We rolled back into town last night at a record-early time for us, we made the drive from Michigan, leaving at 7 something AM and pulled across the border into Connecticut again by 9 PM. We were psyched. We are just insane enough that it sounded like a good idea after all of that rigamarole to reward ourselves by whirling through a grocery store trip before we actually made landfall at the old homing pad. I know it sounds five levels of lost wits but actually was somewhat helpful. Here we are, Monday, first day of our untried homeschooling season and we have a full larder, even if the washing is teetering tall and I can hardly keep my eyes open. (Am doing mad penance for all those early morning chats with my dad PLUS late night discussions and card games and family jam sessions...but OH WELL...it is worth it.)
Today I am printed off menus for the next two weeks, listened to all the new words Nib learned over vacation tumble merrily out of him, took a nap (Hi ho! Sleep, you old acquaintance you!) and generally indulged in the massive, indulgent and very important job of over-processing every single little bit of the vacation. Somehow, I feel like this sort of thing is important after a holiday...but it really seems especially rampant with me when I've been to visit the natal homes of myself and A. I feel like life and my own personal experience and the thoughts of our siblings and the food of our mothers and the hobbies of our fathers and every other little tidbit id a small clue about "what it all means" and "how it all works" and my marriage and my parenthood and any number of other small and un-thought-of connections.
So, I'm running through the grand mass of experiences we had this past week and trying to synthesize. Am I the only one who does this? Tell me that I am somehow normal or sane or ideal or maybe even part of an elite club of special thinkers who are more sentient than the rest of the world. It isn't madness, right? Poor A thinks it is madness. I drive him bonkers with my effervescent desire to wade in the past and the minutiae and my starvation-level search for meaning in the center of it all. A is a raw experience person. He likes to do and then move on. His life is a storage wall of honeycombed cells. Mine is a mass of moving, sticky web strands, woven into a gigantic, sometimes beautiful, sometimes bizarre sculpture that is meant to stay on the wall but has ended up being a room-filling, experiential art-piece-cum-costume for anyone who attempts to come appreciate it. I know that my own personal brain-spill after trips can be a bit um...shall we say...suffocating? I also know that for me it is important and healthful and for those in my life it can contain bits of helpful information and the occasional brilliant insight but it has to be admitted that the mechanism is a bit over-the-top.
This is my attempt at taming The Beast that is my own processing machine. I tried to talk less during the drive home...at least less about all the little things that ran between my ears, and more about the weather and concrete plans for homeschooling and the book we're reading out loud together. And now that I am home, and able to be alone more...or at least buffered from A a bit...I am buzzing through all the things that make my brain whir about what I just experienced.
I am hoping to do a lot of writing, some phone calls with sympathetic/similarly demented pals, and maybe even a little talking to myself out-loud. I don't want to drive my partner insane, I don't actually want to make him allergic to my inner self and I don't want to suppress the very helpful digesting I enjoy doing, and find key to really shelving experiences I've had and also to genuine growth. I am hoping a little distance and self-reliance will be the answer. We shall see. We shall see.
In the meantime, if you need me, and you call me...when I don't get to the phone in time, you'll understand that it is a bit hard to be speedy when wading through a living nest, all plaited with endless strands of thought-tenacles. I will be out again and answering phones and emails and carrier pigeons more handily soon.
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