Five Words In A Stream Of Conciousness

The lovely and talented Dichroic gave me five words to riff on. What's kind of interesting is that all of these words have been significant in my life in the last week.

Let's begin with family. I am so grateful to my brother and sisters -- when Mom is being a brat, they understand. And boy oh boy, Mom was on a roll the last few days. Now, I know -- believe me, I know, I know, I know -- that my poor, frail 98-year old mother is feeling robbed, lost, helpless, and frustrated. But she has a gift for forging all that anger, all that rage at the dying of the light, into a sharp sword and slicing her children to ribbons with it. But my brother and sisters and I have formed a united front to deflect the attacks and bind up the wounds.

When Mom goes through these spells, I can't help but think that I may be looking at my future self. As I contemplate aging, I worry that I will also be angry and frustrated. Even more, I worry that I will take it out on my beloved SonnyeBoy. He has no siblings; the tough decisions will fall on him. That's why I'm doing my best to make it as easy as it can be for him: buying long-term care insurance, writing down requests, all that stuff. I must say, the decision of this British couple looks amazingly reasonable.

In any case, all this stuff over the last two years with Mom has been a sort of juggling act. Juggling her life stuff. Juggling her feelings. Juggling my feelings, while trying not to project and dump them all on poor Joe. Because of all this emotional juggling, I've neglected my hobby of physical juggling. I want to get back to it, but when I get home, it's so much easier to just loaf. So that's what I do.

Writing about it helps. Writing always helps, but once again, I have not been writing nearly as much as I had been. It feels too much like work rather than something enjoyable. It seems like every time I put my fingers to keyboard to write or edit anything, I freeze up and play Snood instead. I think I must be patient. I think I just need to wait a bit longer, until I feel the urge to write because I want to, not because I think I should.

Or maybe I need to police my time better and just do it.

Ah, the word "police." How my opinion of those public servants has changed since I was younger! Of course, the fact that my son is a police officer might have had something to do with it. When SonnyeBoy applied to the University of Delaware, he wrote in his essay (I peeked; yes, I did) that he wanted to practice law enforcement on the local level because he wanted to help people. Recently, he was talking to a woman who asserted that all police say they want to help people, but they really don't. SonnyeBoy disagreed. He helps people every night, by taking drunk drivers off the road. He prevents them from hurting themselves and others, and keeps the streets safe for responsible drivers and pedestrians. The drunks may not see it that way at the time, but I sure do.

Those were good, thought-provoking words! Would you like some? Leave me a comment and I'll send you some.