I am a 47 Year Old Woman This Week

Why are some things so familiar yet others so etherial?1

Her house is always immaculate. Apart from the odd little speck to sweep up, I can now only dream of living in a place like this, those days are long gone. 2

I used to think it wasn't so special that everything was so new and clean. But now, when I go upstairs to use the bathroom and steal a few steps into my room that I used to see as a prison during my adolescence, I think how nice it must have been to raise children here.....3

It's odd how some smells stay in even a meticulously upkept home.4

Now that I am reconnected with places in the house I haven't been in years, the smells perplex me.5

It's like ...well, mothballs in the sliding doored hall closet. Bending to put the dust pan back or get out the broom when I stop over and do a quick sweep down the hall and through the kitchen. When did Mom start that? It's a smell my daughter finds awful yet comforting. Did she start to do it one day when she remembered her mother doing it? It seemed an odd notion to attempt at this stage in life, who knows...maybe a comfort to her as much as it is to my daughter?6

And going out the garage door to put the Coke bottles in the plastic store shopping bag hung in orderly fashion on the hook just outside the kitchen door...how can the garage smell just like it did when we had the dogs? It seems unfathomable. Can I still smell dogs? Is it in the cement floor forever? I laugh and wonder if that's just the smell of a garage. Who knows.7

My mother looks older than ever, she's really tired after three surgeries this year after having been a reasonably healthy woman most of her life. My dad has a look about him that tells me he knows all too well that they are both in rough shape for only being in their early seventies and that these early scares are warning shots to their mortality if they aren't careful. Genetics and hard work haven't been good to them, but they pray hard and often, and wish to hell often that we would wake up and do the same.8

We are all getting older. I look at the grandkids around the table and see that their lives are on the threshhold of that tipping point between making it and not in this economy. Dreams, fears and hopes are shaky ground in 2008 for a young adult. And I look in my sister's eyes and see the truth in them for her has been living vicariously through her children; her divorce was not kind to her but it forced her out of her comfort zone and I see how she has grown far less bitter from the shock of it all and is growing into her own skin. In as much as we are night and day we can look each other in the eye now and we are over it. I am sure the differences will never quite go away completely but the talks in waiting rooms and hospital parking garages, dinners after long days of back and forth to the hospital and I am sure more to come have caused some bygones to be bygones because life's too short.9

Sometimes we pretend we have a brother and other times we know we don't...sometimes my parents can pretend they have the son who is convinced he raised himself. My parents made their share of mistakes,so have we, but he still blames them, and is paying them back every step of the way with his other personality. Memorial Day the old one came back. We all had a wonderful day. He was funny, witty, the kids were happy, they remembered the good times as there were few so few positive role models growing up, and soon everyone went away.... I laughed my head off all day, videoing him with mom shaking her head. It's like she knew it was too good to be true.10

Within a few weeks of the pressure of being asked for a minimal amount of participation in taking some of the duty of the adult child off our shoulders and off mom and dad's because, face it, they have really been stuck with a lot of it themselves, my brother bolted again. Not his problem. I hope he finds a good therapist. I love my brother, but why does he have to break Mom's heart and make her pay repeatedly with his disappearances? I swear if he doesn't find a woman or man to convince him he needs help to get his shit together I will personally beat him to shreds at the funeral home one day when he shows up crying.11

I wish I had a house like Mom and Dads'...hell, I wish at 47 I could have a house... I wish I could be there more often than I am; I get angry as hell at my own physical limitations and my own personal needs. I get impatient and downright furious with my children when all of these things conflict and work wants me to do overtime and I wish the single mom-adult child thing didn't cause men to run away screaming because they really are weak if they are all that selfish. 12

I am not your toy or your entertainment I tell them; nor am I stupid or your slave. I look at my children and say similar; they look at me as if to say "You'll live forever" and bleed me unknowingly some more. Oh its intentional alright, but they don't have the full picture yet...they will.....13

I love my life but I want so much more. I want to love hard, live hard, laugh hard, give so many happiness and not fall short of the mark. I want to use my gifts, excel at my gifts, and be happy. I want to help people, hold people, guide my children and help them be able to face tomorrow when I am gone, not worrying if they can survive tomorrow should one stop talking to the other and nobody is left.......14

I want someone to think I am beautiful enough to adore me and not betray me, not abandon me, or God forbid, die before me...I want someone who is not threatened by my beliefs or strong opinions...15

The ghosts of old lovers fill my head this week like taffeta rustling through my auditory canals..........and I cannot chase them away. I find my nostalgia level is on the rise this week with no end to this rise in sight.16

This is the cry of the Single mother turning 47 this week..this is the cry of the single mother..of all mothers, daughters, ex lovers.....grandmothers......if only you could hear me!17

Sarah Lynn Brinklow June 15, 2008///18