Tag Archives: friendship

hit the road

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There is change in the air.  A melancholy feeling of nostalgia has hit me like a stone in my stomach.  This place here, this one that is full of sand gnats and mosquitoes all year round, this one that has isolated me purely on the basis of location, this one… I will miss it dearly.   For underneath the initial veil of flesh-eating bugs and stifling heat is true beauty.

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I heard on a recent ted talk that beauty isn’t something seen with your eyes, or heard with your ears, or even felt with your fingertips, but a feeling you get.  This couldn’t possibly be more true when it comes to the earthy scented south land.  She is draped in Spanish moss and coated in a candy blue sky.  Live oaks tower.  The world is blindingly green most of the year.  But its when you sit back and let it all hit you at once that you can truly know its beauty.  It fills my cup.

 

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And all in all I have found lots of beauty around here.  I have found the intense beauty in mother nature and I have found the soft graceful beauty of friends.  And the thing is they are not just friends I will have once known, despite what our distance will soon be, but friends who changed it all for me.  Some ladies who I miss so much already and I haven’t even left.  And I have been around enough to know it won’t be the same.  No matter what, these friendships will change along with my new location.  It may seem like a hopeful thought, or a little lie, but they will actually grow stronger.  I have seen three different states in the last few years, and three separate times I have left a piece of my heart with a sweet girl friend.  And its true, we still declare admiration and love for each other on a regular basis.  A sworn sisterhood.

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It is hard for me to see things in any different way. I believe in the powers of fate or the universe or the gods because I don’t know how else I could have found more perfectly matched girls to spend my days with.  For that I am so glad.

In less than two weeks we take one final trip up interstate 95 in hopes to find our forever home.  This is so hard to write.  There is so much involved.  So many reasons to rejoice, but so many to mourn all at once.  I suppose I can only take it slow, embrace them while I can, and know that finally the universe cooperated and I am going home.  Or as close as a forester will allow.  Holidays will be filled with familiar voice, familiar sights, familiar tastes.  My boys will get to know the places I romped as a girl.  They will get to grow up with a cousin or two.  They will live in four seasons.  

IMG_1985But I do hope a bit of this fern green wetland stays in them.  

I know it will be in me.  

three years of love

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To go back in time and re-live the day your first child was born year after year, going through each step, tearing up at the marked time on the clock that they entered your life, is so sweet it is painful.  My little boy, for that is just what he is now, no longer a baby boy, but a little boy, is three.  Oh, how he has taught me.

There is no change in my life that that I can envision doing more good for my soul than his presence in it.  He has given me the grace of mindful living, the slowness and beauty of discovery, the letting go of expectations needed for ultimate patience, and the compassion and power of love.

Three years and three very different lives we have lived in his life span.  Each year somehow brought us a new home, in a new state, with what felt like a new child.  His growth and spirit seemed to morph each day as I am sure it will continue to do so.  From the high desert in Arizona where he was just a babe aweing us with first words and first steps, to the blustery lands of northwest Pennsylvania where he made snow angels and friends, to the southland where he has become so incredibly aware and fascinated with the world around him.

Each year on his birthday, we have had a small celebration with the friends we have made in the short time we have lived in that particular location.  

And each year I feel the strength of the universe in those friends.  We have had the pleasure of meeting so many people, good people, through our boy.  Having children doesn’t stop your social life, I promise you.  It changes it, but in no way does it stop it.  The bond that you make with a mother, as a mother, is something I could not have predicted would be so utterly important and undeniable.

And oh, to see them play.

Three is certainly bittersweet.  I love him growing, but does it have to be so fast?  

  Happy Birthday my boy.  I love you more than roses love the sun.  

synchronisity.

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Standing at the park, sweat was dripping down my shoulders with the impending one o’clock heat advisory just minutes away and baby wrangling no where in near sight.  With chalk drawings in the fountains, sliding and swinging at the park, chasing the chipping sparrows, and a sandwich picnic behind us nap time was suddenly something of utmost importance.  Stripping down two tired sweaty boys and putting on dry clothes for a decently long drive is no easy task.  In this Georgia heat it is down right difficult.  With a swing over my shoulder I put Rowan on my back and then moved on to tackle the task of convincing my two-year old to come with me too.  To no avail I sloshed my way over to the park to where my little man had made a sudden dash.

“I feel that I am the only mom here whose child is not listening at ALL.” I sighed to my dear friend had been visiting us here down in the sticky south.  She is a friend from what seems like another life time ago but somehow we managed just fine and picked up right where we left off without skipping a beat.

This friend of mine.  This girl, who no lie, when telling you the tale of her life you will hear a tale so intense you don’t want to believe it, while at other points it’s so perfect and peaceful you feel light as air.  She has a way of putting things that simply ease your mind.  I hear her comfort her daughter over the phone with just the right words.  I hear her relieve a worried boyfriends mind with such tact and gentleness.  Her understanding and kindness of staying in a household with a one-year old, a two-year old, two cats, a puppy, and five chickens is unprecedented.  Her vigor for life and humans and beauty is absolutely contagious.  I am so grateful that we have reconnected after so much time and space has kept us apart.

“No no. You are not.” She said calmly with a smile.  While I so wanted them to, of course these words did not penetrate my exasperated  mind, nor ease the pain of the sweaty chase.

So with a grunt and some determination onto the playground we went.  My “captain” already in place at the driving wheel was apparently in some sort of squabble with a little girl who looked to be about his age.  I galloped on over, little boy not so happily jiggling on my back, to hopefully help swiftly settle this.  But alas, the little girls mama beat me to the chase with a desperate call to her girl, “Georgia.  Georgia!  Give him space!”

These words rang in my ears.  These words were impossibly familiar.  “Don’t worry!” I assured her. But, she nervously continued to attempt to disengage the girls arms from my confused little man’s neck. What she was not aware of was the scary similarities our two quite obviously had in common (even in the less than one minute I had ever been in contact with this family it was clear).  Keeping a comfortable and not over bearing distance from others has been a constant discussion with me and my little man of the late, to put it lightly. Truly, it has been a constant battle.  A subject of distress, I hate to admit.  And to hear another woman feel my pain at this exact moment, was precisely what I needed to have a change of heart.

We made small talk.  Park talk.  Discussed our hometowns.  The heavy weight of the humidity that weighs so heavily on this southern state.  The whole time the underlying topic of the difficulties in raising her little lady weaved in and out.

My friend and I kept making sparkling eye contact unable to control our laughter.  Not at the the mothers expense I assure you.  My pure happiness of knowing that in no way am I alone was something to celebrate.  And that truth be told it turns out when seeing my problems through another set of eyes, this whole having a little boy (or girl) who can’t stop hugging, is not such an immediate problem after all.  Of course it can be an area that can be labeled “needs improvement”.  But in no way does it call for the red flags that I had been flying for some time now.  I attempted to coax the other mama into calmness with words of sympathy and understanding and I truly hope she was as settled as I through our identical over loving children (for lack of better words).

“Synchronicity” My friend  said with a laugh.  Once again she hit the nail on the head.

Taken straight from Wikipedia-

Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance, yet are experienced as occurring together in a meaningful manner.

These three days I got to spend with her were so refreshing I sang my way clear through bedtime tonight. I swear to you.

I was so lucky to have a dinner just the two of us, feeling like the old days.  An evening sitting on the porch, drinking wine and watching a lightning storm roll in.  Simple understanding, good laughs, and shared stories.  She gave me a renewed sense of calmness that came at just the right moment.  Synchronicity.  Thank you.