A week

An enormous part of my past does not exist without my husband. An enormous part of my present, too. I still feel somehow that things do not really happen to me unless I have told them to him. -- Anna Quindlen *

This is so strange. A whole week and no phone contact. If we do nothing else well, my husband and I talk. A lot. About everything (well, almost.) And he is gone for a week to a place with no cell reception. I am confident that I can reach him for an emergency, but I'm not feeling emergency-ish at all at this point. But, even so, I have things to tell him. The laundry room looks like it belongs to another family; the pristine look would (will) please him. I got through the list of things he asked me to take care of while he is gone; that's always nice for a person to know. I miss him.

As much as I write words of appreciation for my family, I can be a very ungrateful person. This week is good for me...to feel in a small way what others feel all the time. To lean on my God more and more.

And amidst it all, I talk to myself. I sing to myself. I write stories in my head. And I think of my menfolk at camp. I wonder how cold it is in the mountains this morning and what the sun looks like on the lake at dawn. I wonder what he thinks about as he drinks his coffee, feeling the glorious pleasure of the morning air . I hope his back is holding up on that camping cot, and that the week has been filled with adventures.

**********

At this point yesterday, I had to save my draft and leave. The children had a date to see a movie with friends, and I had a date in the "organizational solutions" section of a few stores. As I was driving down the road, the cell phone rang. IT WAS HIM! I got almost ten minutes of quick, "tell me everything" conversation. The most exciting piece of news was that our boys are working on the wilderness survival merit bagde; last night was the night for sleeping in the woods. They bring nothing except the clothes on their back, and they need to create a shelter from what they find and either sleep or just survive until dawn. As we were moving through the evening last night, my youngest called out, "Mom - it's 8:20. The boys have been in the woods for twenty minutes." I am sure if we had stayed awake past 10:00, I would have heard regular updates and questions. One thing we know for sure -- there are going to be stories of the most adventurous sort added to the family collection.

We'll make the most of the next two-and-a-half days, continuing our quest to bring order out of chaos, but the sound we are eager to hear is the phone call announcing, "They're home!"

*quote found courtesy of Me and the Boys