Close on the heels of my last post, I decided to spend the next couple of days training a microscope on our daily lives and how it is impacted by me staying home. If I dismissed what I did earlier as routine, I now accounted for each moment since I woke. In between the waking, cooking, cleaning, nurturing, healing and disciplining, I noticed the one thing that was constant. A new found appreciation for all that I did. So long as I was aware of what I was doing, I found it in me to appreciate the immensity of it all. Where I was dismissive before, I found a strange kind of awe.
Taking a step back and being observant taught me that there is more to this stay at home parent thing than I was taking credit for. I tried imagining doing everything I was doing and adding to it the pressures of handling a job and being good at it and I winced mentally. It reminded me of how just a couple of years ago, I walked around with a constant tight band behind my ears, a stiffness in my neck no spray could cure and an overwhelming exhaustion that had little to do with my physical state.
I figure I need to just be. To lay fallow before the next crop cycle (as a fellow blogger said). I need to see this phase through and know that I am ready for whatever else the restlessness in me is propelling to. In the time it takes me to get there, I shall take recourse to words. I will create visible memory markers for when my brain will fail me. I will trap my children’s lives in virtual amber. I will leave a trail for me to head back should I feel lost. I will write like my life depends on it. And perhaps it will.
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