Crazy Weird

Sometimes life feels like a crazy, weird journey. Just yesterday I was forcing two-year-old Matthew away from me, removing him like a clinging, caterwauling kitten as I dropped him off in the church nursery. Today he arranged, mafia style, by use of the phone I AM PAYING FOR to get everyone a ride to and from football practice in a way that would cut me and my scratched-up Impala completely out of the picture. I guess I embarrass him. Pardon me as I completely resist the urge to morph myself into a cool mom. I'm just gonna go ahead and be the same old latch-hooking me. Every single day it becomes abundantly ever more crystalline that I must move ahead into the second half of my life. I would like to embrace it, as it were. All of that wonderful freedom (read lonliness). All of that glorious silence while the kids are at their activities (read barren stillness). Oh, heavens, it's coming anyway, whether I want it to or not. I suppose it is time for me to take another look at me. What do I want from the next four decades? What would I like to contribute? Who would I like to get to know? What old friendships would I like to strengthen? What is my identity now that my children are batting their little wings around, trying to hop up off of the familial perch? When they were small I used to (don't laugh now) imagine that I would raise dachshunds once they were no longer careening back and forth between clinging to me for dear life and toddling off to fall down the stairs lest I hold their hands at all times. I actually believed that I would have a thriving kennel with every dachshund color in the dachshund rainbow. I saw myself handing care packages to satisfied new owners, their puppies sporting tiny bows. I guess I figured the purchase of a low-slung 70s era rancher with three acres and an air-conditioned kennel out back that would house the generations of champions I would produce from my award-winning stock was somewhere in my unsuspecting husband's future. I am in a cul-de-sac in a tidy neighborhood in Franklin, TN. I have one-third of an acre. I have only one dachshund. Not very close to that goal. I also imagined that book after majestic, best-selling book would issue forth from my computer. I would be so busy, what with the book-signings and new litters of glistening puppies, I would be fine, just fine, thank you, if my children had a mind to neglect me. To be continued.