Stories

My mom left this morning.  It was so hard to take her to the airport for so many reasons.  The first one probably was that 4:45 am wake up to get there.  But that wasn't the worst part.  The worst part was that she got on a plane and left!    We had so much fun and she spoiled us all rotten.  She slept with Little Lady the whole week and snuggled and told stories and picked berries and played and played and played with the kids.  My mom is an amazing story teller and she would be famous if she wrote them down.  She did laundry and dishes and laughed and talked with me and helped me make curtains.  And changed all the poopy diapers.  It was like a working vacation for me.  She worked and I vacationed. 

Really, I painted.  I was able to get all of the bedrooms and one bathroom painted.  We are slowly but surely banishing the "candlelight ivory"- or as Hubs calls it, "Cat Pee Yellow" from the house.  I also made linen roller shades for all of the bedrooms and learned how to do some sheet-rocking taping and texturizing of walls.  I also did a little gardening.  But it was really more like trimming bushes back in order to reach the blackberries that looked ripe.

We also spent a good deal of time sharing some our new favorite sites with Grandma.  We hit up the Zoo, spent an afternoon at Mt. Hood, took her to some of our favorite restaurants.  We pulled out all the stops.  And now we're eating zucchini and bread for the rest of the month!  Ha!  (Not really but I think I'd be okay if we were...I love squash!)

But she left this morning.  We were all bummed when we got home from the airport without her.  Little Lady looked around the room saying "Ma?Ma?"  It was so cute and sad.  And Little Man asked me to tell him a story and I am not like my mom and I would never be famous for my story telling.  My stories always end up being really short and having a Legoman go to space or come from space and its always so random and the details are always so sketchy and Little Man usually ends up coaching me with what should happen next and by the time we finally wrap it up well enough to finally be done with it he usually ends up trying to make me feel better by saying something like "Not bad this time, Mom."  He's very sweet like that even when he's lying through his teeth. 

So my inability to tell stories turned into a marathon Narnia reading time.  We read the entire last book of Narnia today.  The Last Battle.  I forgot how much I love Narnia and especially now.  It was my first read through since we lost J.  Maybe even since we've had kids.  And it was wonderful to read it again.  Hopeful.  Exciting.  Special to share with my Little Man.  We started it in August and would go on streaks where we would read for an hour a night for weeks and then put it down for awhile and then pick it back up and remember all of the excitement of it all.  It was a lovely way to spend a year.  Especially the last book. 

The pictures C.S. Lewis paints are so vivid and exciting and so what I long for Heaven to be like.  I found myself bursting with even more excitement for when we all get to go.  But not too much, don't worry...  The pull is so strong!  To think of my Jameson running and never growing weary.  Laughing his sweet laugh and flashing that smile all of the time because he lives JOY.  I have to seek it out and he lives it!  The hope flooded me at just the right time.

It can be so easy to get bogged down in the weariness of the world.  To focus on the struggles and the "to-do" lists and the finances, to lose my temper over the most ridiculous thing and then, after thinking I've learned my lesson to do it all over again.  And again.  And again.  It's human nature, I think.  But it is exhausting and demoralizing and depressing to keep playing that broken record.  And what started out as a bummer of a day -Grandma leaving- turned out to be a day of thinking about the very bright future.  The one that really counts.  The one where we all get to run without growing weary.  And we all get to laugh and dance and live joy.  And that kind of puts everything else into perspective a little bit.