Somedays I just don’t wanna’

The cement mixer continues its constant noisey tumble. The sunshine tells me that laundry should already be on my line. The sink is full of breakfast dishes and Spanish lessons are waiting. I should be exercising, or studying or…. My time is gone long before I begin and tomorrow will hold many of the same chores. I will wash and fold that same school shirt, sweep crumbs and dirt and -what is THAT?

And the line from Fiddler on the Roof echoes, “after 25 years of washing your clothes,making your meals…..” True I haven’t had to milk a cow and my life is SO much easier than that of a Jew during the Russian revolution. But in all honesty there are plenty of days where it’s an act of will to do the same chores.

Calls from home tell me of Presidential concerns and menengitis outbreak, “did you see what I put on Pinterest?” but life here on the mountain remains much the same. I am part of two worlds and the one that is most familiar is farthest away. The world where I live is the one where I look different than everyone else. I feel like an infant because so often I can’t communicate what I’d like to.  My sister-in-law invites me to walk on a New Hampshire beach and stop for a lobster luncheon and it sounds so appealing-wouldn’t it be just perfect to be there?

And then I remember the line I wrote down the other day from Ann Voscamp’s book, “Nothing is a given-everything’s a gift. Who am I to complain in losses when what I lost wasn’t mine to begin with?” Yes this life is different than the one I had imagined 25 years ago and it’s hard to leave part of your heart in another country. There are adjustments to be made when you lose some of the things you took for granted and days when you feel so much older and so little wiser. At times it’s sheer discipline to continue and the progress seems so small.

So I will choose joy….thanks for the girl who gives me a week of birthday surprises, for the one who brought cold cereal and bananas with her song, for the boy who shares Hardy boy mysteries and the secrets of the perfect paper airplane, for the kitten who “looks like two colors of chocolate” and the little girl who carries her wrapped in a bathrobe, for the one who chats on his way to work at the studio, and the one who proudly posts pictures of the shark he caught and ate, and the one who perseveres in classes that are a challenge, for the ones who teased that they were eating my Bob Evans breakfast,and dear sis who keeps me laughing with her language challenges “contaminated asteroids”. Everything, everyone is a gift.