Black Oak's Daughter

It’s been a wild ride lately. So here’s an update about all that:

My back is fine, healing, responding to rehab. It will be another month or two before it’s strong enough that I will be clear of rehab and released from care.

My job has stabilized. I still have extra work, but in the end they saw my argument about how things needed to happen as fair and wise, and made the necessary changes. I feel good about working there again. Things will settle down in another month or two.

 My house looks beautiful. My back can handle a little bit of gardening every day, and Roomie has been wonderful helping plant big things and hang pots and baskets, lifting bags of dirt, mulch, rocks, etc. He’s also painted the bricks to match the new siding on the sides of the house, so that from the street, it’s like night and day. My run down box of a house is new again. We are both enjoying watching things bloom, and he said something to me the other day when I asked him if he watered. He said “all is well in the garden.” In my heart, all I heard, was “all is well”. It feels SO right here. The house feels alive again, filled with love after years of a slow strangling awful death. 

Roomie is such a force in my life in so many ways.  My garden looks as nice as it does is because he brings an energy, a love for life, a need for beauty that is contageous.  I have been struggling with post-surgical depression, and every day I have done something outside, whether it’s plant a few plants, or some other little task, that brings me out of myself and into a world where things grow, and bloom. It reminds me that my body may still be healing, and I have a ways to go, but in a way I’m blooming too. Life goes on, beautifully, and even with the little work that I contribute every day I feel that much better about myself. 

Yesterday the first rose bloomed. Tomorrow the first strawberry will be ripe.  Today it rained, a soft, gentle, steady rain. Rain has always been a reminder to me that the Creator takes care of us. It cleanses the earth, waters the flowers, and gives the moisture that sustains all living things. 

I feel a peace inside that hasn’t been there for a long time and I will do everything that I can to protect that and make it grow, and share it with the people that I love.

Minime is moving home next weekend.  She lives a complicated life because that’s the only way she knows to live. That’s how it was here as she was growing up, and she hasn’t realized yet that it doesn’t need to be so complex. She’s having the angst that everyone that age has when trying to figure out what to do with their lives.  She works hard at keeping the complexities all working. She doesn’t know how to be any different.  I left all of that behind when I left my ex.  Life became vastly uncomplicated because it didn’t need to be that way anymore. I wasn’t busy trying to appease him, or hide things, or anything else that was part of the grand complicated game that my marriage was anymore.  That life was suffocating me and now I feel like I can breathe again.

I live peacefully now. There’s an honesty that I haven’t had for a long time.  Roomie has never asked me to be anything I’m not. He makes no demands.  I make none on him. There is nothing hidden between us.  There is no judgement. He wants me to thrive and be healthy. I want the same for him. Our comments to each other are meant to help, not scorn.  We live here in peace, and do things for each other because we want to, not because “I better do that or there will be consequences”.  He has been here to take care of me while I’m recovering, as well as do the things that I can’t do right now, and for that I’m greatful. He has also brought the kind of order that I grew up with back to my life. There’s comfort in that too. Things are as they should be. There is still work to do to clear the remaining marital chaos out of my house, but I’m dealing with it as I can.  One bit at a time.

Minime moving back home will be interesting. She left for college four years ago when this place was in that chaos.  That place that she knew as home doesn’t exist anymore. The house is still here, but inside it’s been replaced with a real home, where people have respect, and honor each other with love in their hearts. A home where we talk to each other, we share our days, or things that we learned, or different memories with each other. We leave the TV off and have long conversations  every evening after supper.  She’s not used to that. 

She’s also coming back as an adult, a college graduate. There are expectations that go along with that. She’s feeling the pressure of her student loans. She’s feeling the pressure of rent. She’s feeling the pressure of not knowing what she wants to do with her life, but not wanting to get into a career that she hates.  Maybe she’ll come home, work for the summer and go to grad school in the fall. Maybe she’ll come home, and find a job that she loves, and work her way up through the company the same way I did.  Maybe she’ll find a job at the last minute and not come home. That’s all up to her. It’s an exciting time. She’ll look back on all of it in 25 years, maybe when her kid is at the same point in life that she is now, and smile. Maybe by then she’ll have figured out that all she has to do is believe that things will work out, and then work for them to do so, and they will. Life is what you believe it to be.  If you believe that it will be hard, it will be hard. If you believe that things will work out, they will work out.  I believe that I am blessed, and every day I find more and more to feel blessed about.  

I remember how I felt when I had graduated college and the only job I had ever held was as an AuPair. I didn’t know what was next. I had no idea what I wanted to do other than be some kind of counselor. I lucked into a part time job that paid better than my AuPair job, and it also gave me business experience.  13 years later, I’m still at the same company, managing a large amount of equipment and processes.  You couldn’t have told me as a new college grad with a degree in Psychology and Sociology that I’d end up in the business world. I don’t think I’ll be in that world forever. The urge to do something else is getting stronger and stronger.  For right now though, I am where I am meant to be, blooming my life into something beautiful, and I’m happy with that.

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