Saturday, August 7, 2010

too early for this

Woke up this morning earlier than I wanted to.

I have this grand long-standing love affair with Saturdays because it's the only day of the week that I feel is totally mine. I don't like to share it, don't like to compromise with anyone for it, I just want to be left alone on this one day of the week.
It's the one day that I can be anonymous.

However.....
My husband was getting ready to leave for work (I don't think the sun was up yet) and making a lot of racket. I think it was for my benefit. I think he wanted to tell me something.
I stumbled into the kitchen/living room where he was clumping around and he turned and said," Oh, hi, you awake?"
I floated/sleep-walked toward the coffee pot and waited to hear what he wanted me to know.

"I don't want to go to work today", he said, " I just want to be here with you, drinking this pot of coffee, watching the birds fight over the seed I just threw out, and listen to your fingers tapping on the computer."
(I always have a Saturday session on my computer while he watches the weather channel.)
This statement made me a bit sad, mostly for him, and stirred me to explain about us and how our lives have changed so drastically in the last two years.
He turned then and walked out to go to work. He went because that is the responsible thing to do and because we have to pay for the NEW HOUSE. (I have come to hate those two words.) We both have to pay for it. We work all the time now, him twelve to fourteen hours, me at least ten to eleven hours.

When we had our farm, we often had matching schedules. Saturdays usually found us up very early because we didn't want to miss one hour of our free day together.
Getting up first, he would make coffee, then I would saunter out and pour us a couple of cups. We would get semi-dressed and stroll out to our garden.
We spent hours in there, watching the sun rise, listening to our birds fight over sunflower seeds, watching the wild rabbits sneak over to share the bird's breakfast. We would just enjoy each others company without having to say a word.
The big live oak tree we used to sit under was perfect, very old, large grey branches hanging to the ground, a perfect place to be alone with the wildlife around us.
After a few hours I would walk along the rows of our garden, pulling weeds, picking produce, shaking out seeds for next years planting. My husband would make another pot of coffee, and the morning would continue slowly and beautifically.

We had great conversations about our future.

But..life never follows your grand plans.

We had to sell the farmhouse and leave.
It broke my heart. I mourned the loss of our life and felt it would never be peaceful again.

We thought we would have a new house in 6 months.
Wow, were we wrong.

Everything that had the potential to go wrong, did. It all went wrong in a huge way.
We moved into this little upstairs apartment (it's 600 square feet) and we have been here for 2 years. It has been miserable. We don't know when the sun comes up and when the moon comes out. One little patch of grass between sidewalks. We have concrete everywhere and... we have..... NEIGHBORS. On both sides. Loud, noisy neighbors.

This is whining in the worst way, I know that. I also know that some people have no jobs, no homes and are sick and dying. I have no reason to whine. I wish I wouldn't. Sometimes whining is the only way I can get my anger out.

All of my dishes, cookbooks,and familiar things are in storage. I miss them. All my pretty teapots, rose printed tablecloths ,linen napkins and vintage cookbooks are being held hostage along with my red kitchen aid mixer. My life can be summed up in about 200 boxes, in 2 storage units that I visit periodically. (My husband visits his riding lawn mower and his hay wagon.)

Hopefully, we will begin building in 6 weeks. The bank that is thinking about financing our house is still busy raping our private life. (raping is the only word I can think of, it feels like such a violation.) We are a good risk, but they have to turn over every minute of our past. It doesn't feel good.

I just want them all to leave me alone. Why does it have to be such a violation of your private life to build a house? I feel like a pregnant women with an alien loan officer inside of me.

I believe that soon I will be estatically happy and picking out flooring and colors for the walls. I believe this will happen.

The pond is dug and filled with water, the road is cloaked with a financially obscene amount of rocks and the blueprints have been paid for.

I'm dreaming about the trees I want to plant, where I want to have coffee on Saturday mornings with my husband, and where my new herb farm will be planted. It feels right, I am happy that things are happening in the direction we want, but the sad statement by my husband this morning made me long for the old life we had.

I hope that he and I will be in our garden again soon. I hope to make new bunny friends and plant more herbs than we ever had before.

I really just want to stop walking up these twelve concrete steps everyday!
My knees are killing me.

2 comments:

Linda said...

It is hard to not want to be where we are in our lives sometimes. But you aren't whining-you are aspiring to better things. But what I took out of your post more than anything is that you and your husband are together on the whole journey. That is really such a wonderful thing. Good luck. You will get there.

Anonymous said...

Spoken like a true social worker. I thank you for that, I am lucky to have such a great husband. I hope to leave my social service position someday in the future also, not because I don't love helping our patients, but because I think I must've been a farmer in another life, lol. (okay, thats a stretch of the truth) Some of us are just born to roll around in the mulch and garden rows. I think I am one of those. Sounds like you are too!