It's Electric!

Since moving to West Central 3 and a half years ago, I've found myself of a few minds on the neighborhood. It's an amazing community of people and I am so happy to have met them and become part of their lives. Even when it means that they are texting you and asking where you are because the SWAT team is raiding the house across the street that you've been watching for months as several people a day come and go. Those people are gone but there are still more. An occasional ambulance helping people walking down the street that have perhaps ingested too many opioids, or perhaps have imbibed too much. But then you see a couple walking down the street holding hands, each with a garbage bag picking up trash others have seen fit to just huck out their car windows on their way through.
Although it's all one neighborhood, I've always seen an invisible dividing line at Jefferson. (I suspect that people even further south of us see one too, although their line is probably the railroad tracks.)
I call the area north of Jefferson the champagne side, and our area south of Jefferson the beer side. (Nothing wrong with that- I like beer! But still...) The home values on the champagne side are exponentially higher, and that's to be expected. Many of the homes are quite a bit grander. Our homes on the beer side are simpler, more modest. They are the cottages of the blue collar workers perhaps, as opposed to the white collars north of Jefferson. I love our little village. I call it Electric Village. It has so much potential. People are beginning to see this potential. The city has run a few through one of their housing programs right in my two block radius. New faces are seen walking, riding bikes, and driving slowly through. And they aren't all looking for drugs! They've heard the news that the old General Electric campus is being sold and redeveloped. It's at the end of my street, and I am giddy with excitement. I imagine all the people that once walked to that campus to work, and think now there will be people walking there to do many things still undetermined. Will they be working out at a gym? Will they be taking college classes? Will they be eating at a restaurant? Will they be shopping at a farmers market? Will they be having coffee? Doing yoga? I DON'T KNOW but I cannot wait to find out.
Tonight will be the beginning of this: the developer is meeting with the neighborhood at Emmanuel Lutheran Church and I am certain there will be a lot of questions. I know several wil go unanswered as it is incredibly early in this process and so much is still undetermined. But I do know that I am so very excited to see the progress and see the vibrant village our beer side once was come roaring back to life. Someone turned the lights on. Thank you Greater Fort Wayne, Geoff Paddock, and all the others who saw this vision and found a way to make it happen.

Just show up

I was thinking of my friend J lately, and how in my frustration and grief over my sister's illness and ultimate passing I did not show up for him during his hard times with his family. Granted, we do not live in the same city, and now that I am not regularly on Facebook we do not communicate, but it is still hard. I reached out to him via messaging and asked how he was, what was going on with him, etc. The response was not cold, but standard. I am great! How are you? I don't know why I didn't tell him about the last few years of my life, how my sister was raging with the bottle against life, how some days it took all of me to get out of bed and show up in some way for the three people in my house that count on me to show up in myriad ways every day. About how still after a year I grieve and wonder if there's something I could have done, even though in my heart of hearts I know there is not, I'm enough of a narcissist to think that in some way this was about me. Instead I return with, Great! We are all great! And some days we are. But some days we are drinking a margarita at 5 o'clock because the children won't stop bickering. Or that I don't have time for anything as I am transporting the wee people to and from their various activities. Or that sometimes I am so tired I cannot sleep. Or or or or or. All these things he cannot relate to. All these things I wonder if he cares about. I think about my tribe, my middle of the night people. People we could call if there was an emergency that would show up for us. He once was that for me. That was lifetimes ago. In this current lifetime I wonder who is in my tribe, and come up short. But the fault in that is in me. If I want someone who will answer my call in the middle of the night, I myself need to show up and be a middle of the night friend. When I describe myself I like to use words like loving and loyal, but for so long my loving has been passive. I used to kid around with the mister that I was in a cocoon of despair. This cocoon lasted several years, through the passing of my mother and the raging of my sister. And a year after my sister's passing, I feel like I am still in my cocoon. Maybe I don't know how to emerge, or maybe I am afraid of what that means after all these years. What is true is that it is time, and I need to find the courage to see who I want to be coming out of this cocoon of despair. Who I want to be for me, for the three people in my house who need me to show up in myriad ways every day, for my friends old and new, near and far who need someone they can count on if they need a middle of the night friend. I need to start showing up. It constricts my heart to consider this, but it's mightily overdue. And I pray for the strenght to use love as an action verb. I was weak with despair, but every day, if I keep showing up, I will get stronger. And even if I wear the introverts mantra t-shirt (sorry I'm late, I didn't want to come) I will show up for more than my three people and be clear with my intention that I can do hard things, and my cocoon does not serve me any more.

Friday Haiku

No school today. How long
until the children drive me
completely insane

Monday Haiku Part Deux

Overachieving
Seems like so much work. I will
overthink instead

Monday Haiku

I need a job where
I tell people what to do
I'm a bossy bitch

The Feminine Mistake, or The Least Interesting Woman in the World

I've been in a funk for the last 10 years or so, and recently have contemplated the reasoning for this. On par life has been very good to me, I have an amazing husband who is my partner in all areas of life, two healthy smart pesky children, a beautiful home, a nice automobile, never are we lacking for anything. And yet. There's something missing. And I've recently discovered that the missing thing is me.
I look at my few friends and many acquaintances and see that on the surface they seem to be plugging along without this agita. They go out, have no apparent shortage of things to talk about, live similarly comfortable lives, and spakle like champagne. I feel like an open bottle of Prosecco that has been forgotten after the orange juice ran out for mimosas. Flat.
If I were to have a conversation with you at this point in my life I would ask you questions and pray fervently that you like to talk about yourself. That you have seen independent movies. That you have strong opinions on local politics. That you have some crazy relative that miraculously recovered from an unusual illness using accupuncture and a medical intuitive. That you have a life outside your children.
Because, see, I don't seem to have much of one outside of mine. And for the most part, this is fine with me. And yet.
I made this deal with myself and my husband when we married. Before we met I was resigned to not being a mother but being the coolest aunt my neice and nephew would know. But our whirlwind romance was met with the realization that my future husband would make a great father so we would have that adventure in our lives. Both of us had a less than ideal childhood, so finding some measure of success at parenthood was of paramount importance to us both. We had success early with a daughter and a few years later with a son. Between the two we uprooted out lives and moved halfway across the country. My husband had been laid off, and we decided to open up the job search nationwide. When he found an opportunity in a small midwestern town with which my side of the family had history, we decided to make the leap. The cost of living was quite a bit different than the large metropolitan area that we were leaving so we also decided that my new role would be as a stay at home mother. This intrigued me and terrified me. I think maybe I knew what I would be giving up. Yet what I would receive, and what I would be able to give to my family seemed worth it to me. No more rat race. No more 40 plus hour work weeks with the racing around to do all shopping, laundry, and cleaning on evenings and weekends. Now I could give my kids the attention I always craved but wasn't given by my working single mother. Now my hard working husband could relax on weekends, maybe play golf. It would be glorious. And yet.
I waited with bated breath for him to get home so I could talk to an adult. Weekends I needed time for myself. For what I don't know, maybe to go to the bathroom without interruption. Maybe to read more than half a page of a book without someone needing something. Maybe just something to remind me of the individual human that I am. Or that I was. Fast forward ten years or so, and I am proud to say that I feel like I give my kids the attention that they need. I work hard to be thoughtful when it comes to my family. I try to make their lives as pleasant as possible without putting them in some kind of bubble that will burst when they go to college. They have help with their school work when needed. They are involved in extracurricular activities both in and outside of school. They are athletic. The girl volunteers every week at a local food bank. They are good kids. I know who they are. I'm just not sure who I am outside of them any more. What do I enjoy? Driving them to their various activities? Yes, I now get to go to the bathroom and read without interruption, but the periods of time I have in which to do this seem to be narrow. And my attention span seems to be so small. Because there's a next task. Always. And although this is not always ideal I am grateful for it. Grateful that my kids are healthy and involved in their lives. Grateful to have the opportunity to help them and parent them the way I wanted to be parented but could not be. Grateful that we are so blessed to be able to afford the money, time and attention to them. My angst for my missing self cannot be blamed on them. It is solely on me. On my decisions. On my desires to give to them. I do so without (much) complaint. I just need to take the time between soccer games and choir rehearsals to look for me. Again.
I tease that I am on a ten year plan for my midlife crisis. I don't want to rush things, I want to be thoughtful on how I handle it. My daughter says that she feels like my meditation and spiritual curiosity is part of my midlife crisis. Perhaps. I like to think of it as finding a way back to who I am as a person, and letting that shine through. A lovely bottle of champagne full of verve and life and funny stories of crazy realatives making miraculous recoveries.

Welcome to my brain