Sunday revelations

Any given Sunday is a little highlight in our week! We enjoy this calm day and usually try to keep it within our family! Lately, with growing teenage children, we find ourselves often alone at breakfast, due to sleepovers, early engagements with friends or some activity or other! How long has it been, since my husband and I had time together alone, without paid help to spend some hours just for the two of us? To plan a dinner? To quietly read the papers, confer about plans or even talk of this and that without being rushed? Oh, do we get glimpses into a life as empty nesters?

The house is silent, only the sound of the pendulum clock marking the passing time...I turn another page in my current novel.
And then suddenly it's all over, the front door bursts open, our daughter, with rosy cheeks storms in, with a friend and within seconds we are engulfed in fast paged stories about meetings and shoppings, parties and the unfair loads of homework! There is texting and raiding the fridge, all while we sit, stunned at our grown babe!
We have our share of worries, late nights, where I, full of  anguish, await my daughter's return from a party, when a girlfriend drives her home...
And our son, sleeping over with his best friend, being attached to the Xbox way to long...

But the worries are so outnumbered by our astonishment, to have raised our children so far,  without major injuries and now facing the scary task to let go, to trust them through adventures of questionable nature, mishaps and problems along the way, that they will make it, just as we did! To take part (as much as they will let us) and enjoy their growing explorations of coming adult life, disappointments and ecstasies of first love and the temptations of forbidden things along the way.
We are worried, we are happy, we are in a turmoil of feelings and it comes as a sudden revelation to me, that my husband and I are going through these exciting times in almost the similar confused fashion as our teens. There is no recipe for managing these years and I feel, that humor and patience are still some of the best qualities to take the challenges presented daily. To have good friends, with whom to share these experiences with, is a blessing for all, for our children as much as for ourselves!
With empathy and love we shall make it through! And silently I send out a wish to the unknown forces of life to protect us all.

Have a happy Sunday!










Images by V.Zlotkowski

Expectations

This weekend is special... And that means usually we are having guests! After 10 years my parents are visiting again from Europe, as well as my sister - for the very first time coming to America and my oldest son arrives with his girl from Berlin! It's going to be a wonderful reunion.
There has been lots of prepping and sorting, making space and fluffing up featherbeds....
The culminating expectations for the coming days could not get any higher.
It's not so much the actual plans, we try to keep this in motion and easy going, but to have them here at our place is just wonderful!
Of course you might ask what the occasion might be and here I will reveal that yours truly turns fifty in the coming week... this has been looming for a while ( duh) and although aging has never bothered me, I felt over the last months how this milestone has occupied my mind.
I have the strongest urge to reinvent myself. To turn over a new page in my life and fill it with all that, what I have been dreaming up lately. When I was younger to refer something to later times made often sense and meant only that priorities were such that my own plans had to wait a bit. Now I feel the time has come where I can't wait for more suitable times. The time is now!
There are so many things I have experienced in my life: Multiple immigrations, many moves, parting from people I love and people I do not, meeting the dearest friends in the most unlikely places and learning to make a home, when roots have been cut off.
I look back and count my blessings!

What's the essence of my life until now?
Firstly I am a mother! It has shaped everything within me! Nothing could have prepared me for the overwhelming love with which I would receive 4 children over quite a span of time. I never thought I might have four. I did not think about this for the longest time. What it would mean for my career, my personal growth, my own development.
I wanted children!
That they might have also been an alibi for my insecurities, well this occurred to me only later in life. But it changed the course of my life and now I am utmost content with motherhood. I grew up with all my children. They teach me so many valuable lessons. To love, to be patient (somewhat), to hold my horses, so give without expecting anything in return, to be rewarded by all sorts of small and large tokens of appreciation, to look at life with new eyes. To be more flexible.
They are young and modern and independent and above all they are wonderfully confident!
If anybody would have foretold the insecure, ugly little duckling I thought of myself as a twelve year old, that I would move to another continent, marry twice and have a large brood,  speak another language almost better then my original one, I would have laughed out loud. Impossible, I would have said.
But nothing is impossible. I learned that! And to have faith in one's abilities.

Being married to a man who loves me deeply, challenges me regularly and devotes all living hours to his family has been the most wonderful thing that could have ever happen to me. After a failed relationship in my youth I have now a mature, responsible and sheltering marriage. But perhaps this also was only possible after the lessons of the first one. I feel now that everything carries a lesson in life. Sometimes it just takes a long time to learn it! 

Marriage is movement: We change and to love the changes, the different people we become is not always easy. There are so many challenges, but one of my lessons has been: Live and let live! And to keep it special. With open arms...I love!
I try not to take anything for granted! Life can change in an instant and to cherish every day together has become so important to me. I remind myself often and I forget sometimes.

Deep inside me resides the artist, after many years of dormant life she has reappeared on my mental doorstep and I am ready for the new ideas, which do not let me sleep at night.
Or perhaps these are my tumultuous hormones, not knowing which direction to choose?


My thoughts are more and more turning towards writing, but the form still eludes me.
When I read I notice the shape and texture of a story, the way the language shapes feelings and mood. Years of reading have been my education, but it does not guaranty success in writing myself. I am probing and like a blind person, I feel my way in uncharted territory.


Life ahead is uncharted as well and I love the idea. To move along in it, still full of energy, with great expectations and many more years is what I hope for. I feel so young!


The path ahead is filled with wonder!

All pictures by V.Zlotkowski