The past few weeks have been a rollercoaster ride of highs and lows.
The highs have been monumental occasions. Our daughter is now married to a wonderful man, and our son is a proud new father of a beautiful baby girl.
We are grandparents!
With all the excitement, travel, shopping, and planning for those occasions, I’ve lost sight of my regular routines and the attention I should pay to the things around the house has slipped. And all our cars need repairs. From a broken A/C to an overdue oil change and dead batteries, we are juggling between vehicles, depending on how hot it is outside, how far we have to drive, and which car will start!
Laundry has always been my nemesis. But after being away from home, and with suitcases in various stages of being unpacked, I can’t seem to get caught up. We’ve even been fishing clean clothes out of the dryer and sleeping in dirty sheets. Yuck. Too much information? Sorry! That’s just where we are right now.
It reminds me of high school when everything in your “regular” life stopped, and every hour of every day was consumed with a new romance.
Remember how easy it was to lose yourself, and your friends every time you got a new boyfriend? Rather than studying and spending hours at the mall with friends at the makeup counter, you spent hours hiding in your room, giggling on the phone with your new love while writing out your “married name” in various styles of cursive script.
In high school, the cafeteria was where things always happened. Entire high school dramas played out each day during that one hour. On one particular day, John G. and I were leaning across the table, ever so slightly, while holding hands under the table, thinking that nobody would notice … as if!
Then, my friend—my best friend—joined us. I had broken the unwritten high school rule of Never … Ever dating your best friend’s ex. We did stay friends, though it took a few months and another breakup before we were best friends again. We even became roommates in college.
I’ve been remembering the high school years because next year will be our fortieth reunion! As shocking as that realization has been, it’s also been comforting to look back and remember the things that you thought were going to kill you but didn’t, which is probably true for things that may seem overwhelming today. Thanks to Dr. Richard Carlson’s Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff ... and it’s all Small Stuff, I’ve been reminding myself daily not to sweat the small stuff, and truly, it is all small stuff when it comes down to it all.
This has also been a reminder of how it feels to be the third wheel in a relationship. Being the third wheel happened a lot in high school, which was basically every time one or the other of us got a new boyfriend.
Flash forward forty years and there’s a new kind of third wheel—being a mother-in-law and a grandma. I’m trying to find the right balance to encourage and support our daughter and our son in their relationships while staying grounded in my new roles and life responsibilities.
Perhaps a better way to think about my new beginning is not as a third wheel, but as part of a love triangle.