Changing Weather Changing Life

I always have a hard time in the fall emotionally and I don't know why because I love fall. I think the leaves changing color are beautiful, I love the cooler weather and the smell of wood smoke in the mornings, I love pumpkins and apples and scarecrows, and I love decorating the house for Halloween and Thanksgiving. All this week I have just been so sad, sitting here feeling all alone in a house full of people, trying to hold back tears that I have no way of explaining, if anyone even noticed they were there. Fall in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia is so heartbreakingly lovely I would not want to be anywhere else at this time of year.
What is it then that makes me feel so alone and lonely? At 48 I am not a young woman anymore. My last few babies are growing up fast and I have grandchildren all around me to remind me that my years of being a mom are quickly coming to an end. I have loved having a house full of children all these years but it isn't the same when it becomes a house full of young adults doing their own thing and living their own lives. I know that it was something of an accomplishment to get all these younguns raised but why do I feel that so much of life just passed me by?
I am writing this blog for myself. No one else is reading it. I guess this is just an outlet for me to try and express some of my feelings. Lord knows I have no one to talk to and even if I tried they wouldn't understand. After all no one has it easy these days, at least not in my world. Can't find decent jobs that pay enough money to live on, hard to keep food on the table, hard times for everyone. I have a place to live and food to eat and we can just barely keep the wolf from the door so who am I to complain.
So this is what I wish for my kids to know about me. I loved them as best I could, provided for them and took care of them all the days of my life and suddenly they didn't need me anymore. I wish I could live inside my memories of the days when they were all little and clamoring around me with so much joyful chaos I could barely think. I look at pictures of those days gone by and I realize that my life is so empty now...all the color is gone all the happiness all the tumultuous ruckus that filled up my heart and my soul. I just honestly do not know what to do with myself.

Thoughts

Waking up alone, on a rainy Sunday morning, in a quiet house tends to start you considering things. I have spent twenty-seven years being a mother. I started out like any other new mother, overawed and overwhelmed with the responsibilities of a first baby and the discovery that you have depths of love inside your heart you had never known until the first time you held your newborn baby. So here I am all these years later, most of my children are grown, a few still here at home but not for long. Before I know it, the last three will be gone off into the world. Where will that leave me? Even though Caleb is just ten I already feel so un-needed, strange for me to say considering how much I have sheltered, pampered, ok babied Caleb my youngest child. Boys are independent creatures who do not cling to their mothers. None of my children really did. They were ready to go far sooner than I was ready to let them. I tried to teach them to be strong, to prepare them for the hard cruel world. Honestly I don't know if I did my job adequately I only know that I did the best I could, often under very trying circumstances. The thing is, I lost myself somewhere along the way and I do not know where to go looking for the pieces I left behind. This reflects on something I said in a previous blog, is there anyone out there who truly knows the me behind the mother or must I find ways to ensure that when I leave this world someone somewhere will truly remember me? I loved being a mother so much. Every pregnancy was more miserable than the one before, as I was sick right up until I went into labor. I survived twins and two c-sections, natural childbirth which was actually easier to recover from and epidurals that left me with lasting complications to this day. I made it through crying babies, cranky toddlers, elementary school, the nightmare of middle school, high school, bullies, teenage romances, teenage pregnancy, you name it I did it. I also worked to support my family and missed out on so many things I can never get back, but someone had to do it. I am not very close to most of my children, not by choice, but simply because they are living their own lives and I am trying to find a way to live mine, and they do not often overlap. I babysit grandchildren when asked and revel in the fun of being able to give them back to their mother's at the end of a glorious day. Grannies can spoil their darlings unabashedly and enjoy all the little things that drove us crazy when we were there in those years with our own. Is this the sum of me...mother and grandmother? I don't think it is, but does anyone else see me as more? So this is something I want to tell my children; family is everything. Being a parent is a privilege and a blessing and a responsibility. The thing is, and this is going to sound so incredibly selfish, you cannot and you must not give everything away in the process of raising your family. You must keep some small secret part of yourself locked away somewhere, so that when that inevitable day arrives and you are left alone, you can begin doing the unthinkable...living for yourself.