Jul
25
“I feel like I’ve been let out of jail.” I can’t even count how many times I’ve said this to JB lately. It’s not quite the right sentiment, but it’s as close as I can get: I feel like the world has opened up lately. After over five years of parenting very young children, everything has just sort of . . . widened. Jesus, there’s air in here now.
I don’t mean to imply that six and three are the cakewalk ages or that we don’t have plenty of challenges ahead, but it’s only now that we have a little distance beyond the baby years that I am really understanding just how stifling and challenging that was. In all the obvious ways, but also in all the million little daily compromises that have to happen when you’re caring for little kids. How incredibly difficult it was on our marriage to have to shelve most of the things we liked to do together, to negotiate over who got some time to ourselves, to deal with all the inevitable resentments and pent-up frustrations and feelings of being trapped and occasional helpless thoughts of WHY DID WE DO THIS WHYYYYYY.
This summer has opened all kinds of doors for us, particularly in our travels together as a family, but also just in the relative ease of our day to day lives. It is not exactly a peaceful full-body massage accompanied by a soothing Enya soundtrack to be around our kids these days, but my god, it is NOTHING like it used to be.
Duh, right? Babies are, like, hard and stuff. I don’t know why I keep marveling over such an obvious sentiment, but every time we do something that used to be exhausting or impossible, I think about how lucky we are to have made it through those tough years. This is the good stuff right now. I could stay here for a long, long time.
Jul
21
Back in May I told you about my aunt‘s self-published book, Lessons of Evil, and I’d like to let you know about another book she has available. It’s called Fun House Chronicles, and this is what my aunt has to say about why she wrote it:
My mother and father both ended their days in long term care facilities, one with physical and the other with mental ailments. Shortly thereafter, my husband entered a care facility and never came home again. He died there four years later. For more hours than most, I’ve sat in those hard visitor seats watching the comings and goings of staff, residents, and families. Some were appealing, others appalling.
Fun House Chronicles is the story of one woman who enters a nursing home, and how it affects her family, the staffers, the other residents, and the woman herself. There is sorrow here, of course. But you will also find humor and hope.
It is my great desire that this story gives comfort and information to anyone faced with a nursing home for self or loved ones. It includes many of the things I wish I had known before my own journey began. I wish you well.
One of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t spend more time visiting my beloved grandparents in the nursing home rooms they sadly ended their lives in. I don’t even know what to say about the selfless duty my aunt and mother put in over the years—particularly with my grandfather, who couldn’t even remember the visits—except that they are incredibly strong women.
My aunt has spent a truly staggering amount of time in care facilities, and her story is a good and true one. The vignettes at the beginning of the chapters will make you smile and maybe also break your goddamned heart in two. (Here’s an excerpt from the book.)
If you’d like to check it out, or just support an independent author, or do both of those things at the same time, Fun House Chronicles is available for Kindle or Nook for the extremely reasonable price of $3.99.
Thanks for considering it. I am a big fan of my aunt, and I wish her all the success in the world.
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