Lost in the Inbetween

Carter and Dawson are away at Camp Egan this week. For both of them, this is the highlight of the year, the best week of the summer for sure. It will be Carter's last time at Camp Egan as a student. Maybe he'll be able to attend in the future as a counselor or some kind of helper. But it won't be the same.

"The lasts" just keep on coming for him. And "the firsts" for me, "firsts" in nearly a couple of decades anyway. This week is the first time I am home, completely alone (well, there's Calvin) for the week. I find myself going from room to room, thinking there must be something, some project, I can work on. The silence is spooky. The television shows I always wish I could watch - instead of what the boys or Chris want to watch - are no fun. The music from my favorite play list on the home computer just isn't doing it for me. It's so hot, too hot, to spend much time outside. I read, take a nap, rummage through the pantry, clean a shelf or two out of the fridge.

I check Facebook to find a camp counselor has posted some pictures. I quickly start scanning through them in hopes of seeing the boys' faces. And there they are! Having a blast. Doing their thing and making some of the best memories they'll have forever.

And then it hits me. I'm kind of lost somewhere in between. I'm still mom, but that doesn't mean what it has for the past 19 years. I am having to find out how to live my life for me again, yet still be mom when mom is needed. There is so much empty space and free time in this season of in between. I don't want to fill it for those days I need to be mom, so ... hmm. It's an odd time. And then I think...before we had the boys, Chris traveled as he does now. In Alaska, he worked a week on the slope, a week off. I was by myself a lot then, too. Why is it difficult to remember? I really can't remember what I did then and how I filled all that time and space.

This role of a mom, this life of a caregiver, is sometimes too bitter-sweet to handle. Bitter, because all too quickly the lives you have been molding are no longer yours to mold. Sweet, because you see how amazing your kids have turned out, and your heart swells with too much love and emotion to process. I feel as though the best years of my life are wrapping up and coming to an end as I sit and watch the best years of the boys' lives begin to unfold. I smile, I sometimes even laugh a little out loud, then I feel a tear roll down my cheek like a small pebble of snow that often starts an avalanche. There will be no avalanche today. I have two more days of this quite house filled with only Calvin and me, and I don't want to waste any more precious time feeling blue. Life really is good. 'Just gotta live it, even in the in-between.