Quite the emotional weekend for me. First up, and don’t laugh, my daughter got her driver’s license. We showed up at the DMV around 6:30 and stood in freezing drizzle in line forever for that test. I made her laugh through most of it. Poor thing was sooo nervous. But I do think a driver’s test version of ICarly’s Random Dancing is funny.
RANDOM PARKING!
Yeah, I make up the weirdest crap…
But, she was the first one to take the test at 8 and passed with an A!
I was so thrilled and excited for her and it yanked me back in time to memories of how that felt. Especially later when she took the car out alone. I sat calmly, but inside, I was boiling mass of “what ifs” and a good time was not had. But, I put myself in her place and again remembered that first time I took a car out alone, that freedom, that thrill. (After all, it wasn’t THAT long ago 😉 ) I wouldn’t want her to miss that for the world, but it was interesting to see the other side, to know how my mother must have felt.
On Sunday, the hubby and I decided we needed a family day. We did. Badly. We’ve been working too hard. However, the kiddos wanted to go off to the mall. Alone. My daughter took my son out in the car. I went through the nervous thing again and my husband spent a bit of time reassuring me that they’d be fine, that it was time to give them a little freedom.
I do not want to clip my kids’ wings, don’t get me wrong. But that first REAL moment of letting them go free is more difficult than I expected.
I did, however, have one of the absolute best days with my husband. We went to some estate sales and as usual, had more fun exploring the houses. We both love fixing outdated places up and should probably flip houses at some point. One of the houses had small rooms throughout, then this huge master area complete with a narrow, spiral staircase to a loft where you could look down into this ridiculously large bathtub with more mirrors than any woman wants to have surrounding her tub. Seriously, as a writer, I suffered imagination overload in that place. Especially when we got upstairs and found another opening over another bedroom. <g>
We also went out for Eggs Benedict. Yum. While he teased me for wanting “done” eggs—I do not like runny eggs. Ew. Poach those things all the freaking way! —we also got to witness something that had me tearing up once back in the car.
An elderly couple sitting next to us played out the most touching, heart breaking scene. I don’t know if the wife had recently had a stroke, but her mind was there. She smiled at us and at her husband. But he fed her every bite of her breakfast with complete loving care. I just knew he’d helped her get dressed, applied her make-up and took her out so she could be among people. He talked to her, helped with everything she needed. You could see their years together in every movement, every look.
The hubby and I talked about it after we left. In that small amount of time, we saw honor, heartbreak and true love played out in a way that had us both spending some quiet time afterwards. I’m tearing up just writing about it now, so my words are failing me. At one point, while um RANDOM DRIVING, he reached over to take my hand.
Life can be so harsh at times and a marriage can go through bumps, but that time you spend together, riding the bumps, working the hard times…it creates this crazy life path full of interesting people, places and experiences. We change so much over that time and it’s easy to forget what made us start this path together.
I sincerely hope that woman’s disability was only temporary because I’d love for them to have many more years together. I could have thanked them for the needed eye opener, but it would have been wrong to disturb their private world.