Barbara: After a wonderful
whirlwind long weekend in Montreal last week, after seeing my daughter and
reveling in family and friends, I am now back at home and officially navigating
my new path of quietude. Because back at home there are no dinner parties or
kids (or noise), back at home life “goes on”. And, yes, as we’d all anticipated,
this new life of quietude is not without its challenges: namely, it also
comes—at the moment—with an undercurrent of wistful, delicate sa-tigue (see how
I made that up? “Sad” and “fatigue” together … because it feels remarkably like
fatigue).
I swear I wasn’t even going
to write about this as I don’t want you to worry about me or get all schlumpy
yourselves (ever notice how moods are infectious?), but then … well, when you
gotta write, you gotta write what you know, right? And right now, this is what
I know.
I am doing my thing, by the
way, and getting LOTS done (which is very satisfying and wonderful), but this
satigue just follows me everywhere. Kinda like a puppy who’s forced to be with
you on a long road trip and does so only because he loves you and the
alternative of being left behind is much much worse but who is in great
emotional distress the whole time because he HATES the car but he’d prefer you
didn’t know this as his favourite purpose in life is to follow you around
happily and adore you and so he suffers the dreaded 6-hour car ride in whimpering
“silence”. (… Yes, this would be Chaplin on last week’s road trip to and from Montreal. Make sure you listen for his low down, low-grade whine...)
And do you ever find when
you’re nursing the low down, low-grade blues that you kinda want to be left
alone with them? That you don’t really want to chat and visit and be cheered? I
know, for me, it’s all about letting it run its gentle course. And, in my
experience, it is a gentle course.
This is not the same feeling as true depression, or frustration, or angst, or
grief. It is something else entirely. It feels almost like that dull ache you
get when you’re a young teen and your bones are growing you into your next
shape and size. Everything kinda throbs and hurts and your longer arms and legs
make you all clumsy and awkward. But. BUT. You have this niggling, insistent, committed
certainty that this new size and shape is going to be just swell in time and
that it will all be worth it in the end.
So the truth is out:
definitely feeling the blues right now. But the hope is there: definitely
convinced it won’t last that long or be for naught.
Deb: Oh Barb. I have no words of wisdom. I hope you take solace in
the fact that you know I have been where you are. I hope you see that we made
the best of it and that we were rewarded with the return of our boy plus a
girl. I also hope you see how very very fast that time went. We are reversed,
aren’t we? We are reversed. I am feeling your satigue and I am phoning
you...right now. Sending love. xo
