377 Days - Blog #33 Family is one of those things that dilutes exhaustion

This blog will be brief.  I’m rather worn out from the day.  The good sort of worn out… but the kind of worn out to which I am not accustomed.

So, two things to note about this.

The main provocation for my fatigue is the change to my weekend routine caused by a visit from my sister and her kids.  Normally, I get to visit with them for an afternoon or a few hours.  Um, yeah… a whole night and day with two year old twins and an infant (who is actually a pretty chill guy) is exhausting.  I’m sure that comes as no great surprise to any of my parental friends… or friends who have any idea of the energy of a two year old.  Energy combined with the word no.

I’m tired… but tomorrow night, I get to climb into bed and sleep as long as I want for the next three days of vacation.  A pretty significant luxury that my sister will not be able to indulge.

She is kind of awesome for her endurance.

And certainly, we all find the strength to endure that which we choose to, that which we want to.  And maybe this could be a life I know… but not one I have chosen in this life.

The other part of this is that I am staying in my aunt’s house this weekend.  The house that my grandfather built, where my grandmother raised seven… holy, wow, SEVEN children.  Granted, by the time they moved here, four of them had moved beyond baby and toddler ages… but seriously, Gram… how did you do it?  I know you had Rhea and Nana Rose… but really? 

Maybe it’s exhaustion, but I’m sitting at your kitchen table, where you fed those kids on soup and shells, or toast and gravy… or chocolate chip cookies… and I have a whole different appreciation for you.

The house is quiet now.  Everyone is asleep but me.  And I wonder if you ever sat at this table, by this window space in the days of seven children, whether they had the volume of teenagers or toddlers and heard the crickets as I do now… and relished the quiet that suddenly fell in this part of Central Mass.

Or hey – it’s a Saturday night.  In those days, maybe the hotel across the street provided noise between the cricket chirps.  Or maybe it provided the quiet because, as you once told me, your husband would go join the party and bring home his drink from the bar.  Or come get the car to drive someone else home who had had too much drink.  Then again the noise could have come up through the floor from the cellar at this time of night.  Maybe it would have been Nana Rose sitting in this kitchen waiting to brew the coffee for the midnight hour.  I can’t imagine the nights were ever this quiet as they are now.  And if they were, I couldn’t imagine there would be much dilly dallying before finding sleep.

Maybe not quiet… but somewhere in this air that remains, the imprint of the value of this family.  Of being under one roof.  This magical roof, this Mecca of joy and peace and everything that defines family for a couple dozen or so of us spread out all about this country.

Okay.  Maybe that wasn’t two things.  But they are the things that come in the clarity of exhaustion.