Learned Lesson Number Three: Start Where You Are

As I begin this post, I don't know where I am going with it. I only know that I am feeling a strange mix of gratitude and emptiness, faith and uneasiness, hope and terror. I want to say something that will mean something, because I feel like where I am at this moment in time is important to my future. Not that every moment is not; I think each millisecond of life is an important building block of the whole structure. However, I also believe there are crossroads, and rest stops, and passing of beautiful vistas, (some with really scary drop-offs) that weigh heavier than others as we take this great Road Trip of Life. I know, not a very original metaphor. But I spend a whole lot of time driving, so Road Trip of Life is the metaphor you get.

Earlier this week, after 2 long days of driving, I was awakened by a much-anticipated phone call from a friend, who asked me, "Where are you?" My response was "On my son's couch." My friend was looking for a more specific answer, but the question sort of launched me into this thought process. Where am I really, and where do I go from here? Yesterday was Christmas Day. The week between Christmas and the New Year is traditionally a time to reflect and assess, to make plans to improve our lives in whatever way that we, in our wisdom, think they need improving. I used to really look forward to the Making of the Plans. I was very good at the Making of the Plans. Get the organizational tools, play the motivational pep talks in my head, see myself in that whole new place, just One Short Year down the road. As it turns out, I am not so good at the Carrying Out of the Plans. In fact, quite frankly, I kinda suck at it. So I have kind of stopped partaking in the Making of the Plans ritual. After keeping a journal for some 35 or so years, and seeing the same items repeated on The List year after frustrating year, I began avoiding The List. All it does is haunt and condemn me. And it's not like I'm going to forget anything on that blasted list anytime soon. It is pretty much acid-burned into my brain.

So where am I going with this idea? I don't know. I am starting where I am. Where I am is yet again sitting on my oldest son's couch, in his bachelor pad of a house, where many 20-something boys, some of whom are related to me, live, party, play music and video games, and exist in a world that I have to wonder how much of a hand I had in creating. I don't think it is a bad world, in fact I live here myself some of the time, but it is not what I imagined for them when they were little boys in my care. My daughters and I put up a miniature Christmas tree and cooked a turkey, and did our best to bring some of what they grew up with into the house for the Holidays. We all went Christmas shopping together, and it has been a great week, full of fun and just hanging out, along with an unexpected surprise or two that warmed my heart. And then today I went to church alone, which was both uplifting and a little sad. But that is where I am.

Where I am when I am not here is in a bedroom at my parents' home, working furiously on a college degree and trying to keep my youngest son from wanting to flee back here, where his brothers are. Where I am now is in a physical form that I don't recognize when I look at photos, and that I know I am capable of changing, just as soon as I have the time. Where I am now is far more aware of what my true weaknesses are than I was when I was married. I am also far more aware of my true value than I was when I was married. For this I am grateful beyond words, even though the process has been painful, and I am certain will continue to be so. A lot of where I am is a place I really hate to be, yet some of it is also a place of cautious hope that I don't remember ever seeing in my life. That can be a thrilling and a frightening combination. But it's where I am.

Maybe what prompted this thought process was my journey through bad weather to get from Utah to Arizona for Christmas. This trip was not very well-planned, and came on the heels of what was an exceptionally dark couple of months for me. I was horribly sick with something resembling pneumonia, and I learned the hard way just how evil a tiny little body part called a gallbladder can be. There was also fun with finances and harsh lessons in health insurance. With all this going on, I almost dropped the ball on some of my classes, which I was thankfully able to bobble and retrieve before my academic house of cards came crashing down, but just barely.

I consider myself to be pretty good at finding the positive in the challenging, or at the very least, the humor in the tragedy, but I gotta admit that something about the past month almost took me down. I am extremely grateful that I found myself facing all of this while in the protective embrace of my unbelievable parents. I am convinced that I have so many siblings because when the parents were distributed in Heaven, there was a mad dash for mine, and many were disappointed. I am also convinced that I was in much better shape at that time, because I obviously got to them to stake my claim before anyone else. Smartest move I ever made.

Anyway. Back to travelling through bad weather. I looked out my parents' window on Monday morning and saw snow flurries, remembered something on the weather about 4 days of snow coming, and hustled Sean and all our vital travel tools (good drivin' tunes, snacks, 2 pet rats..) into the car. I was hoping to get ahead of the snow, but it just got thicker and thicker, until I was creeping up a mountain behind an 18-wheeler going 3mph, and doing all I could to stay in his wheel tracks. Cars were sliding off the road everywhere, and having experienced that myself, I did not want to take any chances. I was cursing myself for not getting up earlier and making a better plan, and then I realized that I was where I was... in a blizzard. So where do I go from here? The answer was "forward, and slowly". Although my knuckles were whiter than the snow, I managed to relax enough to plod on through. Torrential rain followed the snow, and it took us 2 days, with a fun-filled stopover in Las Vegas, before I found myself safely on my son's couch. Which felt like a pretty safe place to be after all that.

So where am I now? Still on this couch, but feeling better about being here, and knowing I won't always be. In this all-important week, I will not be constructing a detailed and impossible list of all the things about myself that need correcting in the New Year. ( I used to get this list unsolicited from the ex, fairly regularly, actually. He thought he was doing me a favor.) Instead, I will be making zero lists, spending time helping my sister paint, hitting a movie or two, hanging with my kids and other favorite people, and trying really hard not to fear wherever it is I am going from here. I will not beat myself up over where I have been. I will check the weather before I leave town, and in the coming New Year, I will start where I am. Every day. It's all you can do.