I’ve spent a lot of time living in the past. Not living in the past as much as pining for the past. Pining for a past which didn’t exist. And it still doesn’t exist. It was never meant to exist. Gathering the things around me which connect me to a host of broken and un-lived dreams. There were things at the time which I wanted to do, to be, to have. Instead I was wrapping my heart and my arms around four broken-hearted little children. I was holding them tightly as I faced a world I knew very little about. I had been to some amazing places and had some fantastical experiences. But now I sat there all that forgotten and wondered how I will feed them, clothe them, educate them. All my dreams crushed by another human being. All their securities wiped out. I looked into their eyes and felt weak and small. But the protective parent in me stood up strong and bold. Oh being married to a manic man had it’s perks for sure. But when he’d seen enough of the world and experienced enough of family life, we were on our own. That was the beginning of disappointments. Living with a manic man, we were never really settled. I would no sooner put the pictures up on the walls and it would be time to move again. Not for armed services, not for ministry or business, but for experience. I held a British passport, that meant that we could access another country and live and work if we so chose. For the children’s father this meant adventure. Not planned but spur of the moment I really want to do this kind of adventure. “Let’s take the kids for a drive”, hence the beautiful weekend trip to North Scotland and the dear little Bed and Breakfast. A failed business meant a move back to the states and another failed attempt at business meant another move back to dear old England. When he walked out my first big question was: “Where are we going to live?” So that wasn’t the end that was the beginning. We ended up in a little blue house on a short street in a quaint town West of Columbus, Ohio. I didn’t have much experience with welfare services and the whole thing frightened me to death. I did have some experience with home making and I wanted to carry on with home-school but it became increasingly impractical. I wasn’t very good at getting my children to school on time and making sure everyone had something to wear and that it was clean. Then there were all the things which make up the life of someone who has kids in school. I couldn’t believe how much it cost to send kids to public school. Neither could I believe the teachers who would humiliate a child in front of the class because the mother hadn’t paid the fees. I don’t remember their being any fees or list of supplies when I went to school, but then I didn’t go to school in this country. I didn’t know you had to provide tissues to the school either. That was the dumbest thing I came across. It was straight on the supply list. I’m not exactly sure yet what the taxes and stuff get spent on. What’s next will be toilet paper on the list. Well a parent in my position with four school age children couldn’t afford to buy tissues for ourselves let alone for the school. It wasn’t one box of tissues per child it was four and they had to be a certain kind. The schools were spread out all over the town. Each child went to a different school because they had one school for the K-1 grades, another for 1-2 grades, another for 3-4 grades, one school way out in the country for grades 5 and 6. Then there were the Junior and High Schools. Each school expected you to pick your child up at 3:10 promptly. Each school acted like you had only one child. Getting the children enrolled into school each year was such an ordeal that I was completely exhausted for the whole month of September. What I really wanted to do was have a home where the children could do their schoolwork, I could bake and cook and clean to my hearts content, we could have field trips and shopping trips and look fabulous and I could spend my down time drawing pictures and writing books. The children would be safe on a few acres away from any town and any tissues we chose to buy would be ours and stay in our home. Yesterday, I was thinking about all the clutter around my house and the effort it has taken to get myself going again. How I have felt that I don’t really belong here and that my home isn’t really my home and how I have only begun to put the pictures up on the walls and that I was subconsciously wanting something, somewhere, that doesn’t really exist. I was thinking that this home I’m living in is actually everything I’ve ever wanted and that I really need to claim it. That the man I am now married to, who doesn’t want any more than what we have, who doesn’t want to see any other worlds, who is content to come home every single day. That this man deserves to come home to a house that is cared for and loved by me. One that is decked with pictures and draped in curtains and specked with cozy details. This man who stood beside me as we laid one of the children to rest, this man who held my hands and wept with me after we learned about her cancer. Who tills my garden year after year and wants me to stay home and be content with little and home-school our youngest. Who builds for me whatever my heart desires. Who eats every experiment of homemade foods I cook up. Who slaughters our year supply of fowl and tends daily to locking them safely up at night while they grow. Who has welcomed the older children into his life and home and cared for and supported them in their growing up and in their wild dreams. Then I realize that I have spent enough time in the past. The time for me now is the present. The time for me is now.
Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise, 1,093 words.
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