The view from down here

As soon as the world started to open up in October of 2020, and it wasn’t all that open yet, I hired a contractor to renovate my kitchen. He was a local man, comfortable working in my home as were his workers, and I was getting a little desperate to get started on a long overdue renovation on a more than forty year old kitchen that was crumbling before my eyes.

It’s not a big space and we have a lot a people living here in addition to having a few large parties every year and hosting a couple of gatherings a month. There are always extra people around to be fed and I needed to make use of every square inch of space. So the upper cabinets go up to the ceiling.

I tell you this because I can’t reach about one third of the stuff in my kitchen.

I know. It seems ridiculous.

There are only so many places you can go in a long narrow kitchen, there is no room for an island and up was the only solution, so up I went. It’s really not a big deal and in a way it’s helped my Sean feel very needed

Sean is one of my sixteen year-olds. Yes, I have twins. Bridget is two minutes older, dark to his fair, loud to his quiet, impulsive to his hesitant. Sean is firmly placed on the spectrum with all the quirky odd behavior that comes with that. Bridget is a nuero-typical sixteen year-old girl with all the quirky odd behavior that comes with that. I’m used to both having done it all before. The packaging has been different but I can cope with the idea that a lot of the behaviors are not about me, rather they are about the brain wiring and re-wiring that is going on, so with some patience, lots of prayer and some good Irish whiskey (for my husband and I, not them) we manage to keep things on a pretty even keel. We actually like teenagers. At least they are a little easier to reason with than a three year-old.

Back to those cabinets. I am now the shortest person in the house. My oldest daughter beats me by the barest inch and that is only because I have lost an inch in the last couple of years. Imagine my surprise upon that little discovery. I knew people lost a little height as they got older but I wasn’t aware that I was that old yet. Apparently I am just that old. Old enough to shrink.

Most mornings I skip breakfast. I’ve recently lost a little over thirty pounds and skipping breakfast has been part of it, but when I’m hungry I’ll have a little oatmeal and fruit. By the way losing an inch is not helpful when trying to lose weight. It skews the numbers and it feels very unfair.

Anyway, the oatmeal canister sits on the top shelf. So I have to go find Sean and ask him to reach the oatmeal and fetch it down for me, which he is always happy to do, he is really very sweet and helpful. The other day he told me he didn’t think he could ever move out because he would hate to think I couldn’t have my oatmeal in the morning because I like it so much.

I had to hold back a little because I didn’t know he thought about things like moving out. It is really unlikely there will ever be a situation in which he could do so, at least on his own in any way. Provisions have been made for him and he knows that he will always have a home with us or one of his siblings but it came to me then that maybe he does think about a home and family. Am I ignoring that part of him?

I asked him about it a little while later and he looked at me like I was nuts. His main goal in life seems to be to launch his younger brother permanently out of his room and make some changes in there. In the meantime he’s happy to help me reach things, work on his graphic designs, finish high school and take his time plotting out the rest of his life. “I like it here, it’s quiet now.”

Ok, then. I wish they were all that easy.

Looking up at these boy men and the other one that comes home from college in a few weeks, all man now and planning his grown up life, I wonder about the world we are sending them out (or keeping them home) into. We’ve spent so much time trying raise good men, honorable men, my husband in particular has dedicated his life to it and how valued will that be? God knows, I sure don’t.

And how I got here from a can of oatmeal, I’m not sure.