Friends

      My friend David called me today. Said he'd been reading my blog and he wanted to check up on me. So sweet of him. I realize my blog seems a little depressed. Cheer up, little blog, it's not so bad.  I assured him everything was actually better than OK and that it is merely the landscape of my inner mind that is defunct. Not to minimize the importance of my inside world, my inside voice, as quiet and polite as it may be. It is not fun to feel blue when everything around you is quite fine.
      Staying home for 4 plus years to raise a little person will send you to weird mental places. I have checked this theory with several other moms. Particularly moms whose children have grown, who can look back and say, yes, that was a very hard time, maybe the hardest of my life. No shit! For real. So I am in good company. And this too shall pass.
      Do you know what has been a fantastic part of becoming a mom that I did not foresee?  Meeting some amazing women who live in my town and are being moms at the very same time as me. I probably would not have met them otherwise and certainly would not have shared the moments we have shared. This morning I plopped Desmond in his stroller and we walked to our lighthouse on the Hudson River. It is about a 25 minute walk from our house to the small parking lot and a 10 or 15 minute walk out to the light house where there is a big deck that juts right out into the water, with tables and chairs and steps down into the water. There is always a strong breeze blowing and on a hot day like today it was particularly glorious.
      I put a post up on Facebook last night that we were heading to the light house this morning and four wonderful women and their children came to join us.
      These women are beautiful. They are strong. They are smart. They are funny. They are quick to laugh. The are brave. They are patient. They are my mirrors and my examples. We compare notes and stories. They are especially impressive to me because they all have two children and I only have one. When I am with them I am reminded of why I have only one and just as often I am tempted to have another. I am so grateful for these women. I love them.
      There are moments when I am with them when I want to yell, "I love you guys!!" Like a crazy, drunk might except without slurring my words and without falling over them. This morning I stood on the deck of the lighthouse, looking down at them standing in the sand, talking together, their kids splashing around them in the water and I wanted to shout into the wind, "I love you!" But I didn't. I didn't shout it. But I thought it. And it washed through my inner mind, settling the racket, like the wind that flew in off the river, keeping us cool and smiling.
      I want to bottle that wind. I want to bottle the sun, the wind, the sound of the water, my friends talking, our kids laughing and keep it. Where would I keep it....  On a shelf? In a drawer? In the freezer? I guess it is just as well I keep it in my mind. Where it needs to be, to balance out the racket and the roar when I am alone the air is so still.