Skip to main content

Strollin in like June Cleaver...

Ever since I had the last drain removed I've started to feel, almost, normal. During this strange time when people of our state are being told to stay away from others and stay home. My Facebook newsfeed has been filled with people complaining about this time of being trapped in their home. Stuck with their family. Having nothing to do. Where as I have been savoring every minute of this.

I've been in this weird stretch, where I feel pretty okay but my incisions weren't quite ready to start radiation. So I've used this time to do all the things I haven't been able to do for months. I've cleaned all the things ever, I've reorganized, I've done some cooking, endless laundry, I've taken daily walks with my son, I've started doing my bible studies again, started writing again. In the middle of all this chaos of cancer and Covid, I have been given a tremendous gift - the gift of being a stay-at-home-mom, if only for a moment.

I used to say that I was a June Cleaver/Gemma Teller hybrid; given the right reason I won't even think twice about clocking you...and then I'll go home and slip a lovely potpie into the oven for my family. I loved my job, my job of taking care of the home and my family. I clipped coupons and made fresh dinners every weeknight, I was a prepper, a mom who was on top of it, involved in my kids lives, took care of my home. People say part of being happy in life is finding a job you enjoy doing, and I loved that job. But circumstances changed, and I had to head back into the workforce.

I'm always pushing my boss to let us wear jeans at work, but she's of the mindset that you should dress for the job you want, not the job you have. I always joked with her and said "Well I want to be a stay at home mom, and they wear jeans, so..." I missed staying home, I knew that, I've said for years that I miss it. But it wasn't until I was given this gift of time that I realized just how much I really, really missed this. I hadn't realized how empty I felt. This stretch of time waiting for radiation has been the happiest I've been in...honestly, years.

I'm cherishing this time, because I know it won't last. Soon, I'll be getting radiation every day and dealing with side effects, feeling like a cancer patient again, then I'll have to go back to work and this time will be over. It'll be back to regular life, back to the grind, back to just trying to survive the day and not let it drag you down. The world is in such a rush for things to go back to the way they were, and I'm sitting here, dreading it. I want to pause this time, to hold onto it, to be June Cleaver just for a little while longer. For now, I'm doing the job I once had, the job I loved. I will hold onto every day of this, every moment, because it is a gift - the gift of being the woman I once was. I'll miss her, when I have to let her go again at the end of this journey.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Goodbye to what I know as me...

So much of what is going on feels out of my control, I'm just doing what I'm told because, well, I don't want to die just yet. Mom and I always had a very open, good relationship. She was my best friend, really, and for a long time, my only friend. There wasn't much we wouldn't share with each other, nothing was off limits. But her cancer, was very private for her. I had to text my brother, because I couldn't remember if she shaved her head either time, and something about not being able to remember that made me feel horrible. I know that she would say how disgusted she was, waking up with literal mouthfuls of hair, and how she looked. But she never said much beyond that, and then one day she just didn't have any hair. My brother told me she shaved it. The first time, I didn't think much of it. She still looked like my mom to me, just bald.  She still had her smile, still had her cackley laugh, she still felt like mom when I hugged her. The second ti...

Purpose within the pain....

I met someone today. In the smallest of moments that we don't even think about, a moment you see as just an inconvenience in our day, so we rush through it without being present in the moment so in the end, we've missed the moment entirely. We're somewhere else, thinking about a meeting, errands, ourselves, some mundane detail of our lives that always feels more important than the person in front of us. It's a blink. A whisper of a moment. It makes your day look like swiss cheese, with all these blank voids of the day that were missed by not being present in it. I'm an introvert, if you take even 60 seconds to read and learn about introverts you'll find 2 major notable points - one, no extrovert will ever be capable of turning an introvert into an extrovert. Stop that, we don't like that. It's rude to treat us as if we're somehow broken because we don't operate like you. And two, we find superficial small talk very draining, mentally, emotionally...

Can you even tell I'm a Christian..

  That's a thought that's been on my mind lately, and even more so as it seems to be popping up in different interactions with people. Or perhaps I'm simply noticing it more because it's been on my mind, on my heart. But either way, there it is, with a heavy thunk as it's dropped itself into the middle of my thoughts and just stays there, perfectly centered in every avenue a thought could take...can you even tell I'm a Christian? Without being a dreaded bible thumper of older ways, without stuffing down beliefs into your throat so fiercely it actually turns you away from Christ...can a person, even tell? Whether it be through conversation, or watching my behaviors, how I treat people, without diving into my deepest thoughts as they are here, could you even tell? The question has overflowed into all areas, spilling into each thing I do, each thing I read, every sentence, would anyone know.... And the question - hurts. Because to answer it, to be fully transparent...