Leaving the nest

Sadness spread like wildfire in my heart. I stared out the plane window as we made the decent home- Fresno California. In April, we visited the place I am proud to call my hometown, the place where I spent my first 25 years of life- St. Louis Missouri. My chest fills with sadness and my eyes with tears.

I haven't lived there for almost as long as I did. I don't remember what is where and which highway is which. I haven't been to a St. Louis Cardinals Game in decades. I feel so removed from the girl who lived there and that makes me so sad.

I felt homesick for a home that doesn’t exist the same anyway. My dad is died three years ago. Being there without him still feels sharp because in California I can still pretend he is just a flight or a phone call away. My numerous (we moved a lot) childhood homes are long gone, filled with other memories and other families. Neighborhoods and shopping Centers are unfamiliar. My Mom moved about an hour away from the city. It's all so different.

People assume moving far away is easy on the mover- it was a choice, so it isn’t hard. That statement lies far from truth. The older I get the more guilt and sadness I feel living so far away from my family. I don't see my niece and nephews grow up, and they miss that time with my boys too. Michael and I have talked about moving there, if all the right stars lined up, (most importantly, a job transfer because he wants to stay with his amazing company.) Moving back home is a  thought that fills my heart with excitement and terror. I don't know anything about Special Education and the School Districts there. How do we just pick up and leave our many therapists? How do we start over from scratch? 

The truth is, we long for something more than we have here, it's lonely without roots. I pray that God will give me us answers, whatever they might be. 

There is an amazing shop called The Minifig shop in Kirkwood.  A 3,500 square foot showroom featuring new and collector legos that were so much fun to see. You need to check it out if you are in St. Louis!

Watching the boys with their cousins was the best part of the trip.

My Sister Lisa, My Momma, Me and my youngest Sister Katie.

Anywhere with chips and salsa and tequila feels like home. Ha!

A year ago now I was struggling with horrible pain in both shoulders, despite arthroscopic surgery, injections, nerve conduction tests, acupuncture, cupping, physical therapy, anti inflammatory supplements, and Advil out the wazoo. I finally found answers, although it wasn’t the answers I was hoping for— I have three herniated discs in my cervical spine. I was crushed, exhausted from pain and so low on hope. Then my lower back started hurting and I knew I was screwed. My primary Doc requested an MRI which then showed two impinged lumbar disks. 

FUUUUUUUUGGGGGDE.

I called my friend Wendy because she helps me make sense of the nonsensical. I started working with a personal trainer to strengthen my neck and upper back. You can’t fix joints (which the spine is technically) once they go bad, but you can strengthen surrounding muscles which can take pressure off an angry joint. I realized how extra important it is for me to focus on making health an essential part of my life.  It took a few months, but I’m no longer in intense pain. I stopped taking Advil. Most days I’m a 1 or a 2 on a pain scale from 1-10. I can’t raise my arms all the way up too quickly.  And although it is probably inevitable, surgery can and should (according to my doc) be put off for now. 

Sometimes life changes instantly with horrific news, cancer, death, loss. But sometimes, not usually so fast- life changes for the good. It’s easy to forget to notice. I just realized how much better I feel.

Feeling better after feeling bad gives you a new lease on life. Carpe the freaking diem. I realized the pan-stupid-demic had made us all hermits. I am a capital H homebody- but this was next level, with a toe grazing depression. After focusing on being in pain for so long, life felt so completely unfun. I felt completely unfun. Parker was constantly begging to go away-every day it was somewhere new. Mom- Can we go to Disney Land? Mom, let's go to New York! Mom, we are going to go to Paris!!!  

I knew it was time to rip out of my comfort zone, and that's when we booked the trip to St. Louis. It had been three years since I had been back and I missed my family so much. 

We also went to Disney Land in January...

And Universal Studios in May.

We are so lucky to live in California with access to so many amazing places just a road trip away. Everything has a season, and I will continue to live the one we are in now with intention. Each time we go somewhere it gets easier and easier. I'm remembering that life is so much more than pain and obligation, and that childhoods are for making magic when possible.

writing to make sense

I start typing, and then go back and delete my sentence, trying to figure out where to begin. I haven't written in almost a year and I'm a little rusty. But I have so much to say in my heart and it's been building up, so I try and try again to get it out. I don't want to overflow.

I've been deep in my head lately. Thinking about big life stuff, and trying to look for a theme or a thread to make sense of it all. I think that's why people are drawn to God or spirituality or whatever it is that floats your particular boat- we want all of this to make sense. To have purpose and meaning. To matter. It's easy to feel lost. That's why I write, to help it all make sense.

I'm scared that the best of times have already passed me by. I'm scared when I see under my eyes are getting tissue paper crinkly, and my actual eyeballs themselves don't work as well when reading things close up. When did the text on directions and instructions get so small?! What the heck- aging is so weird. I mean- technically, if we are alive we are always aging- but this is next level. It kind of feels like you are slowly disintegrating. (All the 60 and 70 year olds are laughing at me saying, "Just wait!") Is it vanity that bothers me, or my mortality? I don't know. Probably both, I think, but I'm not always the most reliable narrator. I tend to feel things so deeply that sometimes they magnify. 

We just returned from a weekend trip to Hermosa Beach,California: Population 20,000 packed into1.43 miles of space. Somehow it still feels so open and roomy. Big enough to stretch my arms out to breathe. Nostalgia is a constant companion when I travel to places I used to live. 

We packed up our condo, and moved when Grey was just a bitty thing figuring out the world, while I desperately figured out how to mom (still working on that, I'll let you know if I figure it out). Parker didn't even exist. 

And now, Greyson just turned 13, and Parker is 11. I stare at them, astounded by limbs that lengthen overnight. Hands that lost their familiar dimples years ago. Tiny chicklet teeth replaced by humongous big people ones. Still madly in love with them, what a ride. Are the very best years of my life gone? I wonder. That question I don't have an answer to.

In Hermosa, I spent time with a dear old friend, precious quality time with a pal that left my life and has been replaced with 100 different versions of me. I am the friend. A friend I speak much too harshly to at times: a friend I love dearly. A friend I forget to love dearly over and over again. I would wake up early and walk down to the beach alone, grabbing a Starbucks before 7am. Ocean and people watching in awe. I love morning Hermosa. The only people awake are old people, dog people, and athletic people. Check, check, check. The energy is healing and intimate. I stare hard trying to soak it all in.

It feels like home. I immerse myself in memories and feelings and air that feels like a comfortable hug. I stare at the Ocean in awe, its sounds and vibrations clearing the stacked up clutter from my brain. 

"This is my happy place", captions everyone at the beach and it always makes me laugh. Uh, DUH. I'd say that's true for 98% of people. Just once I want to see someone take a picture with a bunch of dumpsters, amongst the funk and smell and taste of garbage and claim it to be their happy place. In the hospital awaiting test results saying,"This is my happy place". Because it’s just too easy to be happy at the beach but the true test of mastery, is how well you can seek happiness amongst the chaos and pain that real life often holds. I'm trying to love the in between times, the unexpected hard places, and even my wrinkled skin and faltering eye balls. 

My happy place, stinky dumpsters by Hermosa Pier

Some scenes from the weekend...

Grey's happy ice cream dance

Parker discovered a new and desperate love affair with body boarding for the first time in his life. For hours he paddled out, got pummeled with salt water in his face, waited and waited for the right wave, and took off. Over and over again. So much hard work for small moments of exhilaration- kind of like life. His lips were blue and his teeth were chattering and he would still yell, 'THIS IS SO MUCH FUN!" as the tide carried him in. Magic.

Grey preferred getting in ankle deep, and drawing in the sand

Sometimes all of life just feels so boring and complicated and hard. But sometimes I have moments where I think, "Aren't we so damn lucky to be alive?"

Today I sit with a homesickness in my heart for Hermosa, and gratitude for where we live now. Easing back into real life. I learn more every year. And every year I also learn just how much I really don’t know. There's still a lot of living to do, for every single one of us.

XO,

Chrissy