Packing, unpacking

Hello, long lost blog. I haven’t really missed you. Obviously. But I HAVE missed my readers. It's so nice to get notifications of comments, like little love-notes, little butterflies dropping into my hair (excuse me while I wax poetic; cue the flute). Anyway, if anyone is still out there, thanks for checking up on me. I’m still alive and actually doing quite well.

When I got married, the amount of writing I did in my personal journal went way down. It was because I had someone else to tell all those things to. (Poor guy.) My erratic blogging is similar—-you can tell when my postings go down that things are going quite well. (Or quite badly, I suppose. Only this time it’s good.) My excuse: I’ve just been concentrating on being present in my life. Which means a decrease in the amount of mental narration I’ve been doing. A good thing, this decrease. It’s been healthy.

But I like you, little blog, so don’t despair. Here I am for a visit.

I’ve been having dreams about packing. Two of them in a row, one morning. I’m carrying baggage around, and somehow I get tripped up and things spill out, and there is an urgent need to get things cleaned up, repacked, and move along.

What could it mean? Is it symbolic of the sort of sad nostalgia I’ve been feeling the last few weeks at the realization that, truly, my children are no longer small? I have been catching sight of babies, toddlers, pre-schoolers in commercials on TV, at the grocery store, etc. Each time I stop and force myself to analyze why I’m noticing children. I send a sinker down into my soul to sound the depths: “Am I baby hungry?” The answer always comes back, “No. I am completely done with that.”

Then what?

I think it’s that I am just remembering those days fondly. That’s all.

There’s also the fact that a Huge Birthday is coming up. And I’m feeling it. Physically, emotionally. I'm beginning, finally, to feel like a grown-up.

There is also the strange phase of life I am in with my work—done with my novel, waiting to start school in the fall. I am putting off starting any other big writing projects, and instead spending my time tying up loose ends, trying to finish off projects that I’ve been putting off. Organizing the genealogy, for example, which has been surprisingly enjoyable. Getting the photos into albums. (We don’t say the s___pbook word around here.) I guess this business is a sort of packing up of things.

Whatever it is, I’m OK with it. I like where I am, like my life. Physically, I’m still a little under but nothing I can’t deal with. I’m having a life. So picture me here, packing and unpacking but not anxious to be moving anywhere. I’m here, and it’s good.