Here it is, your day! I mean, if you are a mother, this is it. A day on the calendar for you. I hope it is delightful!
Today is potentially fairly grim and meaningless, perhaps, if you did not choose motherhood. Just saying; that may unfortunately become much more common. And although women who do choose (even embrace) motherhood may not understand this, for those that do not choose motherhood, the idea of being forced to endure it is not a “small detail”, and no, their feelings on that may never change, even if they find themselves in the position of having to raise a child (or children).
I chose to be childless, and I am grateful to have come of age at a time when I could make that choice.
Anyway – if you did choose motherhood, here’s to you, and my best wishes that your child grows to become someone you can be proud of, and a value to community and society, and that you thrive in your role as Mother. It’s a worthy endeavor to commit to motherhood, for those that choose it. You have my respect.
Oh, damn, it feels so good to be home. 🙂 What a lovely moment, returning home to a welcoming embrace, and a wee flower on the geranium in the pot by the front door. 😀
Sometimes the simplest things matter the most.
It was a lovely homecoming. A quiet genial evening together, spent gently. A good night’s rest – finally, after days of restless slumber in a noisy hotel. (Note to self: avoid the room directly above the automatic garage door in that hotel! Lesson learned.) I woke to the smell of coffee, which is a marvelous way to wake up on a Saturday morning. I greet my Traveling Partner, already awake and getting some work done on one project or another, on his laptop. Feels so good to be home, again.
…Next week, I’ve got a business conference far away…
Looks like I’ll be at home for June. July is messy, with a holiday, followed by a few days of business travel, broken up by a week at home in between. So far I’m okay with it, and I honestly don’t think it’ll last as things go; those travel expenses add up, and at some point, I expect folks will become a lot more cautious about spending that kind of money for that sort of thing. This last week, out of a week actually in the office, I only took two meetings in an actual meeting space, the rest were still video conference calls, and of the two meetings that involved sitting down in an office? Yeah, one of those was one-on-one, and the content would just as easily been managed on a call, and the other? The person hosting the meeting still attended by video conference. lol Fairly pointless, generally, although I met some very cool (and quite expert) colleagues in person that otherwise I’d never be acquainted with; we’re in very different fields, with limited opportunity to interact or collaborate professionally. I met them in elevators, or the break area making coffee in the morning, or they just happened to grab a desk near the desk I happened to grab, myself. lol I don’t think this return to office foolishness is as “important” as it is being made out to be, frankly. I do get that businesses pay a lot for their brick and mortar spaces and would like to see those used in some way. Area small businesses used to serving the needs of busy people working in office spaces are no doubt hit hard by the prolonged lack of demand for their presence, due to empty offices, too. Those are clearly not adequate reason to return to the office, for most working people with a choice. Can’t say I blame them. Gas is costly, but it’s not about that element of commuting, really; people value having those precious hours of lifetime back for their own use. That’s just real.
Enough about why I wasn’t at home, and what purpose that serves (or doesn’t). I’m home now. 😀 Feels sooo good.
I woke once during the night. I think it was the quiet and comfortable stillness that woke me. I smiled to myself in the darkness, turned over, and returned to sleep. I woke gently, feeling calm and merry. I’m eager to get into the garden, but quickly discovered the morning is quite a chilly one, so… coffee and writing? Yes, please! 😀 Good to be home.
Dinner last night was kind of “more of the same” – fast food. It’s been days of it, but I was completely wiped out from the long trip back, so “easy” won the internal discussion over “what’s for dinner?” Looking over the pantry and contents of the fridge this morning, I definitely see myself going to the store today… no vegetables. Almost out of coffee beans. My Traveling Partner makes great iced tea, and there’s plenty, but no lemonade to mix into it, and I definitely enjoy iced tea with lemonade. I smile to myself, thinking “happy at home” thoughts.
It’s time to begin again. 😀 There’s an entire day ahead of me, and a lifetime of love.
I woke in a sweat, uncomfortable and shaking, tearing my consciousness from a nightmare that I had gotten pregnant – at 60, post-menopause – and unable to terminate my terribly risky and thoroughly unwanted pregnancy because the law had changed, and my bodily autonomy as a human being was utterly lost. My heart was pounding. I paced restlessly for a moment or two, feeling vaguely unsettled and with a persistent “uncomfortable” feeling in my guts.
I laid back down, fighting sensations very much at odds with each other; the sweats and discomfort, the fatigue and sleepiness. I felt peculiarly averse to going back to sleep. I wasn’t exactly nauseous… but I felt suspiciously as if I might feel better if I got sick and got past it.
Predictably enough, I was quite sick moments later. Something I ate apparently did not agree with me. The stressful nightmare was likely a byproduct of the combination of physical and emotional discomfort – one from whatever I ate that did not agree with me, the other from the recently leaked not-quite-official-yet Supreme Court document regarding the likely end of Roe v Wade. My physical discomfort was greatly eased by vomiting. My emotional discomfort… well, it’s no surprise that it persists.
…Tell me again why someone besides me, myself, has anything to say about whether or not I carry a pregnancy to term? I’ve chosen to be childless. Period. Seriously. I did not want to be a mother. Why would my choice be out of my hands? When I hear people spouting bullshit talking points about the sacredness of life from the moment of conception, I reliably find myself wondering how they are so easily able to overlook the sacredness of the life of the pregnant person, herself? How do they justify what is fundamentally a position that states women should be coercively required – forced – to bear a child? Forced to bring a pregnancy to term that they do not want. Forced to endure a potentially life-threatening pregnancy for months. Forced, potentially, to go through all that and the trauma of giving up a child for adoption in order to avoid motherhood? How is that acceptable?
I hear a lot of religious arguments against abortion. My thoughts on that are basically… by all means, if your faith restricts you from terminating a pregnancy, definitely do not do that, then. I get it. Your religious freedoms absolutely permit that choice for you. My religious beliefs do not in any way restrict me from choosing to end a pregnancy. My religious freedoms should ensure that I continue to have access to a full measure of reproductive medical services – including abortion. I know, it probably sounds like I am taking this damned personally for a woman on the other side of menopause… doesn’t even affect me, directly, right? I am taking this personally. Having abortion available to me ensured I was able to choose to be childless by intent. My choice. I was able to graduate high school. I was able to join the Army once I did. Both of those would have been beyond my reach, without having been able to terminate a pregnancy while I was in high school. I had birth control measures available. I used them. My birth control failed – which is not uncommon. I was fortunate to live at a time when abortion was available to me, when I needed it.
I needed to get that off my mind. Thank you. If I’ve upset you, I regret the distress I’ve caused you. Not enough to change (or withhold) my thoughts on this topic, but it isn’t my intention to cause you suffering if we disagree.
…But… can anyone tell me why it seems acceptable to tell someone that they must be forced to bear a child against their will, or potentially under life-threatening circumstances? Why is the not-yet-viable-outside-the-womb fetus “life” worthy of respect and value – but the living breathing human person with that fetus in their body is less so? I don’t get it. Like it or not, that’s really what is being proposed; forcing people who do not want to bear a child to go through that process because someone else is not okay with an abortion that they have nothing to do with at all. Yes, I’m unreasonably angry about this, and taking it personally. It feels personal.
It’s late. My guts are no longer churned up. I’m no longer sweating. My breathing is relaxed and even. It’s quiet in these wee hours, and I am alone with my thoughts in the night. I’m okay, though. No despair. Just quiet. There’s no stress to these sleepless hours; tomorrow I return home to the welcoming embrace of my Traveling Partner. I’m definitely homesick. I’m eager to be at home all through the month of June.
A yawn unexpectedly splits my face. I’m tired and sleepy. Time to try that sleep thing, again. Tomorrow is a new day, and plenty soon enough for new beginnings. 🙂
I’m relaxing with a cold glass of iced tea, as though a chilly rain had not started to fall. lol My Traveling Partner and I finished building the new raised garden bed in the front yard together this morning. I filled it with suitable growing medium from the nearby nursery. Hell, I even planted several rows of future veggies! I’m as excited as I ever have been about a new garden space. More, maybe. In fact, I got so excited and so motivated to work in the garden, that I wore myself out a bit, and now – in spite of this rather strong iced tea – I’m overtaken by yawning, and feel like having a nap. LOL I could, of course, it’s my choice. I’m choosing, at least for now, to simply enjoying this feeling…
… “Happiness”. What gets you there may be something different than what gets me there, but I’m for sure “there” right now, and it’s worth skipping a nap to just soak it in.
Happy.
Wow. Feels good.
I love having a garden beyond the flower beds. I enjoy that there is so much variety; peas, onions, and salad greens round the back, down below the edge of the deck, along the gravel walk, planted in grow bags. In the new raised bed? Well, so far some “easy win” crops: radish, daikon, carrots, parsnips, and bush beans, with plans for maybe a couple of short growing season melons, and the eggplant seedlings that are maturing on my windowsill. 😀 Yummy stir fries are going to get even yummier. Summer salads look like they’ll be fresher and more flavorful. Add to that the exercise I get being out in the garden each day doing some little task or another – it’s all “win”. So, yeah. Happy describes this feeling pretty nicely.
The thing is, “happy” is every bit as intense as my sorrows can be, but if I don’t slow down and take notice of the moment, and really savor it, drink it in, luxuriate in it, however briefly, it doesn’t “stick”. It’s as true as ever, “this too shall pass”. Our happiest moments are worth taking time for. Real time. To just enjoy the delights of life, love, and gardening. Or, um, whatever your “thing” is, I guess. Might not be gardening. 🙂 Do you.
I’m sipping an iced tea. I took part of the day off due to lack of sleep and waking up on the edge of a migraine, and struggling with pain somewhere around my sciatic nerve, between my spine and my hip. Uncomfortable. Tired. I was not up for a day of heavy cognitive workload, and would have been irritable and error-prone. No one needs that shit. Not me. Not my colleagues. Not my Traveling Partner. Light duty – just the essentials – and an early out made so much more sense.
The day is an odd one. Not “sunny” or “rainy” in any definite way – certainly a considerable portion of both, without a theme or pattern to grab hold of. Spring in the Pacific Northwest.
…Damn, my Traveling Partner makes a wicked good iced tea, I must say… 😀
I’m very fortunate. Not just for the iced tea, but for this life, this job, and this house in the suburban countryside on the edge of a large-ish small town. I sip my tea and think grateful appreciative thoughts, reflecting on the distance traveled in this one lifetime. I’ve certainly had it worse at other times in my life.
I think about “home” – and how very much at home I feel here in this place, secure and safe and wrapped in love; it’s not just a building. It’s not just a place I reside. It is “home”. It’s not perfect. It’s not spectacularly large or unusually luxurious (beyond those luxuries my skilled Traveling Partner has added to enhance our comfort, ease, and quality of life)… just a modest little house in a commonplace suburban neighborhood. Still home. Our home. My home. It’s comforting to feel so settled and secure, here. I yearned for this for so long… I’m grateful that it has more than met my (probably ludicrous) expectations of what “home” could be.
So here I am. Settled and at home, on a rainy-sunny day, sipping iced tea… smiling about a geranium in a pot by the front door. 🙂 These are the sorts of things that make “home” more than an address. I mean… sure, I could have had a geranium in a pot on my patio at some other place/time… It’s not even about the geranium, itself. For sure it’s not about the pot. I’ve had plants in containers for a long while. It’s the choice. It’s the ability to plant into my garden, just anywhere I’d like, and know that it is mine, and will be mine tomorrow, and the day after that, and next year, and on into an unpredictable future. At least for some unmeasured while. That’s enough.
Evening Light 