End to the holiday
Our granddaughters have left for home and what a lovely weekend we all shared! Many blackberries were enjoyed fresh off vines, the frog above hopping onto a large stalk, deserving a photo. I took lots of pictures over the last few days, read heaps of books, built hordes of Lego creations, watched a little Bluey, and patched a pair of pants, lol. The girls departed with new hexie shirts from hexie flowers they helped sew while we were together during the July Midwestern vacation, about all the stitching I managed after they went to bed. The house is SO QUIET now, such a different flavor with guests, especially kids. Toys and books are drawn from the large collection in the living room, and three stuffies remain on guard along a sill, my youngest granddaughter placing them there to watch for deer, which did not make an appearance much to the girls' chagrins.
We had glorious weather, which of course demanded a trip to the beach, albeit it at high tide, but sand castles were fashioned clear of the ocean's reach. We sat in camp chairs as youngsters sought after shells, made sand angels, and formed moats. Recent rains have cleared the air from northern fires, but the marine layer stayed away, proffering beautiful late summer sunshine that we joked the girls brought with them.
When my oldest grandkids were tiny, I assumed I would be an integral part of their lives. I wanted to be that kind of grandmother, even to my youngest daughter's family who didn't leave nearby. All four grands were born before COVID hit, but the pandemic altered everyone's life in varying degrees, and we ended up living far away from all our kids. I love living in Humboldt County, I'm so grateful my husband could retire, but I do miss being a part of my family's lives beyond holiday weekends or summer breaks, etc, etc, etc.
There is much about my life I can control; fabric choices, quilt patterns, even pesky characters feeling full of themselves within a novel. But I have struggled with how this change of location works with staying relevant beyond phones and letters. Yes we raised our kids in England and for eleven years we were FAR AWAY from family, other than our trips back home every couple of years. Once my daughters had their kids, I couldn't imagine separating myself from those clans, and yet we did. We moved to a remote area along the North Coast several hours away from all of them. Would we have done that if not for the pandemic, I can't truly say. But even living in the same town as our eldest, for nearly two years we didn't hang out with them as before. That precipitated moving away, and obviously I'm still not sure what I think about it, in that here I am blathering on about what was, what is, and what might have been.
I assuage my uncertainty by telling myself this is where I am supposed to be. And I do believe that, yet.... Now they are gone and the house is quiet and I have time to write this post and use the loo without having to notify a granddaughter that I'll be right back after I use the bathroom. But who am I to them, just this person they see every once in a while? I wanted to be a bastion of familiarity, I wanted to be....
Just now, in crafting this post, I pondered the notion that as I like to say my life isn't about me, well who I am as a grandmother, and a mum, isn't about me either. In that overthinking it and fretting about it is just making it about myself, which seems pretty self-absorbed. My kids and their kids know we love them, even from far away. Maybe we're not in their proverbial backyards, but perhaps that's some idyllic dream from days long past. Whatever it is, me whinging about it two years after having moved away does no one any benefit. Yes I miss them, but whatever this chapter of my life is to be cannot be fully expressed if I'm mopey.
And that is how I am right now, in the quiet. Yet life is about living for others. Which is hard to do when navel-gazing. Go check the laundry Present Me, and don't lament the past nor grouse about the future. And have a little piece of chocolate along the way.
