ULOG: 26 Loneliness and Schedules

Today I woke up feeling like a flaky failure.

It is a tough life to complain about, but I am managing. It is Saturday Morning, I slept well past nine, until there was no sleep left in my body. My children are still sleeping and the house is quiet. I have an opportunity to write, to journal, to manifest and to listen to my thoughts. I had time to myself last night too.

The thought and energy I keep trying to clear around my life is that of failure. Of failing.

I am in the City where my home is, and wanting to be 10 hours down South where my oldest daughter is along with the rest of my extended family. Why do I want to be there so bad? Because last night Grandma made a posole, and I was supposed to avoid the food and then sleep at her house. The next morning the church bells would wake me along with the birds outside the windows, the faint tv filling the home with the information they need.

My grandparents are supposed to come home from church and offer me a coffee and scrambled eggs with something mixed in them. The secret to the recipe is to use whatever is in the fridge.

"Do you like it?" My grandpa will ask.

"Well I can't ever make it again." He will say, after waiting just long enough for a nod.

The kids will automatically follow directions, because at Great Grandma's house, they are not directions, they are patterns. Why wouldn't you happily eat breakfast, go get showered and dressed and then have your day? Who will stop by today? Who will call? How fancy with this party be?

Instead I am in Alameda. Beautiful Alameda, an Island City with nice sunshine, good food, friendly people, an ample house, the ability to be a stay-at-home-homeschooling mom and far far away from my tribe.

Am I really choosing to leave this town, to go back to a time where I have to work full time in order to have a small apartment? Am I really choosing to send my children back to traditional school where they have to wear school uniforms and stand while everyone says the pledge of allegiance? There is no religion in the schools but still our children pray to God every morning. Its not the God in their mouths that I mind, its how He is invoked. Offering Liberty and Justice while detaining our parents outside of the schools, demanding papers they know don't exist, leaving the community without pillars.

Failure.

Even if I did choose to be in a more colonized state, but surrounded by my tribe, I can't be there. I haven't put the pieces of the puzzle well enough together. Its a silly state I know. Away from the tribe, they can run around without shoes, stay home from school, learn at their own pace, pick out their own clothes. Close to my tribe there is communion, responsibility to a whole, generational order, sense.

I left to search for the best of both worlds. I didn't realize the best of both worlds was loneliness without a schedule.

On days like today, sad in the sunshine, away from a big family event, I feel like I am punishing myself to have neither.

I will get it together. I will smile in pictures. I will get my children out to play. I will probably make monster sandwiches and spend time at the park. I will drink half a cup of coffee without the disapproving look of waste, and I will look at the pictures on my phone. Maybe my tribe is mad and concerned that I am not there today.

Maybe they won't even care.

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