Presents

This is really a post script to my last post.  I was feeling pretty low when I wrote the post - so low that I didn't appreciate the humor of my "gifts" Eagle brought me from Canada.  I was handed a small ziplock bag with a bar of hotel soap and spirit stone with and eagle engraved on it.  You gotta laugh at that one!

The boys are are home.  The Eagle came home today and JackRabbit came home Thursday.  They had both been gone since Sunday.  I would like to say it is wonderful to have have them home and that I missed them terribly.  Instead tonight I find myself really sad with them both home tonight.  At first it was so sweet to see them together.  JackRabbit was so looking forward to his brother coming home.  He came bounding out of the house when they pulled up and helped his brother take things into the house.  They walked around with there arms around each other for about fifteen minutes.  Then things began to deteriorate.  Within the hour they were back to kicking and pushing each other, Eagle making threats and JackRabbit being passive aggressive and avoiding responsibility.  Kodak moment over.

As for me and the Eagle, he had been gone for a week with absolutely no contact with me because of his location in the wild and ...nothin'.  No show of emotion.  No "I missed you Mom.".  I hugged him - might as well have hugged the tree.  I asked him to sit with me and tell me about his trip... he sat on me and didn't say much.  Then within about an hour came the set up, "Mom can we go to the store so I can spend the rest of my vacation money?" He knew the answer and I knew what the next hour would look like.  Big sigh.  I was hoping for an evening.  Just one.  A little emotion, maybe even a tiny bit of desire to make a connection.    But as is all too frequently the case, my hopes and expectations were nothing more than salt in the wound, stinging and irritating.

I want to have some profound little nugget to wrap this up, but I don't.  So I guess I will sign off and maybe I will come up with a nugget later.

Making Bread

I am not the mother I thought I would be.  I have learned that she actually does not exist, she is a mirage.  Like the lush tropical mirage a thirsty weary desert traveler sees, she is not compatible with the environment.  Truthfully, the uber mother as I imagine her, is incompatible with the day to day business of mothering. Uber Mom's daily routine barely fits into the hours in a day without the addition of sweet cherub faced babes, let alone  actual kids.  If the uber mother lived in this house I am certain she would be in the corner rocking and whimpering to herself by noon.  I know she would not approve of leftover pizza for breakfast, let alone would she run through the food groups in her head and think "Hmm actually it has most of the food groups in it - I can live with it."

So what does any of this have to do with baking bread?  Well I assure you it is a long and curvy road but the gist of the journey is this: I am not the mother I thought I would be but one of the things I thought I would do as uber mother is bake bread.  Not that imitation bread maker bread, mind you, but mixed and kneaded by hand from whole grains kind of bread.  There are a lot of things about my journey of motherhood that are not what I thought they would be.  However, tonight on cooling on my stove are two lovely loaves of homemade whole wheat bread.  You see uber mom has been a monkey on my back so to speak.  She has been heavy and unnecessary baggage that I have been carrying around.  I beat myself up about the top 1000 ways I am nothing like uber mom.  Multiple times I would try to convince myself that if I would do xy or z I would become the mother I wanted to be.  I think recently I have been mourning the fact that I am not uber mom.  It is really o.k I'm not uber mom...sort of...I guess...kind of...maybe...o.k. I'm still fighting that one.  But I have decided that I can DO some of the things I thought I would do even though I am not everything I thought I would be.  So I baked bread - real bread - tonight.  Now - and here is where uber mom would head into the corner - there is noooo way my kids will eat the bread I baked - they don't eat much bread at all and whole grain bread - not so much.  Oh well - the bread is pretty good.  Maybe if you are lucky I will post the recipe :) tootles!