Yesterday was supposed to be a doozy and in several ways it was. While the storm – complete with tornado warnings – did not materialize, the day turned out to be momentous in its own ways. Finally, our rhetorical storm ran out of rain.
For the past 11 years, we have been chasing our tails and in a tornado of our own making. One funeral, three marriages, three cancer diagnoses, three career changes, five jobs, five rescues and a whole-house renovation was a lot to pack in just a little over a decade. Yesterday, somehow, the storms ended.
Now, yesterday was not fantastical. It was, by all means, an ordinary day. I rushed to finish work and get the yard mowed before the rains hit at 6 p.m. We also had to do some kitty cleanup due to mischievous behavior and my hubby continued his extra hours at work finishing a major project. So, more of the same so-so suburban life going on. Why then, did it feel like the storm ran out of rain?
That’s complicated to answer but I’ll try.
For a long time, I’ve felt the rhetorical rain tapering off. It started with our small projects list two years ago and when we got halfway through the list, I could see progress. Then, in January, we finished the upstairs. On the professional front, it started with me leaving my firm and striking out on my own. After that initial burst of work, I had the anxiety that I may not work again. The advent of new contracts and steady work has assuaged that fear and the work storm petered out. Then, it was accomplishing a few of those things we never had the time to do: pulling the fallen trees out of the woods to become firewood, taking care of the standing dead pine tree that would have crushed our shed had it fallen on its own and adding the heretofore unthought of catio to improve the kitties’ collective lives. And finally, it was that deliberate process I took to settle our lives down. As each project was finished, the excess was cleared away and as the rooms got put back together, I chose durable, timeless furniture and fabrics to put back into those rooms. The goal here? Make it look timeless and get rid of the clutter. We’re not doing this again. Visual serenity is a real thing for me.
The final step? Accepting that the storm is over. It may rhetorically rain for awhile, but the big clash of thunder and lightning? Over. The rest? Well, a good cleansing rain is likely what’s needed for what’s next in our lives. That includes more decluttering, taking care of some outdoor small projects and building our deck. As we prepare for mutual semi-retirement sometime in the next few years, it also means slowing the past of change, completing the big capital purchases we have left and exploring who we will be when we don’t work so much.
But to answer the question of why I know the storm ran out of rain? There’s the circumstantial evidence I just provided, of course, but there’s also just a gut feeling. In all times and tides, you just know when something is over. When it’s time to leave the party, time to start something new, time to end a project. Something deep inside of you tells you it’s time, likely honed by decades of stop-and-start cycles when you didn’t even realize you were learning the message. But this? It feels incredibly real and in that no-longer-deniable kind of way. As I watch our latest rescue come into my office and belly up to his food bar (each of the kitties has their own automatic feeder and ID tag to open them), I am struck that life – while always mundane – can now become mundane in a way that is similar to his lazy sauntering up to the trough. It won’t always be roses and sunshine around here, but the big storms? They are genuinely over. And that’s okay by me.
The Yuppie Homesteader 