SavageTimes

I’m melancholy.

It’s a weird time of year.  This is the first spring in three years in which my life hasn’t been turned upside down.  So, part of the melancholia is, honestly, a lack of crazy.

My birthday was a simply lovely weekend with fabulous friends, and my kids were well-cared for and loved with other fabulous friends.  No pretending everything was OK.

Mother’s Day was fun: the kids and I went to the Outback Kangaroo Farm an hour away from us, and we petted baby kangaroos.  The most tension we experienced was when my 15 year old son, who refuses to learn how to drive, felt he needed to get out and direct me into a parking space at the restuarant where we chose to eat lunch.  I had already circled the parking lot twice while Mr. Front Seat Non-Driver Teenage Know It All shook his head at every parking space I approached.  I knew he was out of his comfort zone–we were in the “country,” by his standards, and he doesn’t like The Country–so I gave him latitude.  Up to a point.  When he essentially demanded that I park in a space for which I was driving the wrong way, and then, when I did park in that space, he had comments about my parking….I tore out of that space, parked where I wanted to park, and slammed the truck door for good measure.

I snapped at him, he apologized a dozen times, I aplogized, then we were in the restuarant and over it.

It took me longer to write then it took us to go through it.

That’s how we are now, this “new” family.  We have stuff, we shout, we slam doors, we stomp around….for half a minute.  Mostly.  My daughter can spin herself into tornadoes, more so anymore when school is stressing her out.  But we’re working on it.  Together.  As a rule, we’re just human.  Only the good kind of crazy, like when we have dance parties to my son’s Japanese game music Friday nights.  Or when the two of them have an all out Nerf gun war when I go out for the evening.  Or when we decide to have ice cream and cookies for dinner because I’m just tired.

Actually, my son never does that; he refuses to eat dessert before a healthy, balanced meal.

I often wonder where he came from.

Back to the melancholy.

I’ve been physically divorced, for all intents and purposes, for a year.  I suspected I would end up here for a few years, even if I didn’t want to admit to myself I knew I would end up here.  I loved my husband, and I wanted that to be enough.  I convinced myself that was enough.

I told myself a lot of other stories, too, about my life, and the people in my life.  I’m good at telling stories.

Now….here is my new story: My daughter is happy.  My son laughs a lot again. I’m giving to those who give back, not just take, which means I have energy to write, and to teach.  I had the best time teaching journalism this last year.  I want to do more of it.  I hope I taught them as much as they taught me.  And I started the second book in my LAKE WHISPER series.  It’s….different.  It has multiple POVs.  I’ve never done that.  I didn’t think I knew how.  But nothing compares to the thrill I am experiencing over the literary fiction short story I wrote: it involves fish, and fishing and a part of the country I know nothing about, and it was inspired by words written by a friend.

I don’t remember the last time another’s words motivated me to write my own.  It’s not so much a selfish thing as it is a level of awareness that has been lacking in me for a long time.

I’m moving on from where I told myself I should be, to where I am.

The melancholy isn’t a sadness.  It’s just….a settling.  Lack of crazy is good.  Just forgotten.

A year from now….where will we be?  I’m excited to move in that direction.

But I want to hang on to the now for a little bit longer, and I also need to make sure I don’t lose sight of the past.

I denied myself a lot of truth for a long time. I want to see clearly from here on out.