Today was grand­par­ents’ day at the kids’ new school. They all had such a great time, but the kids real­ly missed Mama and rushed back home. They had PLANS, giv­en the ear­ly release, and that includ­ed a park. So I loved on them, then spent some time pay­ing atten­tion to ME. 

Get­ting ready now is a dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence. I actu­al­ly have time to (try to!) do some­thing with my hair, a lit­tle bit of make-up. I con­struct an out­fit and try things I didn’t before. Because his opin­ion doesn’t mat­ter any­more. If he were to see me, he’d prob­a­bly have a ton of neg­a­tive things to say. 

I’m real­iz­ing just how much I heard his crit­i­cism as a con­stant under­cur­rent through my mind. But I’m no longer under his spir­i­tu­al author­i­ty or cov­er­ing. So I’ll try some­thing, and see if I like it. And if I don’t, I’ll try some­thing else.

Back to the point. We went to a park and played for hours. Then my Mama spidey-sens­es start­ed to go off when I saw a van park, then fol­low, park, then fol­low us, as we walked around the path. We quick­ly left, and I found anoth­er park clos­er to home. And what an amaz­ing park it is! My daugh­ter shrieked, squealed, screamed! in excite­ment when she saw it. And we were off to the races. 

My son just want­ed to be on the swings. I watched him fly so high, bliss on his face for so long. And my heart ached, know­ing that bliss was soon to disappear. 

After 2.5 hours of play­ing, I called them to a seclud­ed bench and told them we had to have a seri­ous con­ver­sa­tion. I can’t even han­dle recount­ing the whole thing here right now. Here’s what I man­aged to text a friend afterwards.