I'm wondering if Hubs is right, he keeps saying it is going to be a really brutal winter. It's been a long time since I remember snow on the ground before Thanksgiving. But this year has been an odd one all along. We didn't get spring until well after summer had started and fall has been doing an odd dance with summer, neither one taking the lead and now it appears that winter is planning to cut in early.
I guess it goes well with a year full of heart ache, loss and turmoil. It feels that this has been the longest year. It started bitter, it's so hard to believe we have started the first holiday season since Dad passed. I am not even sure what lies ahead, this is new and uncharted territory. There are days that I find I miss him beyond comprehension and other days I am sure that I can pick up the phone and hear his voice.
Walking my boys this morning, watching the sun rise slowly behind the brilliant colored leaves hanging on for dear life to the trees, everything dusted with snow flakes, I was feeling a bit reflective.
Over the course of the past few months so much has changed. I've left my MX Y behind. So many memories, so many friends. I truly put so much into the Downtown Y. It was like leaving a family. There was a beautiful party and ironically a day dedicated to me by a congressman. Seems it will live forever as my day in some storage place in Washington DC. My home is filled with beautiful plants gifts from them and my life is full of memories and joy from my time there.
I've returned back to where my Y career inadvertently started. Before Hubs even became Hubs, I volunteered at South City with him. I was filling some serious voids in my life. I was new to the area, I didn't know anyone, I was recovering from the lowest my life had ever gotten. My health was almost destroyed, I couldn't be understood when I talked, and I found a place to heal and start being human again.
When I was volunteering doing odd jobs, playing Mrs. Clause, painting walls and murals, during that time I had no idea what the future would hold. I didn't intend to find a career, I didn't intend to find family, friends, and a place to call my own.
Fast forward... I am settling back into the very place I started. Most days I don't find a moment to stop for lunch. Most days are very long. Part of me is working so hard because that was Hubs' original Y home, I want to take care of his memories and honor them. Part of me is working to give back what was given to me. I'm not sure when that realization happened.
I have had to take some hard steps, have conversations I wasn't quite ready for. During this time I have laughed and cried. I have felt confident and completely overwhelmed. I have set up an office that is completely designed to be functional - yet comforting. Not just for myself, but for my team. A sanctuary of sorts. I knew there would be conversations that would be difficult, that there would be moments when a cup of coffee and a willingness to listen would be just what someone would need. And I knew that there would be times that someone might be me.
I am learning my new family. I am learning that maybe it isn't so terrible to be in a Y with kiddo's. As I've been blessed to watch their smiling faces through things like a Pumpkin Splash and a Halloween parade through the offices with the little kiddo's in their costumes. I'm learning that the teens are searching for a place to belong and we will solve that soon. Or at least we will try. Seems to me that teens have been searching for that since time began.
Somewhere in the midst of all of that, I am still trying to have a life. I haven't been very successful. I'm trying. Dinners are rushed affairs - all too often at a restaurant surrounded by people we don't know, mediocre food - that loving hands have not touched. To be followed by an early bed time because Hubs and I are exhausted.
We are trying to balance it. We've taken in a few shows. We've enjoyed a few fires and hung out in the cul de sac with the neighbors enjoying the the aftermath of the subdivision Halloween parade. We've even managed a few motorcycle rides. Slowly life is returning to some semblance of normal.
Today, we will enjoy the crazy weather with a bit our own crazy. We'll tidy the house, go out and celebrate veteran's day a bit early - I want to be sure to celebrate and thank my veteran, maybe even do a bit of shopping. The snow sure is bringing home the fact that the holidays are creeping up super fast, that will be a bit wonky for a ton of reasons this year also.
It's odd, as I got older I thought things would become more routine. I thought that the bits would move into a settled journey, kind of like the night follows day over and over. I don't know if it is normal to feel like that isn't how the journey is going. I wonder if I created that image from far too many episodes of cheesy old black and white television shows. Where mom wore heels and pearls as she went about her daily chores of waiting on the family and doing little things to make them feel loved.
I hear my sweet hubs downstairs, he was cleaning out the fireplace and I hear the wood being stacked and the flame of the propane torch that he always lights it with. Hubs doesn't do anything small, maybe that is what I love the most about him. He loves completely and does the sweetest things to make people happy. Me in particular....
I have so much swirling in my mind lately, and I know that is a sign that I need to take a few more moments to simply write. I've missed writing, but as you can see it's been a bit busy. Now I am going to sit in my comfy blue chair, enjoy my beautiful fire and maybe work on the Christmas presents that I am determined to complete this year.
Then its a day with the Hubs!
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