I think I’ve just run out of steam.
Somehow we survived the last three months of Joshua’s work overload that included a college course in entrepreneurship for small businesses, two trips to Boston, and twice a week evening webinars.
Somehow we survived twice a week rehearsals followed by track practice followed by crockpot meals and pleas to just go to bed already because Mommy can’t be nice past 9 p.m.
Somehow we survived him chairing the Stewardship Committee at church the year a proposal is brought to spend 2.6 million dollars on building. Which meant on the nights he wasn’t online learning, he was Baptist committee discussing.
Somehow we survived nine straight days of four hour plus tech and dress rehearsals that culminated in four performances that had me crawling into bed well past my bedtime. Nights that prompted him to say, “I think I get why you’ve been so frustrated lately about me being gone.”
Those words? All I needed for Mother’s Day.
In the midst of it all, Madelynne was in a play at school. I drove Amelia to Physical Therapy once a week and down to Atlanta for the oncologist and over to the pediatrician for a well-child (ironic, huh?). Oh, and every Saturday we drove 50 miles or more to a track meet that lasted all flipping day.
Gus turned three and started wearing underwear and watering the flower beds. In the front yard. My neighbors just love me, I know. But since they have a Statue of Liberty in their front yard, I don’t think they have room to complain.
Yes, Lady Liberty can be viewed from my front porch. Small town Georgia never had so much class.
Then, in the midst of it all, I took an assistant editor position with the Splickety Publishing Group and a month later, the editor I worked under got promoted, so guess what I got?
Assistant removed from my title and an inbox that scared me so much I had to close the computer and walk away and eat a lot of chocolate.
So, we’ve been a little busy. A little overwhelmed. A lot tired.
But I held hands with starry-eyed teenagers last week who were readying for the last show of their spring musical and I told them thank you.
Thank you to Footloose and Splickety and Babson College and rec league track and Building Committees and birthday parties and the beginning of CSA season at Red Dust Ranch.
Because for the past three months, we haven’t just been those parents who have a child with a scary, unknown diagnosis.
We’ve just been parents with deadlines and schedules and lives.
I think we were “winter killed”–buried beneath the weight of frost and fear.
But spring brings revival. It’s hard work pushing back up and taking root and stretching for the sun.
I think we’re going to survive after all.
Lindsey P. Brackett 