Sometimes strange.
Sometimes not what I would choose, but if it were left to me to script my life it would be so comfortable I would never grow.
Overall, it’s been good. That is why I haven’t posted much of late. When things are good there isn’t such a need to vomit up the toxins.
So, I’ll just post a little catch up stuff.
Jeremiah is going to move again. The State of Oregon reassessed his needs and determined that he does not need the level of support he has been getting, so they reduced the funding for him and that forces him to move to a home with less support staff.
I think this will be good because the other residents where he live have such great handicaps that he never connected with them. Never made friends with them. He made friends with the staff.
They will be letting me know about some other places Brenda and I can visit to choose his next home.
I spent six hours with Brenda on Tuesday.
Kid stuff again.
Isaac was accepted about two years ago for the Job Corps and finally moved in to Tongue Point Job Corps at Astoria, Oregon.
Brenda was going to drive, but I quietly insisted. “I’ll just pick you up on the way,” I texted.
It’s two and a half hours there and I dreaded the trip back alone with her.
Simple solution: invite Jeremiah along.
The place is a lot like a military base.
Check in at the gate. We were escorted to the dorm, followed a military style truck... They seemed a little surprised at how Jeremiah, Brenda, and I came in with him for check in. They went through Isaac’s bags. The only thing not permitted was the mouthwash (contains alcohol).
On the way back Jeremiah fell asleep in the seat beside me. Brenda, in the cramped back seat of the Mustang, started apologizing again. She said she had made a huge mistake, that she was sorry for all the hurt she caused me. She cried.
There was an awkward silence.
I didn’t want to open any doors, not even a crack.
“Thank you for saying that,” I finally said.
I always want to comfort those who hurt. This time though... this time if I showed any movement toward her or her feelings, well, she would take it the wrong way.
We stopped and ate.
The house is too quiet.
I’ve heard about empty nesters going through adjustments.
Part of me resents that this time in my life, the time I had fantasized about, when the kids are gone and it is just me and my spouse, has been thrown away by someone I trusted.
I’ve been in a bit of a funk all week. The house is too empty.
Last night I was texting a friend who asked how I was doing.
“I miss Isaac.”
Those simple words made me choke up. Before that moment I had made comments about how strange it was to have the house so quiet. I said things about the absence of helping someone with meals, or sharing the bathroom. But those simple words, “I miss Isaac” seemed to so clearly say what was really at the heart of my funk, I choked up a little.
I remembered the key moments in raising him. The clear spirit-led guidance that brought us together. And moments of his life with me. His first joke. Teaching him to ride a bike.
The moment I first saw him... I was standing in the living room of the orphanage. Looking out the sliding glass door, across the patio to the bedroom filled with cribs... and there he was, jumping up and down... “Daddy, daddy, daddy!!!” he was shouting.
This is a challenging time of the school year. The tasks, the lessons, the projects coming due, are all made more difficult by the many culminating fields trips of various courses and programs, and by the behavior of the adolescents wound up by the nearing Summer Break, the good weather, and the chemical imbalances nature sometimes inflicts on the brains of carbon-based life forms during Spring.
School ends in a little over a week.
I’m adjusting to an empty house and the changing schedule.
It’s all good.
