I have written a few post over the past few weeks but lost interest before I posted them. I am coming to the end of my renovation and this weekend I will be putting the house back together. The kitchen is beautiful. I still don't have gas because the gas man tripped over his dog and broke his foot. He gave me the name of another company where his sister in law works and they are going to squeeze me in on Monday.
I took a spontaneous trip over the long weekend to visit my childhood best friend. We have a long history including her mom letting me live in their garage when I left home. There was no room in the inn at that point. We were five adults, one kid, two large dogs and three cats living under one roof.
It was complicated with 5 vehicles parked in the drive way. I slept in the garage with the cats and the car it was heaven to me. I was free from the emotional roller coaster of living with my dad and my step mother who thought I existed as free labor. Leaving after my dad threatened to have me fired if I didn't quit my job and babysit full time so my step mother could go back to work.
My friends mom was at one time my own mother's best friend. Both of our families were Pentecostal but we didn't attend the same church. We lived on the same street but my friends mom was a person that focused on the bad things that were happening in the world. Instilling in my friend a lot of fear.
Her husband left her around the same time my mother died. He ran off with his secretary and my friend's mom never married again. She didn't let her fears keep her from living and some of her happiest times she spent playing piano at a inner city church for the homeless.
What I loved about her is that she always had a plan. When we were kids every Friday night the family drove to the park and had a picnic dinner. Anyone that wanted to come was welcome and this ritual continued even while I was living there. She was a godly woman who never remarried because she felt it was sin in gods eyes to divorce. She never tried to control her kids and I think my friend was the only one of her kids affected by her fearful side.
I always felt welcome there we all took care of ourselves and I bought my own food. I never wanted to be burden since she so generously let me stay there that summer. I was happy to be able to just live my life without being some one's Cinderella cleaning and babysitting.
My friend and I haven't been close for most of our adult lives. We are very different people she lived at home until she married in her 30's. She quit work to home school and raise her kids. They moved out to a rural area to get away from crime. So far out I thought something was wrong with my GPS.
I don't have any judgments about that everyone has to find there own happiness. When her kids were young and she had to be right about everything she tried to preach to me about my life. I had just met my ex and we were living in sin. Time has passed and we both know more and are less right about things. When her mother passed away I went and stayed with her. It seemed the same as always polar opposites just hanging out. We have history.
Our mothers were opposites too and so it seems appropriate that we are the same. Her kids are leaving the nest now and both her parents and the other woman have passed she is feeling a little lost without so many responsibilities. I think it is interesting that we are both the same people we were on the inside that we were when we were kids. We still fit the same way which is nice.
It feels like to me that we start out one way in life and we decide that we are going to be different or life circumstances change us. Then as we mature and relax we come back to the person we were when we were kids. We know none of our rigid thinking really matters and we live and let live.
I think my renovation represents what is going on inside of me mainly a fresh start mixed in with who I am at the core. My kitchen is simple and calm with a big splash of color. It isn't what I would do for a customer but it fits me and I love it.
Accepting the real me, allowing her to speak and listening to her, is not an easy thing to do. I've recently relocated back to a little village along the coast near where I was born, and that has been the best decision of my life, memories have surfaced, feelings and images, and from a time when I was still untouched by 'perceptions', it's been freeing. Enjoy your new home, seeing the end result and living in it is so rewarding.
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