Broken Wings...

“Give me the beat, boys, and free my soul…”

Perfect song for a dreary Friday. Although, I promise, I’m not complaining because at least spring has finally arrived, even if it’s a rainy one.

Things have been a little topsy turvy in our world this week. My nieces were here for the beginning of the week, which of course my girls loved, but we still had school and track meets and piano practice. They all four watched several vintage episodes of The Baby-sitter’s Club with me (from my old VHS tapes) and, of course, decided which babysitter they were and now sing the theme song really loudly. (I sing right along because few things make me as happy as loudly belting out, “Say hello to your friends!”)

Of course, they all picked different babysitters to be-Mallory picked Stacey, Felicity picked Claudia, Natalie picked Kristy, and Betsy, as always, picked more than one-Jessi, though, was her most favorite.

(I, of course, am Mary Anne. But my favorite babysitter is Kristy.)

And now it’s not my weekend with the girls.

It becomes a part of your life-knowing that you have downtime, or knowing that you are the one in charge of all the things. Life in the world of co-parenting lends itself to time of extreme busy and time of extreme alone.

Learning to love the alone took time.

And let me assure you, I love to be alone.

I’m an introvert to my core, and I need time to myself to regroup. I have always been this way, always the girl up in her room with her nose in a book. I hate crowds more than anything in this whole world and so I purposely try to avoid going anywhere with lots of people. And when it can’t be helped, I’m not pleasant to be around (the poor girls have to endure my complaining every single time we go to Walmart, which I try my best to only do one time a month).

But being alone in the beginning-that was rough.

I still remember very clearly Nick, as he was packing his things, saying to me, “You’ll be fine because you like to be alone. You can read more.”

And even though I know he didn’t really mean anything by that, it had the effect of making me feel like my needing alone time was the root of all of this. As if this was just the natural progression of our life together, the part where Nick goes off to have a new life and I get to stay at home with my books.

So, for rather a long time, being home was difficult. I missed the girls with all that was in me, physically ached for them. I couldn’t read because I couldn’t concentrate on the plot. I would finish a book and have no real idea what it had even been about.

There were weekends where it was all I could do to get to Sunday, and I would feel such relief that I had managed to live through it. For me, sorting it all out took a long time, and it felt impossible for me to believe that eventually I would grow used to the fact that this is what life looks like now.

I say all of this because I’m always writing this for that girl that I was then-I want her to know that weekends now are actually something I look forward to. I still, probably always and forever, will like the weekends better that the girls are home. It’s just more fun for me to spend my time with them. But I don’t dread weekends alone at all. I use them to clean and read all the books and watch all the movies. It’s fun, truly.

Betsy’s new favorite song is “Miss Me More,” by Kelsea Ballerini. Every time we hear it, she says, “Mommy, it’s your song.” And nothing makes me prouder than perhaps the notion that I have shown these girls that living a life alone is pretty fantastic.

“I forgot I had dreams, I forgot I had wings
Forgot who I was before I ever kissed you
Yeah, I thought I'd miss you
But I miss me more"