August 4, 2024

Breathing Just a Little Easier

With a house full of 8 of us and various visitors coming and going, when just one person is not at home it changes the dynamic and quite honestly, for me, it allows me to breathe just a little bit easier.

I am an extrovert and I live large gatherings, though I do have some social anxiety around individuals I don’t know well until I get to know them. But when one of my children goes and spends a night or two with the paternal grandparents or when another is at camp or when Dad spends the day playing golf or my husband is at work….I breathe a little easier.

I want them to return of course, and I begin to miss them (some more than others sooner- highly dependent on recent attitudes, behaviors, possible disagreements) after a couple of days. But at first I can feel myself take a deep breath.

It’s one less person who will interrupt my focus or need something from me. It’s one less possible variable in the realm of potential conflicts. The potential for conflict goes up exponentially when all 8 of us are here and when just one is at his robotics club meeting or another is playing at a friend’s house, the potential for overall conflict options goes down.

The noise seems to decrease even more so than it actually does. The messes should decrease, but that never seems to happen. But it’s truly a thing. My almost 9-year-old is spending a couple of nights away from us and going to a couple of stores with 3 kids instead of 4 seemed to happen more simply today. And I didn’t have to think about whether that son or my husband would hate what I was making for dinner tonight because my husband was at a work dinner and neither of them were here to eat it (still had one out of three kids whining and trying to refuse it- it was spaghetti and meatballs, I mean, come on).

It’s a little easier to breathe when one or more steps out and even when the dog is at the groomer it’s like a mini vacay in my mind.