I’ve been a little lax around here. Well, a lot lax. Last week my husband was gone for work. After watching the weather diligently, I made a judgment call Wednesday morning and told him to come home a day early. Turns out his co-workers wife (who travels frequently for work) had called him to do the same thing. By Thursday afternoon, before the bad weather started, planes weren’t landing in Charlotte. I have three friends who played out scenes from “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” to get home.
What have I been doing with all of this time?
The bad weather started Thursday night and I listened to the bouncing of sleet off of my house. I paced later, knowing it was freezing rain and concerned about the damage. After sleeping fitfully, I was up and started cooking. When I wasn’t cooking, I was reading. When I wasn’t reading, I was with my family.
That’s what I did all weekend. My family and I cooked meals together, we read a lot of books, watched Coen brother movies and just spent time with each other. With the constant reminder of death coming from every angle in the form of celebrities who’d had an impact on our lives, my step-dad not doing so well post-op due to a number of setbacks, and a few things that have went on that I prefer not to write about, this was what I needed. It’s what we all needed.
While all of the parents were complaining about the kids being out of school (our back roads were very icy, and we have several mountain ranges to deal with in our county) I cherished each moment The Kid was at home. We drank hot chocolate, more coffee than you can shake a stick at (he’s 15, I’m okay with the coffee), and we allowed ourselves to just be.
It was so peaceful. There was no crankiness, no snapping at each other, no eye rolling. The stress of every day life seemed to melt away. I can’t tell you in words what that did for me, for my family. To just be together, cocooned in our house, like we’re on vacation, but without the stress of vacation. (Why are vacation’s stressful? Am I doing them wrong?)
Knowing that The Kid leaves for college in just over two years made our time together even more precious and bittersweet. We won’t have many days like this with him. Our lives are changing and when we’re housebound again, he might not be here. We’ll take every second we can, because like the icy roads, it won’t last forever.