Descending the maelstrom

Tuesday after the holiday weekend, I got up and hit the road by 7 a.m. to drive back to Bentonville and find a place to live. 

Again.

As I needed to be back in Oklahoma City by 6:30 to pick up my son, I had to leave Bentonville by 3 p.m., which means I had approximately 4 hours in town to seek out and secure a place for us to live.  Amazingly enough, I managed it. I stumbled across a house for rent by the owner that we had somehow managed to miss the first time around.  I called the very nice woman who owns it, who just happened to have left her twin baby girls at Mothers Day Out that day, so was able to accommodate my request for an instant showing.

The house was perfect. It's toward the end of a dead-end street, so no zipping through-traffic.  It has a six foot cedar fence all the way around, lots of trees in the back, a big master bedroom with a bow window, a kitchen I could roller skate in (which about all I do in the kitchen, anyway), a big open living room and a gas fireplace. I said "I'll take it."

She hesitated, but I charmed and cajoled, and she said "I just have a good feeling about you.  I'll go ahead and let you have it now. I know you need to get back to Norman."

She just had a good feeling about me.  I just happened to see the sign.  She told me later, as I was handing over the money order for the deposit, that she had told her husband she had a feeling that this time they would rent the house to a single mom.  Me.

Remember when I said that the nice lady with a radio station to God had told me that something good was coming for me? Well, she called yesterday, and told me she had heard I was moving, was happy for my new position, and she knew I'd be happy in it, and she was sure God had blessed me.  I wasn't at all sure that it wasn't HER who had blessed me.  Her faith and goodness seem to rub off on me every time I talk with her, even though I'm not Christian and I don't even really know her very well.  Maybe she truly is tapped into something old and deep.  I don't know.  But she called it.  I hope she keeps me in her prayers on that broadband.

In general I find that this move has shown me the best of people.  It has brought forward kind words from the most seemingly unlikely quarters, and I've been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support and congratulations from my colleagues and friends and acquaintances and acquaintances of acquaintances.  My dear friend, Jin, had a party for me on Saturday, and everyone was so nice and asked so many flattering questions about the new job that I began to feel sort of bad for talking about myself. "Yes, it's a beautiful new museum!  Yes, I'm so excited to be going!  Yes, it's wonderful to have been chosen from the many who must have applied!"  Me, me, me...  I began to worry that everyone must think me a terrible conceited ass.  But the whole experience has been one of positive reinforcement and harmonic convergence.  I truly think that I'm experiencing one of those manifestations we read about in the hippy dippy literature.  "Open yourself to the Universe and change will come for you."  I know that when this blog was born of the ashes of Scrawlspace in May, there was no such place – in my experience, anyway – as Bentonville, Arkansas. 

As my last day at the Sam draws near, however, things get pressurized, and my choices get fuzzier.  There is so much to do and I want to do it right – to leave things in proper order, to tie up the loose ends. I know there's no way I'll get it all tied down, but I'm scrambling to try to do so.  Scrambling at home, too, trying to juggle packing and organizing and feeling bad about the time I don't have to spend with family or my boyfriend or friends... arguing by email and text message with the X... and through all of it trying to save up a little special time with Grayson. This is his last week at home before he goes to spend a week and a half with his grandparents in New Mexico and El Paso.  It's his last week in this home, as well, and I'm painfully aware that he's aware that our time here is drawing to a close... that after Friday, the next time we see each other will be in Arkansas.  I'm doing what I can to make the transition as painless as possible, but I'm also under a lot of pressure, and sometimes I'm short tempered or grouchy or unreasonable. 

Yesterday I snapped at him because he was picking at me to help him synch his Nintendo DS with the Wii. Of course, I know nothing about it, plus the wifi is wonky the last few days, and then when I nearly erased his game, he snatched the controller out of my hand and I snapped.  I felt terrible about it instantly, but I made him cry, and I just couldn't apologize enough.  How do you explain grown-up stress to a kid?  There are so many complicated factors to my stew of emotions, I don't fully understand it myself.  I'm excited and fearful. Exhausted and exhilarated. Anxious and ebulient.  As usual, my boy was preternaturally perceptive and kind.  In fact, he was so gentle and solicitous with me all evening that I felt even more guilty about my waspish, un-mom-like behavior. When will I start being the mother I should be and want to be, and stop being this overgrown kid who's in over her head?

In the final days, I just have to keep my head down and keep moving. I know that I asked the Universe for this chance, and now it's up to me to reach out and take it.  Chaos, as I said at the beginning of this blog, is my patron saint.  Out of chaos are all things born. So I just grope my way forward through the maelstrom and have faith I'll come safely – and sanely – through the other side.