“In a Nutshell”

         The last month’s challenges found me floundering under waves of unexpected events that pounded me down and under every time I surfaced. As I struggled for shore, and surer footing, I spun words through my head with the goal of sitting down to write, but another wave would tumble me head-over-heels, I’d submerge and scrape along the gritty ocean bottom for a few suffocating moments, only to briefly surface again.

         I decided last night that my sanity required returning to my blog. And I vowed to condense the trials of this last month into a nutshell, not to diminish the importance of the experiences, but to gain some perspective in my life again.

         Having the arbitrary decisions of others invade into my life spun my “control freak” personality into a frenzy of anxiety. I became the Tasmanian devil, a whirlwind of angry and uncontrolled energy that plows through every obstacle in its path. I will spend weeks apologizing to my loved ones for my frantic behavior.

         During the past month, we moved my son back home because the owners of his rental house decided to sell. About midway through the move, they notified us that they had “changed their minds” and he didn’t need to move after all. But it was too late. We’d already rented storage units, purchased bins and located moving boxes. We’d already made the mental shift of bringing our son back home for the remainder of this year. Then a second punch hit when our son’s sore throat morphed into swollen glands and tonsils. A quick run to a med clinic left no doubt to the diagnosis—mononucleosis. The illness left him sleeping twenty hours of each day, weak and unable to swallow, barely able to even drink. Driven by worry and unable to feel control over anything, I focused upon getting the move completed as quickly as possible, and almost drove everyone crazy.

         Now our lives take us on a new and promising pattern. We must integrate the ebb and flow of my mother’s Huntington’s driven days with the bass throb of our son’s music career. The rhythm of our daily dance will change, and I don’t know how long it will take before we synchronize our steps.    

Copyrigh 2012 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman