Dunkirk NY – This morning I am enjoying the last bit of peace I am going to get for the next week. Starting tomorrow night, the house will be filled with 4 more people. One of them is 10 years old, and not my grandchild. Not that I mind, but it does mean my usual routine will be interrupted, and my house will be fuller and busier than normal.
Times like these make me realize how much I have become used to having the house be a refuge for peace and quiet, and how much I like it. When I retired, I gave myself three years to allow the stress of work to shed itself from my system. I figured after 43 years of working, it might take that long. And it has. I enjoy getting up a little later, and my usual morning routine is now quite relaxed. I am seldom ever ready for the day before 10 AM. Recuperating from the knee surgery has added a bit to my ability to shed a little more stress and be less antsy about having to be somewhere or do something. I think I still need goals and things to accomplish, but at the moment I am letting things come to me as they appear. If a show comes, all well and good. If I have to go out and take care of Mom for a bit, all well and good. If I have to spend 4 months in Washington taking care of my daughter, all well and good. If there is one thing about being retired, it’s knowing that there is no “work” to get in the way of getting things done or doing certain activities.
So having a collection of “invaders” in the house is going to disrupt my new-found routines. The 10-year-old will be getting up early with me and I am pretty sure I will be feeding her breakfast. Her mother and both my sons will sleep in late. There will be a lot of activity in the kitchen, and I have been working my way back to taking over kitchen detail, which is my usual household responsibility. Some cricket will be watched, football as well. It will be a little more noisy, and I am sure the 10-year-old will demand constant attention in some way or another (not to mention a little discipline here and there). This is all pretty normal stuff, but when you have become used to a slower, more peaceful routine, I imagine it can get a little stressful.
I’ve never really experienced to a very great degree all the holiday tensions people seem to have as I read the news. Politics was never an issue in my family, despite the fact that two of my brothers are fairly conservative (the two without BA degrees). My children are all to the left of center. We get along pretty well as a whole, so there is seldom any conflict. This is of course not to say there aren’t family stresses. We simply tend to ignore those whenever we get together, which is actually rather seldom.
So I expect any stress this week to come simply from the increase in activity around the house. My sense of relative solitude will be a bit shaken, but not to the point where it’s insufferable. I enjoy Thanksgiving and having the kids about. As long as when it’s over, they return to their homes. The paradox is that, as soon as they leave, I will miss having them around. -twl