...And What Comes Next?

I have a week off of work to sit in my home, breathe, and examine my own everyday surrounding details as we cross the threshold of a decade, at the end of which I feel like I am finally just arriving in my own life.  I'm hit like lightening with a flash of love and gratitude and I want to do better, to be better, with every fiber of my being--not that I'm that bad, many people do like me, I swear--just that I feel called, I feel a flash of lightning hit me and everything around me is illuminated and I want my heart to explode so big over this earth that it swallows us all, and it's hard to explain what I want, to put it into words, even to myself, but I feel love-fear-gratitude and yearning, the yearning to be good enough, to be truly good enough for everything I've been given.

And then there is Sunday and that epiphany begins to wear around the edges--but just slightly--as the unfolded laundry mounts and the dining room floor needs to be scraped of discarded food stuffs once again.  I hum and stretch my way through household chores and remind myself not to sigh.  And still, on Sunday, sometimes I giggle, or smirk, and am light on my feet.

And then there is Monday and items on a list long ago written and ignored are quickly and efficiently tended to and checked off.  There is satisfaction here, the satisfaction of that first day of productivity after a rest, but the affect is a little flat compared to epiphanies.  And then that evening we team up and cut the boy's hair.  We look up directions on the Internet and then wing it:  I'm weilding scissors; my husband has clippers.  Little Lightning Bolt went to the barber shop once, with his father, and when they returned my husband said:  "Remember the lead test at a year?  When it took me and two technicians to hold him down?  This was way worse.  Way, way worse."  The boy had multiple bald spots and the front of his hair had been left untouched in the abandoned effort and ended in a point midway down his nose.  So we're learning to cut hair.  We're no Regis Salon, but we're not too bad either.  And while it was no epiphany, it was a step up from paying the bills online.

And then there is Tuesday and a calendar for January I need to look at--pore over, really, for quite a while--and a new, expanded list of things to do, and more phone calls to make, and I spend way too much time reading, until I'm hunched over and slouchy and my shoulders ache and my head feels like a buzzing beehive of thoughts, yet kinda dumb at the same time.  But then pizza is ordered, and bath time is undeniably cheery, and Tuesday is salvaged in those little evening moments of joy.

I want to be present in two places at one time.  I want to be present in my daydreams, my moments of epiphany, but I want to be present in the details of my everyday life too.  The first are my magic, and, strangely, they seem to be where I easily reside.  It's in my real life that I uneasily reside.  My real life is dusty and I have asthma, and while I do enjoy making a good to-do list, carrying out all the items is frequently tedious work.  As is much of motherhood, employment, art, marriage, friendship, family and most else in life.  But there is much joy there too, if you can drag the daydreams down into the dust to liven up the atmosphere while you grab that broom and get to work.  I want to march in, focused and determined, grab the broom in one hand, stuff the daydreams in a pocket with the other and immediately begin to move in some perfect formation of floor-swept perfection, but I know it doesn't work that way.  I'm at home, in my own skin, not in uniform or in costume.  And I'm trying to learn to dance, not perform a six-gun salute.  I'm not sure, yet, how to do this gracefully.  But I just need to begin.