After a torturous ten hour drive home in which I almost lost it four separate times and had a random man at a gas station in Blackwell offer to buy me a beer, the girls and I are home. After taking two very reluctant girls to school this morning, I came home and just sat on the couch for twenty minutes or so. For the first time in a week, I felt myself really relax.
This was a hard visit to my parents, a good one but hard. Relationships with my family and friends are changing, maybe growing and maturing but at the same time retreating. Their is a separateness there that is not uncomfortable but unexpected.
Of course I still love and adore my parents and my sister but their lives are especially intertwined now that my sister has had a baby and I felt slightly out of place, not quite a guest but not quite not one either. Having left home so early I haven't been there to see my parents lives change. And we are at that weird place where our relationships are beginning to shift to me being the responsible one. It leads to a tension charges atmosphere.
Friendships have changed too. Though I haven't lived in Dallas since I left home at eighteen, a few of my close friends have either returned or never left. But their lives are so far from mine, in so many different ways. We rarely want to do the same things and I feel slightly at a loss as to what to say at times. Where do I fit into their lives now that I am just a "mom" and no longer the girl they knew?
The whole week brought into focus something I knew but hadn't really fully accepted yet: my parents' house isn't my home and my family is my husband and the girls. And it feels just right.
I can relate to this. I left Minnesota at 18 and din't return until 8 years later. I didn't keep up with any of my high school friendships past first semester freshman year. It's weird to see people I knew so well now and think they might not recognize me. Growing up is really strange some days but I wouldn't trade my little life for anything.
ReplyDeleteI can relate too. My sister recently lived with my parents while she was pregnant and a new mama. Oh, how dynamics change when grandma has the grandbaby in the house.
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