When I am older than I am now and I want to remember what my life was like 'way back in the very first years of the century, I think this place will be the best place to come to remind me.
This post is to remind me of how the days work in April, 2006.
Spring has truly taken hold here. The mud that spans between snow and summer has become only an occasional misstep, instead of standard underfoot matter. The grass is green and there are dandelion buds tight against the ground, keeping their heads down until there are leaves enough to support their spurt to bloom. Today the next-door lawnmower wore shorts. I've not seen him or his legs since last fall.
The house is quiet this Sunday early evening. Parker is playing a computer game that sends an occasional cling of sword meeting sword through the house to the corner where I sit. I've been sick for a few days, and I've decided that I can't lounge around forever, so I've been outside cleaning up a flowerbed and thinking thoughts as the iPod kept me company. There's a lot of work out there, probably more than usual, this time of year. That's okay, though. Summer hasn't even started. There is plenty of time to get everything done.
My brother's children are still living with me—officially. They visit home for long weekends so that their mother's housing subsidy is not withdrawn. When they leave, those of us here go slack, and simply enjoying a lack of excess population pressure and excess stimulation is enough to make weekends successful in our eyes. Even Parker, who loves his cousin's company, enjoys time in his home with only his friends. We've learned a lot from the past three months.
Mack has not surrendered anything in the current situation, but he's dealt with busy bathrooms and people always where he wants to be, and alarms going off at strange hours of the morning better than I would have ever expected.
The adult heads of home are frazzled. Laundry and dish duty are constant and the young people are very good at having urgent school assignments and work shifts whenever chores are to be done.
The current set-up will continue until the next court date on May 12th. The social worker who has been working with the family sounds discouraged and expects that the children will be returned to their mother. Is she capable? That hardly merits consideration. The children are in their teens, succeeding in school, and want to be home. At best, their maternal grandmother may move in with the family and the court could place guardianship with her, but even that is unlikely. I hope she moves close by anyway; the children have the best chance at relative stability if their mother can hold herself together and having her mother near might help. Or it might not; I've heard the mother's complaints about her mother often before.
Jean is still at collegel, and will be taking a final exam during the day-long trial. I talked to her today. She's sick and having trouble with a residence board event. She is handling a great deal. She sounds tired and like she needs to come home to rest.
Rick is very busy being a grown up in Chicago. He might return to the human race after he takes his fifth actuarial exam in a week or two. Until then, we think of him as a faded photo in the family album, and hope that he'll return—at least in email form, if no more than that.
In her quiet house thirteen miles away, Rose is grieving for her sons and missing the daily presence of the children's father, who lived with her. The rest of us call and visit and her neighbors to the south drop in and bring her food the mother learned to make when they lived in Mexico. Rose doesn't want to try new foods, but their kindness is appreciated.
My sisters call to check on me, too. The brother from out west emails about once a month. My other brother stays to himself.
Tomorrow the children and I go back to school after the Easter break. None of us wants to go.
That's the way life is April of This Year.
