I said I wasn't going to do it. I guess on one level I said that because I felt it wasn't necessary. But as the day has drawn closer and the hands of time have moved forward faster, I just can't seem to help myself. I could even add that it was prompted by my son. And now that I think about it, I was planning on letting it go until he said something. I blame the boy.
He came up to me several weeks ago and said, "Mommy (my 10 year old still calls me mommy), what are we doing for our 2 year anniversary? Can we go out to dinner like we did last year?"
If you don't remember my posts last year at this time, it might interest you to read into the archives of August 2006 and if you really want to torture yourself with more reading, go to the archives from August 2005. Last year I posted every day of the anniversary of our move and titled them "Reflections". Really, I intended on letting this go but as these days have now come upon me, I find myself drawing on my past. Not to relive it because that is really painful but I think just to sort of test myself. My sister and I have this ritual when we deal with something painful. If it hurts to much, we take the issue and mentally envision putting it in a box, taping it up and storing it in the closets of our mind. Then, every once and a while, we envision taking that box down from the shelf, opening it up and seeing if it still hurts. If it does, we tape it up and put it back. We've had so much hurt to deal with in our lives, that we have put lots of boxes in that closet. I'm not saying that we don't take the time to deal with issues, that can be destructive and lead to years of bitterness, I'm saying that sometimes it hurts so much that we can't deal with it at present. And that's were I find myself with this issue.
Reliving all the pain and anguish of that time still hurts to much. I'm keeping that taped up in its box. What I want to focus on this year, as we have now lived in the great state of PencilTuckey for 2 years, is what I have gained and even lost because of this move. It's almost like there was a big trade off moving here. When we were in OH, we had no family around and no family to consider in our day to day lives. We also, after 10 years of being there, found ourselves with a small circle of friends that we interacted with mostly on a monthly basis. Our trade - here we have family all around us and constantly have to consider family in our day to day lives but we have a very diverse circle of friends who we interact with on a daily/weekly basis. We are busier here because of the friends we have made and the fact that we jumped feet first into an array of activities for ourselves and our kids. EXAMPLE-Olivia's social calendar this past weekend. Friday she had gym from 9-12. After gym she begged me to have one of her teammates over to play. We weren't doing anything so I agreed that she could come over. Come evening time I told them that we needed to decide whether her friend wanted to spend the nite or wanted me to take her home. She decided she wanted to stay, which was fine with both parental units. Come bedtime, the little girl got upset and wanted to come home. After speaking to her mom, we both decided that that would be best. We made arrangements to meet halfway. I took Olivia with me and when we met the girls mom, the mom asked Olivia if she wanted to stay over at her house. Olivia was dressed in a robe, pj's and flip flops and asked me if I could just go home to get her Princy doll and her blanket so she could sleep over. I told her it was way to late, 11pm by then, and that she could either come home or go to her friends house without it. She decided to go anyway. Well, I didn't see my daughter until Sunday morning. She not only stayed over Friday but Saturday too. She would have stayed most of the day Sunday if it weren't for the fact that her social calendar was already full for Sunday afternoon because she had another gym friend coming over after church to spend the nite. Come Monday, my little social butterfly was certainly exhausted. That kind of stuff just never happened in Cleveland. The kids had never been to a friends house to sleep over, there were never friends knocking on our door to play, we rarely had friends calling for the kids to play at their house and we never had neighbor kids and all the issues that entails.
And it's just not the kids, it's me too. I have more friends that I would not have a problem calling in the middle of the nite than I did in OH. In fact, I can only think of one person I would have felt comfortable bothering in an emergency and that person was still kind of iffy because of how far away she lived from us. But here, oh my, I could name a handful right off the top of my head. That also includes the hubby's uncle who has become a big part of our lives. I have so many friends from different parts of my world. There are those that we have met through Jake's sports. There are those that I have met through my work. There are those that I have met through Olivia's gymnastics. There are those that I have met and continue to meet through the kids homeschool group. Now that we have switched churches, that's another group of people that I really want to know. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I locked myself in a room and never went out when I was in OH. We were just as involved and our kids were just as involved. But here it's something different. Almost like a blessing for following our irrational calling to pick up from a place we had called home for 10 years and move to a place we never wanted to be. I'm glad to be at the place in my life that I am at. It's hard to believe that it has been two years since we started this new chapter in our lives. It seems like yesterday and when I take that box down from the shelf it feels like it was yesterday. Yep, still hurts, tape it up and put it back. But I must say that the pain is different. The pain is only a memory of what it felt like to be ripped from all I knew and thrown into a place I didn't want to be. To have the feeling of being disconnected from everything and not belonging anywhere. I don't feel that way anymore. I can honestly say that I feel connected here and definitely belong in this place. That box in the closet is distant memories of pain not the present place that I am at. Next year, when I take that box out of the closet, I hope I can take those distant painful memories and say, "Yep, that part of my life really hurt. I've moved beyond that now and can now let it go for good." I'm almost at that point now but just not quite.
