The darkness helps us all to shine

There's a Red Hot Chili Peppers song that I love called "Dark Necessities." I love the music from start to finish, but I love the poetry in the lyrics - one lyric in particular, "the darkness helps us all to shine." I actually thought it was "the darkness helps to sort the shine." Honestly, I love both versions! Mine is better...don't tell Anthony Kiedis.

I have been thinking a lot lately how very charmed my life is right now, and has been for a bit - even through the pandemic. I was very, very lucky - I have been in a job now for over 11 years that I love and has supported my family well. I received a generous inheritance that ensures me and mine will be ok (and while the safety net is nice, I'd give anything to have my dad, stepdad & grandma still here).  My children are mostly doing well. I am in a happy, safe, fulfilling relationship. I mostly get to set my rules, and it's nice.

Life wasn't always so easy, though. There were years I didn't know how I'd pay the bills, especially the thousands in mounting medical bills. There were years I felt trapped in unhappy, unfulfilling, and sometimes even verbally abusive marriages. There were long periods I was so despondent over my sons' health - both mental and physical - that I worried all the time that I was going to lose them. There were moments in my present job I was desperate to get out, worried over whether they could even pay me. I've lost parents and beloved family members. I've watched my sons lose friends far too young, and friends and acquaintances lose children who never had the chance to grow up.  I know pain, and I know trauma.

But my sons all survived childhood. I have zero medical debt, at the moment. And I am able to make some long-needed improvements to my home, and help my friends & family when they need it. But even now, while life is relatively calm and easy, I still look for storm clouds on the horizon. I know they will come; that's just life. None of us gets out of it alive, as they say. But what I do know is that no matter how bad it may get, I know how to get through it. I don't wish for a different history, for the one I have makes me beyond grateful for my present. 

The darkness certainly helped me to shine - and helped sort my shine. 

Summer musing

April has become a month of sad reminders, having lost two of my favorite people in that month, in recent years (my stepmom and my grandmother who raised me). No birthdays; no holidays. It's often more cold than warm; spring teasing us with hints of summer only to return to blustery and sometimes snowy days. I'm usually eager to see the end of it; to enjoy the warmth and celebrations of May: birthdays, Mother's Day, graduations, maybe even a wedding or two. And of course, Memorial Day, marking the official start of summer for Americans. This year is really no different. May 1 was yesterday, and already I feel a little lighter.

Even before the month of April took its leave, however, I was already dreaming about summer. For the past week or so, the edges of my mind keep showing me glimpses of summers in my youth and in my children's youth (to be fair, those things aren't far apart, my children having been born in my 20s). I keep thinking of the slightly spicy scent of vegetables just picked from the garden. I think of all those summer hours when my sisters and I begrudgingly helped our grandmother snap beans, peel tomatoes and apples, and shuck corn to can and freeze for the year to come. And while at the time I hated nearly every second, I look back on it so fondly and wish I could have one more summer like that. 

And I think of going to the pool with my cousins, lying out to tan in the backyard, and wishing the oppressive heat and humidity of central Illinois would give us all a break. I remember the family car trips to visit relatives in West Virginia and Florida, and how lucky I feel now that there are so many in this world I'm somehow connected to, who always seemed happy to see us, and gave me rich memories of a full and loved-up life.

I think of summers when my kids were little; Quentin sitting in the middle of a strawberry patch with red juice drooling down his chin as Joey and I picked fruit. All the boys splashing in little inflatable pool in the backyard. Trips to the zoo and the park and the library, always trying to find something inexpensive to keep them happy and entertained. And I feel so lucky, that it was an incredible privilege, to be able to have that. 

This is the first summer all my boys will be adults in the legal sense. The oldest has moved back home; the youngest is just graduating high school. The middle is living just down the road with his dad, finishing up junior college. The things they enjoy now are different than when they were kids. But I'm sure going to try to fit in a hike or a time out or two in honor of summers past, when life was a little simpler, and be ok with their groans and grumbles...because someday, they'll be the ones wishing to have it back for a moment.