Starting Again All Over Again

I could see the adrenaline and fear pumping through Josh. I thought he would never be able to sit down again. I wished he would cry, either with me or while talking to his own mother. He hadn't cried since the hospital, and I knew that, even beyond his heart and mind, his body needed that relief. That white rock, which looked like it would have come from someone driveway or a border around a small, decorative tree, had seemed to bring with it all of the losses and near-losses in Josh's life, and maybe all the mistakes and guilt too, as it cracked the window of our bedroom just above our infant son.

Once More Into the Breach

The above excerpt is from my wife's blog which is here on Blogger.

At the beginning of December 2010, my wife and I were living in Monroe, North Carolina in a tiny but happy little half of a duplex.

Later that same month, we relocated to a massive, two-story house in Laurinburg due to a change in my wife's career.  The house was a cavernous structure built in 1910 for a family of seven - in May of 2010 the last of those children had passed away, leaving the house to her nephew who, living in Minnesota, charged a realty company with renting the home.  We never did finish unpacking.

On 5 May 2010 my wife and I discovered that we would be having a baby boy.

Later that same day I was informed by my employer, a school district located in the Piedmont region of the state, that my contract would not be renewed for the 2011-2012 school year.  Since August of 2008 I had been a high school English teacher - no more.

My wife and I realized that without my income, we would no longer be able to afford the house in which we were then living.  Once again, it was time to move.

We found a much smaller house, a two-bedroom/one bath home, one block over in the same city with the same realty company.  With our extended families performing a good deal of goodwill grunt work, we relocated in July 2010.

Mentioned at the beginning of this post, a rock whizzed through our bedroom window at that previously mentioned residence.

Within a week, we were navigating awkwardly through stacked boxes at our new apartment in the city of Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Somewhere between the assortment of relocation, Becky's mother remarried and our son was born.



Dear Friends

Some people drink wine, or Corona (hi, dad), or smoke (various leafy things), or go shoot stuff at a firing range.  Some people exercise or snort cocaine, or exercise while snorting cocaine while shooting at stuff.

Some people even do the above-mentioned things for stress relief.

My only concern as of late has been staying above water. I did exercise a few nights ago, using the equipment made available at the clubhouse here in our apartment complex.   It was nice (aside from the reminder that I am horribly out of shape aerobically).  Still, what else to do?

I've considered meditating but, as a narcoleptic, I would most likely keel over onto the floor.

I'm a writer, so sometimes I write.

Really, stress relief or learning how to cope is the last of my concerns.  I really just want peace.  I mean that in the global sense as well as in the most intimate sense.  I just want peace.

I don't want to have to start again all over again every six months.  I want my wife to be able to enjoy herself when she comes home from work.  I want her to be free to go to Target for a little while, or Barnes & Noble, or to be able to journal or even, perhaps, have a bit of time to read.

I can't really be too plaintive as my wife will be entering into her Christmas vacation soon, and will, I hope, have the chance to really enjoy the new town in which she lives after spending so much time trapped in the quaint yet devastated city of Laurinburg. 

These aren't so much Christmas wishes and I don't expect anyone to grant them, Jesus or genie, I just wish - that's all.

Add prayer to the list of stress-relievers I'd enumerated.  Some people pray.  I don't pray but maybe wishing is how, at least in part, I'm learning how to cope.

Still, it remains, that in the deep of this hemisphere's cold season, a bare tree against a cloudless sky can be beautiful.  I am tired, but we are here, all of us and most importantly, the three of us.