I hear that the French language has 12 different ways to express the word "love". I wish I knew some of them, because just saying "I love Interlochen" doesn't do it justice. There is something life changing that happens to me here every summer, and that's why I tell people over and over that this is my favorite place on earth. This summer is proving no different.
For the past five years or so, I have bemoaned the fact that I don't have a job. I have taken online college classes to "better" myself in the hopes of jumping into the workforce. I have wondered what was the purpose in having children so early since they seem to leave really early too. I have contemplated what I'm going to do for the next twenty years, in my house alone most of the day. I have played the blame game rather well, telling John that if he had just been more supportive of me and my goals during college, I would be more fulfilled now.
What a load of bull.
No joke.
You know the saying "you must walk a mile in someone's shoes" to understand them? Well, I have walked a mile in my own parallel universe shoes, and I have learned something about my other possible self.
Here at Interlochen, I work six days a week, eight hours a day. I do it so that my kids can live with me through the summer (instead of boarding in a cabin for six weeks). I wake up at 5:55 a.m. every morning (including most Sundays), shower, put on my uniform, bike to work, work for eight hours as an office manager in one of the infirmaries, bike home, crash on the couch for an hour until Hannie gets home, make dinner, catch a concert, brush my teeth, go to bed, and start over the next day. While there are benefits to the job that I don't have at home, such as having friends, I have come to the realization that I like my other job waaaaay better.
In fact, the job I have worked for the last 24 years is such a great job, I don't even recognize that I'm working most of the time. Isn't that how people qualify if you are happy in your job? It doesn't feel like working?
There's nothing better than being a good wife and a good mom. In fact, as I put in my eight hours of work each day here, I miss the life that I lead the other ten months of the year. Ethan told me the other day that he never knows when to call me now because I'm either working or sleeping. How rotten is that? My boy, and my other boy, and my girls, and my honey are THE most important things to me, and yet when I'm unavailable because I'm working, it seems to say to them that they are NOT the most important things to me, and I'm not okay with that.
The best parts of my days (during the rest of the year) are when my kids call me to talk. Or text me something funny that happened at school. Or are willing to make a milkshake run with me to Chick-fil-A in our pajamas late at night. Or curl up on the couch and watch a movie with me. Or talk to me for hours in the car as we travel somewhere. Or when John and I head to the temple on one of his days off. Or work on the yard together.
And I want everyone to know how blessed I was to marry a man who has supported me all these years. He's told me over and over that he will do anything to make me happy. And he does. He's the one, slogging through the days at work so that I can live the life I do.
I can't believe that I threw myself into such a tizzy for so many years, thinking that I was worth less because I didn't have a vocation. I DO have a vocation, and it's the best job in the world. I love being a wife and mother.
I love this little corner of heaven here in Michigan because each year it teaches me more about myself and shows me how happy I really am.
Are you reading this, John? Are you ready to move here yet? :-)
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