I recall returning back to teaching again after taking time off with our two youngest out of five.
I honestly thought I was going to stay at home until they were at school age the way I had for our first three.
My husband provided me everything he could to create a loving nest.
Something changed in me, however, and I recall disliking the feeling of not having a scheduled norm.
I created and maintained a regularized pattern with my oldest three. This time, things were different.
Back then, I was straight out of college. This time, I was coming off of having already established my career in teaching. In fact, this would be the central reason for the twelve-year age gap between our third child to fourth.
I had utilized my days being under full control with our oldest three within my home. That playing house factor had been in full effect.
I was alone with my children when my husband was away at work, knowing when he would call to check on us.
I timed our walks and errands to be home during our talks over the phone (the reminiscence of land lines back then).
The splendor of a controlled environment. Peaceful to the heart, mind, body, and spirit.
I have shared with my husband how I wish I had kept my calendar planner to serve as a reminder of how I used to plan out our daily routines. One day would be ART DAY. Another day, SCIENCE. Then, there would be PARK DAY.
I could write these over and over weekly and never tire of seeing each neatly written to look over and check off as if there were anything remotely different from what I had done just a week before.
As soon as our oldest was able to participate, weekends were game days with my husband leading the way, having been eager to volunteer his time coaching just as soon as he could.
Our evenings, endless movie nights.
I tried to have a routine with my youngest two. These duo, however, were a year apart, an interesting challenge from two sizes of diapers to different developmental phases, two separate, energetically fast growth processes at a time.
To add, the world was finishing up that seemingly silent Great Recession where the housing bubble didn’t just pop but burst, causing what seemed to have ended to dwindle through several years after.
I recall our main office secretary at school privately sharing with me within this bleak window period of time that someone down the street at a retirement home was just reported to have ended his life with a bullet.
Around this time, I recall one of my student’s father telling me with his wife that after twenty-six years of working at a well-known company, they let him go right before his retirement.
His story was starting to sound similar to those reported all around. While some were losing their jobs, some were losing their homes. Some, both.
A domino effect of the economic downfall was becoming evident worldwide.
Upon consumers deciding to stop spending, producers lose demand to produce. With no need for production, use of materials to requirements for labor work face suspension.
The burst was causing a major clean-up after the standstill.
Interestingly, restimulating the economy historically becomes the phase before and after good times whereas lending to those who could be at risk to not pay back becomes part of the financial epidemic.
We then clean that up with programs to help those impacted. Problems creating troubles creating solutions.
Proposing a solution could very much be a pushback for those needing the problems.
Cobblestone roads versus asphalt.
The only ones who seemed to least be impacted were those who already hadn’t anything to lose.
Words such as predatory lending surfaced into the air for those who found themselves falling into such predicament, some perhaps not even knowing the term, and thus, falling into depleted surrender.
Whether an unknown entrapment led into by hopes and dreams or a sudden enemy of the state enactment like Executive Order 9066 placed during WWII, having witnessed the rise and fall of my very own parents and understanding precipitous storms sometimes with little or no warning, the human species can only knowledgeably be aware of historical possibilities.
I quietly felt families and retirees all of a sudden see their world instantly turned upside-down to most no one’s help or answer.
The crippling aftermath could be seen through the eyes of those suffering. The poker faces hardly held to any mastery. Several were left to fold.
Our boys were born following that phase with my husband hardly sharing with me what was happening amidst our own world. I could only sense the air had become heavy at times, he lifting all the weight in our home to ever make things seem so light.
My husband’s saying, Why have two worry? I took in, abiding my lane for our strength as one.
The strength of forward mentality- when you plan for two more, you don’t let the happenings of the world stop you. We didn’t. In fact, we continued forth with jubilation.
Our family was growing like a garden of sweet-smelling roses- such an endless awe to gaze upon.
Still, as a mother once told my husband, with every rose comes thorns.
My husband continued to keep his smile and excitement for the expansion of our family regardless of what personal challenges may have crept in.
If truly silence speaks louder than words, that is because of the thick air being breathed that seemed to not know how to dissipate. Energy has a way to be felt, good or the other, a quant manner of matter.
The yin and yang is not a still picture but rather quantumly moving, incessantly, even as we sleep.
You don’t need to understand energy. You feel its radiation of existence in any room, realm, or even between boundaries.
Balance can be drawn out to be equal by sight. On a scale, the weight of a feather can be heavier than one’s light. Sadly, there are just those willing to risk the wrath of incinerating heat and torching fire to have insatiable abundance now. Their burnt coals and ashes causing the feather to fly off the scale when measured.
I could sense my husband’s battles through his reassuring smiles that while he enjoyed the sight and sound of our growing family, the weight he was carrying would weigh him down at times.
My husband was counting on our oldest son to focus on a strong finish in college, that vicarious joy received from giving your child the experience and opportunity not given you.
At the same time, he quietly thought and worked through to keep going with our two daughters to follow. Adding two more seemed undoable. And, yet, we did.
Three older children, twelve years distance from what was once our youngest to now our two newest born a year apart.
Our oldest three were in different phases in life as I clenched to the blessings of our two newest.
At the same time, whilst staying at home with my children and husband continued to be my joy and peace, too many energies I allowed in were quietly taking me into a silent whirlwind I failed to acknowledge or recognize then with two barely having entered this world needing my greatest care and attention.
Those who only knew how to keep talking about trivial matters weren’t helping with the forward movement. They were like beavers, perhaps while trying to have a part, were not only chewing up wood around but creating blockades for a smooth stream.
At home, our two youngest, just a few months from being a year apart, placed me in an array of emotions quietly and silently to myself all day.
The world, preoccupied with their own wants and needs seemed to not take notice that these latest blessings of ours, helpless on their own, were needing my focus.
If our family was a table being held up by each member, this was surely the time I felt sides imbalanced, taking turns to hold one helpless newborn in my arms while placing the other hardly any different in need, on my hip, while making sure to keep the table up on my end.
Five amazing children and a loving husband, so much in abundance given me. And, yet, I couldn’t seem to balance what began to feel like an overflow.
I remember quietly keeping track of time while at home trying to have order, reminding myself what class period I would be in had I still been in my classroom.
While I could hardly find time to be alone with my thoughts at school, at least I had order of time in which I could plan when to be alone to deeply think in between moments where students were out of the room.
While the world was on a rebuild, I simply just wanted to be alone to think for myself. Thinking time no longer seemed to exist. And, whenever I did find to think, because they were broken into pieces due to unavoidable interruptions in between, grasping to any of my thoughts were slim to none.
I tried to find time to think but that was just it. My eyes, always fixated on our developing youngest two, while my heart, mind, and spirit tried best to love my oldest three throughout their own journeys caused me to simultaneously feel lost and losing.
The youngest two simply wouldn’t allow me to focus on anything but their developing growth and doings, hardly even toward the oldest three, whereas they had been my full focus before then.
Of my most painful discovery, our two youngest detested what seemed to me, an unquestionably simple routine that I sadly realized I had taken for granted with my daughters.
Walking around the mall to mindlessly glance at things was always a good indoor walk for me in a hibernating state due to weather.
At least with my two daughters, two years apart, after having hit the gym, I could walk around the mall to continue some good thinking after breakfast and dropping off our oldest to school, before heading back home to clean, prep up for lunch and then, dinner.
I could clean the house every day with the same routine back then.
With our boys at home, one crawled up and down things while the other wobbled about the house.
I thought I could push through with a similar routine as I did for our older three, eventually creating a daily calendar to follow as our kids would begin to develop into active learning.
I didn’t get far. I couldn’t even start. I couldn’t find any single moment of pattern to know where to begin.
My insides were in survival mode. I simply began to ache to return to where I felt not only did I have a scheduled routine but the days would be productive.
Changing diapers all day while trying to manage all in between feedings and baths weren’t producing anything different by any manner. Those duties were simply necessities for two young ones who couldn’t care for themselves.
I was alone. Strangely, something that I have always preferred. This time, however, aside from my husband whom stood beside and by me, I was alone, as if swimming in a pit under a tunnel I had fallen into, too prideful to let out a yelp.
I looked at my two youngest and surrendered. My heart and body was with them but my mind and spirit were clinging to chance of barely deteriorating motions.
After already reaching out to my principal to return the next year, I recall telling my husband my decision.
He said what still hurts to undeniably admit to. “Yeah. You’re not happy here.”
He saw. He must have felt. He just never once said.
I couldn’t verbally admit he was right because his words had spoken directly to my heart, mind, body, and spirit.
I felt as if all parts within me had their heads down, failing my husband as a mother of his children and yet, desperately needing to get out to save myself so that I may continue being his wife and friend to both of us.
Unregretfully, going back not only saved me, but my presence for my family.
I recall that next year with such repetitive feel of early morning zeal. I looked forward to waking up every morning to create a pattern of routine for where I would wave my farewell to our boys from the window as I drove away each day.
I had purpose to think and do again.
I once more had routine that I could no longer find at home, my daughters suggesting space while giving you the notion that your distance was far too much or too little but never right.
I was searching for the ones I had lost- me, myself, and I, before further time would only lead to permanent loss.
Thankfully, after over a decade of reflective moments, I am grateful to come to discovery that all three never gave up on me. They were never lost. They were fighting with my backup, the overseer, the entire time.
Funny how you dance and sing with you again to a point where sometimes even when the music stops playing, you still hum a tune quietly to yourself.
I hold my husband’s hand, happy to know all of me, myself, and I are still here to watch the continuation of my priceless presents.
By not letting pride get in the way, within me saved without.
