Have You Seen My Rose-Colored Glasses?

The radio in the kitchen is playing its familiar morning radio show, the smell of coffee is wafting through the house and all the bags from our trip are unpacked. I stand completely amazed that we made it up to CT and back without much of a blip. Nothing blogworthy to write about in two whole eight hour drives. I just might have a place in parental history.

I want to say a big thank you to our fellow travelers at the Delaware rest stop who stopped by our lunch table to remark on what beautiful children I have. It brightened my day and gave me a bit more energy to get back into the car with my two “angels”. It would have been even better if one of those fellow travelers had read my mind and gotten me a steaming hot latte from the nearby SBUX, but no worries.

This trip gets mixed reviews though for a few reasons. I wanted to head up to New England and relax and play with my kids on the beach but the weather was too cold and wet almost the entire trip. The girls had a rough time settling in the first few days and everyone either had a cold or was on the verge of one. We kept busy despite the rainy weather, traveling to different parts of CT and RI and visiting family. It proved to be all a bit more tiring than I imagined and I think the dreary weather did me in a tad, combined with the fact that while I’m excited for my parents to move closer (Read: ECSTATIC!) I will miss having them in a house that I have now begun to think of as a second home and one that gives me my New England fix on a regular basis. The declining health of my grandmother just about did me in all together though.

It is hard to see someone you love and who helped raise you no longer know who you are. I tried to have that whole “that’s the circle of life” attitude but that didn’t exactly pan out. It weighed on my mind quite a bit and a touch of sadness hung about me for most of the trip. I’m not the type of person who can sprinkle fairy dust on a situation and I tend to feel things a bit more than others sometimes. This is a woman I always wanted to be like and to see that very essence of her just disappear saddened me more than I could even anticipate and perhaps realized at the time. I feel as if I have walked into a room in my home and all the furniture has been removed, the pictures have been taken off the walls and everything is just devoid of emotion and memories and no one can give me an explanation as to why this has happened.

It made for a very disconnected feeling on my part and a deep yearning for the sun and hugs from H. Neither of which were attainable at the time. I couldn’t wait to return home and find both. When we did come home it was as if the darkness just clung to me. My lack of ability to coat the world with the aforementioned fairy dust has made me unlikable it seems. There is a disconnect in my house because of this and it makes me angry. I’m not one to sweep emotions under a rug or save them for later. I never have been and I can’t apologize for that and I don’t see it as a character flaw.

I can make lemonade from lemons with the hardiest of them but I can’t pretend very well and walk around wearing rose-colored glasses especially when the moment doesn’t call for it. I’ll be fine in a few days I’m sure. Every day life is already grabbing a hold of me and not allowing me stay in this for very long. However, I should be allowed to feel what I’m feeling and not have to make apologies or play Tinkerbell for someone else just to make it better for them.