Where I Am Right Now

It’s dusk. I’m pleasantly tired. I just woke up from a 30 minute nap. I could probably sleep all night but responsibility calls. We opened Soul Miners Children’s Theater company’s 2nd term today. This term I have a smaller role and was free to leave at 2:15, almost 3 hours before my mom and Bernice, but Soul Miners is magic and I wanted to stay with the group of parents gathered by the couch.
In 2010 my life became so literal I’m having a hard time thinking in soft lines and quiet pauses. I’m getting a taste of the “adult” world and I don’t care for it. Honestly it’s not where I’m supposed to be right now anyway. While the boys are still young, I’m supposed to be primarily caring for and teaching them. That’a how our family chose to arrange matters. It gives us long lazy afternoons with other families. These extra hours help us cultivate friendships. We enjoy slow morning routines, relaxed bed time conversations that often go longer than they reasonably could if we had to rise at 7am every day. This is how our lives have been from the beginning of parenthood.
Then 2010 came along like a speeding train. Before we realized what was going on, all of our routines were upside down. I was tired all the time from tending a successfully budding gluten free baking business and co-producing Soul Miners first term and my husband was exhausted from filling in for me when he wasn’t working his 60-70 hours a week. Our children were hanging on tight for the ride. It wasn’t sustainable.
It was fun arriving at the Farmers Market with boxes of goodies, spreading them out next to price lists, hanging signs and laughing with new customers. It wasn’t fun or realistic or sustainable for me to run 3 extra errands every week, bake 10-12 hours between Thursday and Friday nights, not getting to sleep until 2am then gathering my enthusiasm and my body at 5am to go set up for the fun part at our table down town. It was hard to walk away form people who finally found a good loaf of bread after giving up hope because they didn’t want to eat turkey and mayo on cardboard ever again. I loved the light in their eyes when they tasted the food that was the result of hours of enjoyable experimentation in my home kitchen (before we ever tried large scale production…ugh).
It was fun helping start the theater company (except for the 30 hours in meetings to learn what we needed to do). Being with 11 children, focusing on virtues, watching a musical about an elephant come together while I visited with parents who became like family and keeping time for snack, breaks etc was a dream. Everything about Soul Miners was great, except that it was too much.
Now I’m letting go, trying to ease back into family life as we knew it before. But I have a few things to let go of, like my shattered illusion that I can do everything I want if it’s good and helps people. There’s also a truth that I need to bring back in to my intimate understanding. I can help one hundred people, but if I’m not properly caring for my family, I’ve missed the foundation. I love my boys so much. I missed them in all that creative helpful doing and our 6 year old was beginning to melt.
I’m ready to take my boys to the park again, the museum, indoor playground, to friends homes just to play and return to creating with them. I’m ready to turn my creative energy back into baking experiments, knowing I don’t have to take them any further that my kitchen and gatherings of friends. I’m ready to focus one hour a week on virtues classes for Soul Miners knowing I can leave when my part is done, or I can stay and visit if I choose. I’m ready to do what I can do well and no more.