For the last five weeks, I’ve been unable to focus. Stuck. Tense. Edgy. Scatterbrained.
Maybe you noticed?
Because my blogging has certainly suffered. When Something Else is taking up all my mental energy, it’s nearly impossible for me to write about the normal stuff. Manuvuering around the elephant in the room is exhausting work.
My husband would come home in the evening and find me listlessly lying on the sofa, moaning miserably, “I can’t do this anymore.”
“No news?” he’d say.
“NO!” I’d explode.
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it” he’d say all rational-like, and then he’d go about his normal life. So exasperating.
Last night, exactly five weeks after we first found out about the possibility, we received the green-light phone call. We are going to Guatemala with Mennonite Central Committee for the 2013 school year, January through October.
We’re taking the kids and skipping country! We’re going to Guatemala! We’re going to Guatemala!
WE’RE GOING TO GUATEMALA!
Last night, my husband and I were in a meeting (regarding Guatemala, in fact, but more on that later) when his cell phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number so he ignored it. Not until we got home did he see he had a text message and a voicemail, both from MCC headquarters.
We scanned the text message and then whooped and high-fived. We must’ve been pretty loud because our older daughter got out of bed and came downstairs to see what was going on. We had moved on to listening to the message on speakerphone and were standing stock still in the kitchen, straining to hear every word.
“We’re going to Guatemala!” I whispered.
“We’re going to Guatemala?” she asked, eyes big.
“Yes!”
“We’re really going? We’re really going? We’re really going! We’re going! Yes!” She was trembling with suppressed squeals and jumping up and down. She stopped long enough to give me a death-squeeze around my middle and then tore off upstairs to tell the other kids the much-awaited news.
A little later when I went upstairs to tuck the kids in, my older daughter was laying in her bed, a million questions on her lips, my younger daughter was sound asleep, still unenlightened, my older son was smiling drowsily, and the littlest? The littlest was curled up in a ball under the covers, crying.
“I’ll miss Charlotte! I’ll miss my friends! I’m scared of the airplane!” he sobbed.
So. This is pretty much what we’ll be like for the next two months—all over the map.
Hang on to your seatbelts, people. It’s going to be some ride!
PS. I have so much to say about this—five whole weeks of stored-up angst and thoughts and stories, to be exact. You’ll hear all about it, probably more than you want to. Stay tuned!
This same time, years previous: silly supper, brown sugar syrup
