Shady Day

So, a strange thing happened to me yesterday. I was checking out at a store and the lady in front of me turned to me and said, "I don't really know you, but I keep up with you through friends on social media. I just wanted to tell you how happy I am for you that you are getting remarried. You deserve to be happy, you and your kids have been through a lot. I'm so glad that life is treating you well." I thanked her and said considering where I was five years ago at this time, I never imagined my life would be what it is today.

The "Dark Day"...everyone has one. Whether it be a day of sadness, remembrance or the scab of grief that never fully heals itself. These days are met at times with shuttering anticipation, self-evaluation and the prophetic wonder about what the next "dark day" will look like. Through time, one hopes to see this day come and go, surviving it unscathed with hopefully a nugget of wisdom attached. Grief, sadly for those who experience it, is atemporal, free from limitations of time. However, happiness is also atemporal, if one continues to see a silver lining, no matter how difficult it might be. Yesterday, it was a stranger who made sure to remind me the millions of reasons I have to smile.

For me, this day is a day I have been wondering about for the last five years. I wondered how I would be five years beyond. I wondered how I would figure out how to go on living, raising kids, making ends meet, single parenting and basically holding it all together without my best friend. I remember looking at my mom and saying, "I can't do this." Fully not believing in myself because I never had to before in this way. This extreme way of dealing with life basically alone, other than the offspring that we created, my best friend and I. The mere notion of being outnumbered and raising kids I knew I would most definitely screw up...how's that for atemporal?

Today five years later, I'm grateful. I'm grateful for the chance to have become a mother, the toughest job you'll ever love. I'm grateful to have had a best friend who I am sure is looking down on our kids with pride, and occasionally laughing his ass off at the antics they attempt. I'm grateful for the support of friends and family, encouraging me to not forget my strength. I'm grateful for the chance to fully accept that life is not always kind, so take what you are given and live it to its fullest. I'm grateful for the arguments my kids had with me this morning about wearing their hats, and my come back to them, "Well, you're going to take them off as soon as I pull away from the school- humor me, please." I'm grateful for a cocktail some days. I'm grateful for the chance I've been given to be a wife again. I'm grateful for someone to love again. I'm grateful for the understanding that the last five years have given me. Today is not where I thought I would be five years ago, it is way better than I could ever have anticipated. No one is in jail (yet), only a few trips to the ER, and we've all endured this thing called life.

Through the years, on this "dark day" I would never look at social media. I would never sit down or sit still for fear I might lose it. My phone was put away and the kids and I would set out on an adventure. I had always hoped that eventually, the "dark day" could just become a "shady day," knowing only time would get us there eventually. I sort of feel like it has. Five years later, we're scaling back a bit, having a nice dinner, sharing fun memories about their dad...and buying shoes. (GASP!!!!) Anyone with offspring know, buying shoes for one kid, let alone four is something akin to any myriad of the tactics used at Guantanamo Bay. A cocktail at dinner for me and ice cream for the kids afterwards will be the reward for somehow not getting arrested in a department store today. Five years later, I'm still thanking Jason for the gifts he has given me. Also, I want to thank those gifts, my kids, for always giving me a reason to look for a silver lining, not only on this "shady day" but every day.

Just to be safe, here's a heads up if I call you from the police station, I'm going to need a ride.

...coincidence met fate

In a million years, I never figured this is where life would take me.

While this notion is pretty much true for every reader, the concept of actually realizing it could either be gleaned in a joyous or sorrowful way. I talk about life a lot...life with kids, life as a single parent, life not being always kind and finding the silver linings in life. Sometimes, the words just spill right out of my brain and onto my laptop, the good, bad and ugly. Sometimes, and this is when I know things become really personal, it is more difficult to get it out into words. That is when I know I'm really feeling something.

You meet people every day of your life. Be it someone who comes into your work, someone in a waiting room, someone at the checkout line at the grocery store. While your interaction may not be that of a Hallmark movie, for a brief moment in time, you share a common space with a stranger. Sometimes there are words or sometimes there are just glances. I have a special aura that strangers must see, sometimes I walk away and wonder, "Why did I need to know that you are moving to Colorado? Why do I feel bad that you cannot eat dairy? Why am I constantly being talked to by Jehovah's Witnesses, am I wearing a sign?" But I digress, sometimes without even knowing it you meet someone for a distinct purpose, it isn't coincidence, it is fate nudging you and you don't even know it.

All of us have those special people in their lives...the ones who understand your jokes, can make you see the best in yourself and have seen you at your worst and love you despite the afore mentioned. These people you meet, who for whatever reason that meeting, that chance encounter, is etched on your brain forever. Their possible fleeting presence in your life happened. Maybe they were inspirational?  Maybe they were thought provoking? Maybe they were annoying? Maybe just seeing them made you lose your breath for a minute and left an overly verbal person speechless? You can go back, years later and remember that moment, place or day when coincidence met fate and changed your life forever. The most important lesson from these people is recognizing you have them, cherishing them and never letting them go...and I'm lucky enough to get to do that.

My day to day has changed since I began writing, and it has completely changed since I started writing this blog. I used it as therapy, comic relief and a chance to document all of the crazy things that not only go on in my head, but even the crazier things that go on in this "THUNDERDOME HOUSE." Sometimes writing it down took it off my heart/head and helped me move on to the next quarter-life-crisis of parenting. The melt-downs over bathing. The debates on independence when someone can't even be mindful of brushing their teeth (I'm not sure when the last time a few of mine have actually brushed). The push and pull of adolescence and playing good cop/bad cop. The notion that while I might not die alone, as I know at least one of my kids will never move out-they've got it too good, the real fear of never finding an adult to complete, compliment, inspire, love and feel appreciated again. At least one of these is the underlying fear in all of us in some way, shape or form. I am lucky, as I mentioned, because I have found some of these things in friends some of which I know fate was the only way we would have ever met, so thank you. I only hope I can emulate what to you what you do for me.

But, unknowingly, something important happened three years ago. I met this person, and all of the things you hope to feel, I felt. All of the chance encounters as they were, made me feel giddy, grin and wanting to know more about this person...but it was just chance, right? Turns out, three years later, I found out that person felt the exact same things about me. Never knowing when we would bump into each other, a friendship was there but nothing really else until one night when we got to talking. All of the sudden, I realized this concatenation, these chance meetings were "our" moment when fate met coincidence.

As time progressed, we discovered that we were more alike than anyone else we knew. We liked the same things, felt the same way about topics, and didn't want to kill each other over discussions of religion, politics, traveling, music, cooking and parenting. This person, while I've known him for years, I didn't know how much we had to share with each other. I suddenly felt like, "In a million years, I would never have thought that life would take me here...and I'm so grateful that it did." Three weeks ago today, this man who still makes me giddy, grin and most importantly love, proposed at our favorite restaurant and in our favorite seat. His eyes twinkled, and while they do quite regularly, I will never forget how they did that night. I couldn't wait to say yes to him, and yes to what most definitely is the grandest example of what happens when coincidence met fate... thank you HJR, 107 days and I cannot wait!