From Mother's Day to Father's Day - because this summer that is just how it is going to roll. We are on the road, taking our annual road trip. Lamenting the fact that we have been five weeks without Daddy, loving the time catching up with friends and family, and generally vacillating from one emotion to another (well, that's me, the kids are just having a blast with their friends and cousins, swimming the days away and falling into bed exhausted at night).
After a week on the road, we spent two and a half weeks in Naples. My kids consider Naples their "home" and in many ways I do too. After 17 years, a place just kind of grows on you. Even a place that took you years and years to come to terms with. And of course, we have THE best friends in the world there.
Then, we arrived in North Carolina two weeks ago and we are on our third week here. I'm not entirely sure how my parents feel about that - the third week part. I mean, NO ONE loves their grand kids more than my parents, but no doubt about it, we are a wrecking crew and when you are used to living alone....well, you can only try to picture the chaos that ensues. This is the longest amount of time I have spent in my home town since we left 19 years ago. Usually we run in for a long weekend or maybe a week. I think I might have been here for ten days before, but never ever for three weeks. Living in Arizona has necessitated a few changes in our normal traveling routine. Anyway, being here is really emotional for me. I have done well until the other night and I just lost it with my poor husband, Face Timing me from over 2,000 miles away. I hate the helpless look he gets when I lose it like that, which because of his personality quickly turns to anger that he can't "fix" me. I don't think that fixing me is really possible, I have just learned to live with me. I guess that is what he is going to have to do, too.
I love being here. I have a really close relationship with my parents and my sister and her family. I still have a grandmother who, at almost 89 runs circles around me and has more energy than I had as a 20 year old. I love sitting by the pool at night, sipping a cold beer with my sister and her husband, grilling something and just watching the kids swim and play (and fight) in the pool. I love sitting in my parent's driveway, slowly pushing the wooden swing back and forth, chatting with my mom and watching Patrick and his cousin Banx, separated by only 3 weeks in age, play with the dogs. I love the slow pace of life in a small town, especially this one. The one I grew up in. Because more than anything else, I like being known. I don't know if that makes much sense or not, but it is the thing that keeps coming to mind. We have lived in only two other places since we got married, which really isn't a lot of moving compared to some. However, both of those places have been very transient, retirement communities - both full of tourists and business men who move their families regularly. We have formed many friendships that are now broken by miles. We have loved and lost - a lot. Now we live in a city of 4 million people - growing up in a city of 3,000 that almost boggles my mind. We are not known. There is no where that I enter where people know ME. No where. I don't realize how much I miss that until I come home. Here, everywhere I go people know me. They want to know about my children, my family, my LIFE. And they really do care. My dad and his best friend since they were ten years old still sit in church together every Sunday. Their kids grown and raising families of their own, but they remain. They KNOW each other - in a way that I can't even fathom. Part of me wants that for my kids.
Then, there is the part of small town life that I am so thankful to have walked away from. The gossip, the back biting, the bitter resentment that festers for years and years - the racism. These are the ugly things that hide beneath the canopy of trees that grow taller and more full with each year. The beauty of green that I so took for granted before we moved to the desert. I miss trees. I miss being known. I do not miss small mindedness.
The thing I love most about a small town is the very thing I hate. There is never any change. In many ways, for a wanderer like me that is a good thing. It is solid, secure, and its roots run deep into the ground. The people are the same, they drive the same cars, the only things that change about their homes are the flowers they plant out front every Spring and the flags they fly from their porch rails. It is comforting. However, on the other hand, the lack of willingness to change stifles and smothers. It means that there is never any forgiveness - never any true compassion. I am not the same person I was in high school - thank God.
However, here I only have two choices - be the same person or be the snob who left.
I don't ever want to be the same person I was then - I don't want to be the same person I was 6 months ago. I want my relationship with Jesus to be so living and so active that I never, ever grow stagnant. I want Him to use me, stretch me, and change me - every single day. I don't want to be the snob either. I don't think I am "too good" for this town (something I have been accused of). Just because I want to feed my family a healthy diet, adopt children of other races, and forgive those who have hurt me does not mean I am a snob. I think and pray it means I am not the same self-centered brat I was at 18. But, here, in a small town that kind of life is totally misinterpreted and misunderstood. Most people simply can not wrap their minds around it. What that means from a spiritual standpoint I am not going to speculate. That is not the point of this post.
The point (I think) is to say that being here has been confusing and emotional for me. I love it and I hate it. I can't decide if I want it for my children or not. Stan and I have been discussing our "next step" a lot lately. Dreaming the "what ifs" and "one days." As he approaches 50, retirement looms in the not so distant future and we still have a 3 year old. Where do we want to raise him, what do we want to do? I have no idea. I am trying to imagine us in a small town and I can't. However, I am not really loving city life either. I feel caught in the middle of two worlds and I want them both for very different reasons.
Right now, my daily prayer is just that God will draw us, show us where He wants to use us. I pray we hear Him clearly and follow Him wherever He leads.
And since I never mentioned Father's Day in this post - I will just say that it was wonderful to spend the day yesterday with my sweet daddy. More on that later.
No comments:
Post a Comment