the heavenly chorus, especially for those whose tears are not yet dry. C: Grant them Your peace, which passes all our understanding. A: We ask Your comforting presence on those mothers who have buried sons and daughters. C: Comfort them with the knowledge of their children in Your eternal care. A: We pray for those w