Rough Patch

I'm in the screen porch. It has become my springtime refuge on occasion in the evenings. Because of the near incessant rain this year, the roof is often needed. Due to the resulting sogginess the bugs are often unbearable, and so the screen is wonderful. Since it is next to the baby's room, its location is ideal. I get to breath in the fresh air, listen to the birds, the wind, look at something other than the endless dirty dishes, the perennial laundry baskets, the stack of papers needing my attention, and decompress for a few minutes sometimes in the evenings.

Tonight the frogs' throats are thrumming down by the pond. A mockingbird is wrapping up his last songs. A catbird is mewling in the dusk. The barn swallows are twittering as they swoop over the hayfield catching the last insects of the day. The crickets are warming up for their night-long symphony. The tulip poplars' large leaves are rustling at intervals in the wind. A humming bird is buzzing around the impatiens flowers behind me. The first bats are circling. And I sit, sit and breathe, collect my swarming thoughts from the scattered edges of my mind.

It's always something. That's what life's made up of, an endless onslaught of, well, something. Last week it was things like the storms, the power outage, ticks on the kids (including the 4 month old), a coon in the grease pan under the grill, a miserable teething baby, and and over-tired and acting-out preschooler. This weekend it was stuff like kidney stones: the intense pain, the passing of crimson-colored urine, the worry about whether it could be something else. It was making cookies for the gentleman at church who always hands some out after Mass- but just has shoulder surgery. It was the in-laws camping on the land and visiting.

Today it was the printer. I needed to print off and send in my oldest son's assignments. He's remotely enrolled this year, for the first time ever, in a private school. I need to submit a bunch of end-of-quarter paper work and the printer is probably inoperable. It is my sons, unable to settle for bed, singing and yelping and raising a ruckus until too late at night despite my intervention. It is my husband, overwhelmed by work and still at the office, leaving me with all the evening chores... again.

I'm really not surprised. Like I said, the endless string of stuff is life. That's why heaven is called, "eternal rest", the "heavenly banquet", and "paradise". Nothing is perfect "here below". The respites are few and far between. So I try to embrace my proverbial crosses.

Everything is dark now. The only thing I can see is the sky above the tree line and the occasional darting bat. Just now a dim shape walked only inches from me alongside the porch. I hissed at it, and startled, a raccoon scuttled along- only to return shortly thereafter to the grill to fiddle with the cover. I had to chase her off again. I guess that is my cue to return inside and get done what I can before the baby rises again, my husband returns, and I'm a complete jelly. I'm just hoping I have the stamina to push through this rough patch, this bit called life.