I've got you, hang on to me...

I've been browsing blogs and I'm seeing that many of you are preparing for the summer, taking breaks from writing, sporadically checking in to let everyone know you're around - just uber busy and/or otherwise pre-occupied. Some of you are racing off to China unexpectedly (wink wink P-mama), just getting back from China, or still trying to settle into your routine after becoming a new parent.

Confession number 1: I'm not busy

Confession number 2: I'm not otherwise pre-occupied

Confesion number 3: I'm neither racing off to China (sniffle), just getting back from China (sigh), nor settling in to new parenting. (btdt)

Honestly? I'm just blue.

I don't know why. I don't know what it is. I can't quite put my finger on it. Every time I think of blogging, I just shrug. Don't know what to say. Feeling kind of bleh. And then blah. And then "sigh".

Maybe because Quint's been having a hard time - whether it be teething out those last two molars, fighting the urge, rather unsuccessfully, to throw a fit at every infarction, or constantly frustrated that we can't communicate yet. This leaves Mama feeling rather overwhelmed. And sometimes I have a tantrum with him - cathartic, I tell myself.

Maybe because Anton is exhausted after finally finishing a long and busy school year - and as ready as he is for a nice long summer break - it's not in the financial cards this time around. I'm sad for that - because he worked so hard and went so far above and beyond for the kids - and it's not time to rest, like it should be.

Maybe the fact that we're staring down summer #4 without our sweetie pie KJ running around the pool - chasing brother - and being silly? Maybe because Quint points to her crib and chatters away as if saying "where is she?". I don't know...she is supposed to be there, isn't she? Feels like we got on a boat fully loaded, fully staffed, and fully gassed. Somewhere over the Pacific we dozed off and when we woke up - we were in a little dingy...no paddles, no oars, no gas...no staff....and not a scrap of land in sight. And so there we are...drifting, rocking, swaying to the silence. No idea when we're going to hit land. No idea if we'll be ready to get out of the boat when we do...

Maybe the fact that the older I get (and I'm not that old, I swear) the faster time just seems to slip away from me. The time to say "I'll go here" and "I'll do this". The time to relax and enjoy my life. The life that already came and went yesterday or the one that's still waiting for me tomorrow. I don't know about you, but I am that person who wanted four kids. Wanted a big family. Wanted lots of things that seem to be drifting away before I can stop them.

People say it all the time - "enjoy it - it goes by too quick".

My Mom said to me just the last time I was with her "I look in the mirror and I can see that I'm almost 60, but my mind doesn't believe it...I say 'I'm not ready to be 60...I'm not done yet...I have so much to do still!' and yet I can argue all I like but I know that it doesn't change the fact that time is always slipping away from me". I love her.

It's how I feel now, I guess.

Where is time running to so fast and what am I supposed to do with the remainder of my adult years - without feeling I've piddled them away on just living? I know it sounds like a tall order, but my lord...there must be more than day in and day out for us.

I want to know what we're supposed to do - our little family. Are we just supposed to be a nuclear family of three...(or four?... or five?...or six?) and live our pretty little life in the suburbs - like the Cleavers? Scraping by like everyone else in this abysmal economy (except Mr. Obama, Oprah, and Dave Ramsey of course) ? Are we supposed to do more? Be more? See more?

I don't know about you. I only know about me, about us. My little handbook of questions. This is like a quest to find where God would have us. Where/how/when/etc.

I do know that AB and I are feeling winds of change...feeling that we are being pulled towards change. Change that may roll thunderously through our lives and uproot us to a grand adventure - but if that's so, then bring the thunder - the very one that rolls the blue away.

Change takes time. So who knows when that will be and what we should do in the interim.

Something about the way AB looked into my eyes tonight - just seeing my "blue" before I could even articulate it to him - it said "don't worry...I'll look after you". Literally. Without a word being said - all that confusion and frustration, and apathy...just rolled back from where it came for a while - all in that one gaze that said "I've got you, hang on to me..."

And maybe I just needed to be reminded that no matter how blue things seem to be sometimes - whether it's about money, or babies, or lack thereof, or family problems, death, sickness, loneliness, discontent...that someone else has my back. Has a tight grasp on me while I dangle over the darkness. Someone holding tightly to the rope that anchors me to my sunshine...to my sweet boys and to my future and all that we can do together.

All three, four or five of us...