Twas the night before the Last Day Of School and all through the house not a creature was stirring, except for maybe mommy, all tight shoulders and frown lines, deciding what to do.
No, no. Not with the summertime hours, boredom, long stretched out days…
No rather, mommy was trying to find a way to deal with the new discovery of mold in the home.
Why yes, “mommy” is me…but you knew that.
I’ve been moving furniture from the basement to the upstairs on the other side of the house, with help, to try to bring the kiddos up out of the mold. That is the first thing to do when you discover mold. Because you can’t just run out the door screaming with all of your belongings behind you, on a string, while carrying the kids on your tight shoulders, even if you want to.
So today the rooms are part-moved, because it all had to wait until after work so it could not be finished. And I had talked to one of my fellow sober people and she reminded me not to pretend I can do it all in one day and hurt myself and make myself worse. I had to listen, because most sober people know wise things and live by them and I try to copy them.
So now it is time for early morning light, and I’m sitting here with you, the windows are open (it is a beautiful day but I’m pretty sure I would have the windows open no matter what because MOLD).
Normally I close the window in the bedroom at night because even if I love birds, they are so mouthy in the morning. Or beak-y. They start at 4:30 or so and they just don’t stop singing and singing to each other. There must be so much planning to do, or something. Today it didn’t bother me, and I let the birds keep me company as I dozed in and out, felt the soft breeze through the window.
I thought about how many times I (and then we) have moved in my adulthood. In my twenties, I moved once a year, the entire decade. My parents loved helping all those times. There was always something. I was a caregiver at these quaint little brick apartments in the Grand Ave are of St Paul for a while, and when my landlord would say, Can you move to a different building, that one needs a caretaker now? I would say yes. There were less things then, of course. But I think I also liked change, almost too much. I was always fighting the creeping boredom, routine, ordinary. And I still want a full life of adventure in the sense of waking up in the morning and watching what the day will bring, who will I meet at just the right time, who can I serve? That sort of thing.
Really, if you’re paying attention, every single day is quite a ride, mold or no mold.
I just don’t want to force Big Changes anymore, just to feel something.
My body, mind, and heart need a place to land and stay. A mold-free place with no more space than what we need. What we need is not much.
Just each other, of course, and the willingness to hear the birds sing, no matter how early it is.
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