Friday, September 05, 2014

blogging jumpstart: how I spent my summer vacation


I wake late to a quiet house—late, at 7:40 a.m., in a panic that maybe everyone has slept through their alarm clocks and maybe I will need to marshal kids to school, to drive in my bathrobe before I’ve even had coffee… and within moments, I push aside the sheets to find I’ve been spinning my worst-case scenario, like the good midwesterner I am. I’ve simply slept hard, harder than I’ve slept in days, after the SAT-prep center opened to some small measure of success, after the first week of the college courses I’m teaching. None of my workplaces seem shiny or perfect—I feel a little bit behind on copies, files, names, record-keeping on all of my classes, and I forgot a meeting with my teaching assistant last week. I can’t say how many days I’ve forgotten to eat breakfast, forgotten to eat lunch, forgotten to plan a dinner to fit in the 90-degree afternoons, between school pick-up and soccer drop-off.

I wake late, to a quiet house, because everyone in my family is all right, is exactly where each person needs to be. And I am here, with the cool edges of morning still lingering on the shady side of the house. Here. Thank God, thank God. While the sun will swelter today, we’ve begun the autumn schedule so well that I slept through the morning rush in the downstairs hallway. September, perhaps the most beautiful of all the months of the year, at last; like a finish line, we’ve reached September.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation, I type, the stupid irony of the non-vacation. How I Spent My Children’s Summer Vacation, in which I did not vacate. In which I apparently did not breathe, in retrospect. I would say I'm breathing now, but I'm just getting started.

I spent my summer, gave my summer, invested my summer…

More tomorrow. I haven’t blogged for years, but I’ve been thinking about blogging all summer. I need to remember not to say everything all at once, dear ones. Remember, I used to write letters, and I need to return to that kind of beautiful discipline again. Let me tell you a story, but maybe not all at once today.

For today, I am still finding my footing, foggy-headed, adjusting. Time for coffee. See you tomorrow.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Welcome back! I've missed reading you!
Holly Dillaway

Unknown said...

Beautiful writing, Denise. I've thought about doing a blog as I move along in life, starting out again on my own after ending a 21 year marriage and parenting my children towards independence, but always wrestling with when to let go and when to step in. I am not an eloquent writer and might be intimidated by others reading my basic wording. Reading your blogging has allowed me the first step towards actually doing it.

Denise said...

Ellen, I would be your reader, anytime you want to write. It's just life, right? Write a letter.