Where is My Mind?

Where is my mind?

If my summer needed a soundtrack, apparently the Pixies have entered the chat.

It's been a minute.

Not because I stopped writing. I actually have several blog posts sitting on the sidelines, fully or partially dressed, waiting for me to remember that writing them and actually publishing them are two different steps.

Apparently, I forgot the second one.

In my defense, life has been...a lot.

There have been financial struggles. Car problems. Then more car problems. Then the realization that perhaps setting money on fire in the driveway would have been a more efficient relationship with my vehicle.

I wrote about that.

Didn't post it.

There was another post after that.

Also didn't post it.

So somewhere on my computer is a tiny backlog of The Building Life patiently waiting for me while I have been very busy building, breaking, repairing, traveling, parenting, worrying, recovering, and occasionally staring into the middle distance wondering what day it is.

Then we went to Europe.

I've been to Europe before.

I had NOT, however, planned and executed a multi-country European trip while responsible for two children and my father.

Which, mathematically, is two children and my father.

Operationally?

Three children.

Sorry, Dad.

You know I love you.

There was one night when T and I came back to our rented apartment and could hear the TV before we even got inside. Dad had it turned up so loud I was genuinely worried we were going to have the cops called on us.

So yes.

Three children.

I was planning around flights, ferries, trains, hotels, luggage, teenagers, a younger kid, everyone's needs, and my dad's itinerary and limitations while trying to remember that I, too, am technically a person who requires food and sleep.

And Europe apparently looked at my carefully constructed plans and said:

That's adorable.

There were delayed bags.

Canceled and delayed flights.

Damaged luggage.

Unexpected shopping trips because our belongings were somewhere having their own European vacation.

Rerouting.

Transportation puzzles.

A ferry.

Enough logistics to qualify me for some sort of honorary certification.

And through all of it, there was Estonia.

There was standing in a peat bog in a place that looked like it belonged somewhere between another planet and a fairy tale.

There was Pärnu, where we learned that the phrase “beach day” apparently has a very different interpretation in Estonia than it does on the Gulf Coast.

We went anyway.

There were markets in Latvia.

Tallinn.

Tartu.

Skateparks.

Food.

People.

History.

My kids getting to stand in places, hear languages, eat things and experience parts of the world that many people never get the opportunity to see.

There was chaos.

So much chaos.

And I am incredibly grateful for all of it.

Especially because so much of that opportunity exists because of my dad.

He's the real MVP of these adventures.

I don't think he could ever fully know what he means to me or how deeply loved and appreciated he is, even when the kids and I are cranky as hell after 54 hours of travel and none of us particularly likes each other anymore.

I see my dad almost every day when we're home. I talk to him even more than that. He is woven so completely into our everyday lives that I don't usually stop and observe him from the outside.

Travel made me do that.

Spending that much uninterrupted time together, navigating airports and ferries and unfamiliar streets and long days, made some things harder to ignore.

He's getting older.

I know that, obviously.

But knowing someone's age and seeing age catching up with someone you love are two very different things.

His health has changed. His stamina has changed. There were things I needed to think about for him while planning that I wouldn't have years ago. There were moments when I found myself watching him and realizing that time is doing what time does, regardless of whether I'm interested in cooperating.

I'm not.

For the record.

And I'm not particularly interested in turning that realization into some tidy lesson about appreciating your parents while they're here.

I already appreciate mine.

I already see him constantly.

I already know what he means to me.

Maybe that's why noticing the changes hit differently.

Because someday I will lose him, and when that happens, I know the world will become darker.

But I also know how much light he's already put into it.

It's in me.

It's in my boys.

It's in these ridiculous stories we'll tell about dragging Grandpa through Europe.

It's in photographs and inside jokes and places on a map that my children can point to someday and say, I went there with him.

I hope those memories keep reflecting his light long after he's gone.

Hopefully VERY long after.

Dad, if you're reading this, that was not permission to go anywhere.

Sit down.

We still have shit to do.

The trip also carried some emotional luggage that American Airlines couldn't lose for me.

It had been almost a decade since I'd attended an event with my stepmother.

There's history there.

A lot of it.

Enough that even now she still sends my father scathing emails about me and my “illegitimate children,” which is a fascinating commitment to a storyline after all these years.

So going into my brother's wedding, I had some mental gymnastics happening alongside the actual travel logistics.

My brother had to make accommodations to keep everyone on their respective sides of the wedding, something I hate that he had to think about at all.

For the most part, we were ships passing in the night.

And that was okay.

What I wasn't prepared for was seeing her family.

Not through social media.

Not through someone else's update.

Actually seeing them.

Hugging them.

Talking to them.

Connecting with people I hadn't genuinely connected with in years.

And discovering something I think part of me needed to experience in person:

They didn't hate me.

They were warm.

They were genuinely happy to see me.

They were warm to my boys.

Even my kids noticed it. They knew enough of the history to be surprised by how openly affectionate everyone was with them.

There are some things Facebook can't give you.

A real hug is one of them.

I don't need to dissect that experience right now. Maybe someday I will.

For this trip, it was enough that something I had carried into Estonia felt a little lighter when I left.

And more importantly, the wedding itself was beautiful.

My brother was happy.

I gained an amazing sister-in-law.

Our weird, complicated collection of humans managed to occupy the same beautiful event without the earth opening beneath Estonia and swallowing us whole.

Success.

Eventually we made it home.

I then required approximately two weeks to become a functioning human again.

Jet lag is one thing.

Jet lag after being responsible for an international traveling circus is another.

Unfortunately, life did not receive my PTO request.

I came home and immediately found myself helping my brother navigate some major life stuff.

Then there was the puppy who apparently decided keeping his snoot intact was an unreasonable expectation.

Because obviously.

There were Scouts.

Summer activities.

Appointments.

Work.

Family.

Paperwork.

Things that needed fixing.

Things that needed paying.

Things that needed forms signed.

Things I definitely remembered at the last possible moment.

And then somehow school arrived.

I swear summer looked me directly in the eyes, said we have plenty of time, and then raw-dogged us straight into the school year.

We didn't even get lube.

Rude.

So that's where I've been.

Not gone.

Not uninspired.

Not sitting somewhere waiting for something profound enough to write about.

Quite the opposite.

I've been living faster than I've been publishing.

And somewhere underneath the travel, financial stress, parenting, family history, car disasters, aging parents, growing children, puppies with self-destructive faces and the general administrative nightmare of being an adult, I've also been thinking.

A lot.

Maybe too much.

So while I haven't been posting, I have been writing.

There are a few pieces waiting on the sidelines.

Some are funny.

Some are frustrated.

At least one contains a significant amount of profanity directed toward finances.

And one I wasn't expecting to write at all came from learning about someone else's life and unexpectedly turning around to look at my own.

That one is coming next.

It's considerably heavier than this.

Apparently after disappearing for a while I thought the appropriate return strategy was:

Hi! Europe was beautiful. My car is an asshole. My family is complicated. My dad is aging and I'm emotionally unprepared for the passage of time.

Anyway, would you guys like to talk about trauma?

Welcome back to The Building Life.

I told you I've been writing.

I never said I had my shit together.