Rejuvenation

When I was a very new mother who worried about every little thing (as opposed to now, when I'm a more experienced mother who does the same damn thing), one of the most often-heard pieces of advice I received on a variety of worrisome things was "tincture of time."  It was good advice then and it's still good advice, and it works on lots of levels.  Last week I was so evil I couldn't even stand myself, but today, a week out from my chemo and after three days of blessed aloneness, I am back to feeling pretty good.

Friday afternoon when Mama and Liam left I was so relieved that I burst into tears.  I had been holding in all my stress, trying not to take it out on anyone else, and I was just so relieved to be alone to wallow in my anger and sadness and everything else.  And by then, I really didn't need to wallow anymore; the peaceful calm quiet of my empty house was an immediate relief.  I watched hours of DVRed shows from the past week and went to bed late and didn't talk to another living soul and it was bliss.

Saturday morning I woke up early in my quiet house, and spent most of the morning listening to music and surfing the 'net.  My friends had invited me to a party and I decided to go for a little while.  I was glad I went;  although K and I speak on the phone several times a week, we haven't seen each other since I started my treatments.  She was so sweet and kept telling me how great I looked ("Y'all, doesn't she look great?  THIS WOMAN JUST HAD CHEMO ON MONDAY!  Doesn't she look great?"  Yeah, she was about half in the bag).  I stayed about three hours, the perfect amount of sociability for this weekend, and the best thing was that after it was over, I could retreat to my calm quiet house and regroup.

Yesterday I had to work a little, but mostly I read--no, devoured--a new book.  It's called The King of Lies and it is outstanding.  The author is from North Carolina and it is set in Rowan County and I don't write well enough to tell you what I liked about it, but the story was compelling, the characters well-drawn and it was beautifully  literary in the very best sense of that word.  I hope we'll be seeing more from John Hart; he's very talented.

Yesterday was also the beginning of race season, and I watched almost all of the Daytona 500.  My guy Tony Stewart was out fairly early (and didn't even punch anyone), so I was pulling for Mark Martin to win, but Kevin Harvick surprised everyone (including himself, I believe!) and won the race while several more cars behind him wrecked.  It was a good race and despite lots of wrecks, no one got hurt.  It was a great weekend for Harvick; he won the Busch race, too.

Liam will be home in an hour or so.  Today I miss him a little bit, so I'll be happy to see him.  I hope his weekend away was as good for him as it was for me.  My boy is having a hard time these days, and I hope a weekend of just being eight years old and adored by his grandparents has helped to restore some balance.

Tomorrow I have a conference scheduled with his teacher and the guidance counselor, sort of to just touch base on where we are with all this and make sure everyone is on the same page. Later on Liam and I will go for our second visit to the counselor. I hope that he will agree to talk with her alone this week; he didn't the first time we went, but she'll keep trying. He is dealing with a lot of stuff no child should have to, and I want to give him a safe place to talk about it. He is so private, and so protective of my feelings, so he often can't talk to me, but he doesn't need to keep all this in. One of these days (and hopefully soon) our lives will not be All About Cancer, and I need to make sure we both have a good life to come back to when our focus can shift again.

Comments

[Sarah]

I’ve been enjoying reading about your journey. It helps put life into perspective. It is so hard to deal with life in general, and then heaping cancer on top of it, and mingling that with motherhood and fear and everything else. You have very eloquently written about your journey thus far.

[sea & sky]

i don't know you at all, but i can tell that you are a wonderful mother. take care.

[kenju]

You are such a good mother and if Liam is caring of your feelings and protective, then you are doing a heck of a good job in raising him. When this is all over, and you are healthy again, it will pay off in spades!

[catherine]

That's beautiful... again. I love your ending line.
I also crave my alone time and truly enjoy it. Sometimes I even hide in the bathroom, but someone finds me!
I hope Liam had a great weekend and was spoiled rotten by his grandparents.

[Deana]

You, Delane and Jackson, all the enemy. I'm a Jeff Gordon girl...and no I am not ashamed of it! I also like Jimmie Johnson. I enjoy Tony though. Racing wouldn't be the same without his mean bully attitude. And I do think he and Jeff are by far the most skilled.

PS- happy to see Tony lost some weight. I thought I was going to get to pick on Delane about him not being able to squeeze out his little window to climb the fence!

[colleen]

It sounds like my kind of fun! I'm so glad you got some time alone. I call it puttering. I just love to putter from thing to thing as I please. I hope you can get regular times like this cause it's so good to get caught up with yourself!