Let freedom ring.

I read somewhere today that freedom is a state of mind and I like that thought so I'm going to try to remember it the next time I start worrying. The worries. The worries are heavy. I want to knock them off my shoulders and dump them in a bottomless pit so that I never have to deal with them again. The worries keep me up at night, they consume my thoughts throughout the day. I breath them in and breath them out. I cannot make them go away.

Freedom is a state of mind. Ok. For the moment, it's working.

My hair smells like smoke from the grill. I had a massive grease fire going on this afternoon when I was cooking up the food. I'm the griller in my family which I know is unusual, but with my husband gone a lot of the time, I needed to know how to fire up a grill or go without and so now I am an expert. We had hamburgers, hotdogs, sweet italian sausage, baked beans, salad, my specialty deviled eggs, and corn on the cob. It was all so delicious. I don't think there are fireworks in town this year due to the economy but no big deal. We can buy fireworks in the grocery stores here so if we want them we can go buy them. When I was growing up, my father would put on a fireworks show each year for the neighborhood. We'd crawl up on the roof of our house and watch them and it's great how I can think back to that time and I'm back there. I love the snapshot memories that take me back.

I bought a new pair of sneakers last night and I am thinking about taking up my walking/running routine again. I took a "day" off that lasted 8 months. I always do this. I run like an engine for a year then get tired and decide to rest a day and then I don't go back. There is no sense in this, I know and I fight to understand why I'm wired this way. I lose motivation somehow. It leaves me when I don't realize it's going and then I can't get it back no matter how hard I try. I know the motivation must come from within, though, so there's that.

I'm trying to keep my mind off the economic difficulties going on in our world. I'd feel better if I felt that we had people working toward fixing what is broken, however I think we have people intentionally working to destroy rather than build up. I worry for the people without jobs. I feel strangely calm about my husband's job even though he is in an industry that the Obama administration is working tirelessly to decimate. I'm certain we will be ok but I still care deeply about the direction our world is headed and I wish I could get everyone to think good thoughts and pray to God to help us. We have a bunch of people in our government who are not our friends, who are following a path that is wrong, who are betraying us. I've gotten beyond the democrat/republican thing because I think both are rotten and corrupt.

Anyway, my hope is that freedom, or at least the form of freedom we have now, does not get smaller. That is my wish this 4th of July. For everyone.

A Good Mother

I've been a parent since I was 23 years old--more years than I've been without kids. In a lot of ways, the time has flown by in a blur, but in other ways, it feels like forever, if that makes any sense. While my friends were out having fun, I was raising children. Having children was the most sobering thing in the world to me. Being carefree was a thing of the past. I stayed serious and determined because I did not know any other way to be. I learned to put myself last and that came easily because all mothers should strive to be selfless, right?

I can see myself from the outside looking in and this is what I see: I see someone who has been waiting patiently for a time when I no longer had to be last. It's like I was willing to be last as long as I knew that there would come a time when it would be over--knowing that made everything bearable. It was a light at the end of a dark tunnel. It was a star I was inches from touching. It was a pot of something splendidly wonderful at the end of a sun-kissed rainbow.

I'm not sure what this says about me. I'm afraid it says that my heart couldn't have been fully into parenting if I was simply waiting for the time when it would end.

I mention this because I have days when I'm not sure I will ever get the chance to have a life outside of being a parent. I was fortunate to be able to stay home with all of my children all of their lives and this is what I know better than anything. While other women were establishing careers which paid them for their hard work, I was home playing Chutes and Ladders with my kids. I was repeating nursery rhymes a million times. I was pushing them on swings and building sand castles. Their lives became my life.

Whenever I start to get excited about gaining part of the old me back again, something happens and the date gets pushed back even further to the future. I get sick of the fact that it appears my life is about living with the decisions other people get to make for me. My oldest child is moving back home again and I think a good mother would be happy about that, but all I can think about is how much more work that will be for me. I think of the extra laundry, the extra meal preparation, the extra person I will have to always consider before thinking about myself because that is how I am wired now. I feel resentful and hateful. I'm convinced that a good mother would not feel this way.

And the hardest part of all, the most confusing thing to me. is that mostly I am happy with my life and I don't know how to reconcile that with the fact that I long to be free of taking care of other people. My children only know me as a mother and I'm sure they never stop to think that maybe there is a part of me I've sacrificed for them that I'd like to reclaim at some point. I don't think they want anything for me except this and I can't say that I blame them since I've made it perfectly clear that it's ok to think of me last.

I wonder, sometimes, how long I will have to wait.

I've always been good at waiting.