Rainy Days
I like rainy days. I like to look out at the view. My view. The creek before me. The woods to my right. The open valley to my left. It is a beautiful place to live and I don’t take for granted for even one second how lucky I am to call this place home.
Stan is working a 12-hour shift today so I am home alone. Again. He often works long hours and long stretches in a row without a day off. When the boys were young, and still home, I was always running them around and going from one sporting event to another.
I was always busy, seldom alone, never lonely.
When they graduated high school and moved into their adult lives, I had a hard time adjusting. It wasn’t Stan’s fault. His job was and still is demanding. It expects and takes more of him than it has the right to. It wasn’t the boy’s fault either that I was suddenly all alone in a house that was too big and too full of memories of days that were never to be again. I had to let go. They had launched as we had raised them one day to do. We were proud they had grown into strong, independent young men who were off forging their new futures. But that doesn’t mean it hurt any less.
Suddenly I was never busy. I was always alone. I was always lonely.
They had moved out and I felt like I had lost my identity. I had lost my reason for being. Stan was at work; the boys were gone and I was alone.
Funny, looking back, how time has a way of healing us, sometimes without us even knowing the transformation is taking place. Like a healing from within, not visible until it breaks through and renews the surface. It’s like I woke up one day, and yes, I was still alone, but I was no longer lonely. I had learned to fill my mind and my time with new things that kept me busy and made me happy. I felt like I had value and purpose again. I felt renewed.
It has been eighteen years since our youngest son graduated high school. That just doesn’t seem possible. But in those eighteen years I have been so truly blessed at how my life has changed and evolved into what it is today. I’m blessed that two years ago we made the decision to sell the house we had called home for twenty-nine years and make the move to this sweet cabin by the creek.
I’m blessed to have the love of a man I have shared my life with since I was seventeen years old. He was my guy then and he still is. I have two wonderful sons who know how to be kind, how to be humble in their success, and know not only how to be loved but also how to love in return.
Through the years there has been the addition of an amazing daughter in law, a sweet grand daughter and a rambunctious grandson to our family.
And there is Freddy, the little black and white shiz-shuh, who is all about his toys and Shonie, the sweet-faced bulldog, who loves to eat and lay on the deck in the sun. They too are family.
It took a long time, years even, but I have learned how to be alone and not be lonely. I have learned that my days don’t need to be full to be fulfilling. I have learned to make the decision, and it truly is a decision, to find joy and beauty and happiness in the places and the people around me. And I have truly grasped how lucky I am to have this sweet cabin life that I have, where even the rainy days are good.
My cup truly runneth over.
Dianna