Reinvention

So many kind people have reached out to me lately wanting to know how I am doing now that Timothy is away at college. The truth is, I don’t know.

Everything happened so quickly. You live with someone for 18 years and then one day you drive them somewhere, and leave them there, and your husband then spends the entire drive home patting you on the shoulder because you cannot stop crying.

So yes, I had my ugly cry, but I’m fine. Really. It’s just been strange sorting through the emotions of not having a child in the house anymore. Yes, there are empty hangers in the closet, the grocery bill has plummeted, and it is quiet when Joe has to go out of town, but mostly I feel the need to reinvent myself because there is no denying that life now is different.

The last time I reinvented myself was in 2007 when I decided to start writing about family life and all the funny, crazy, aggravating, loving, inexplicable things boys do. Set within the framework of faith and my Italian heritage, I started my blog, La Dolce Vita, the Sweet Life with Three Sons. The blog opened doorways I never imagined: Steve Crawford published several of my articles in the Columbia Country News Times, I had an op-ed published in The Augusta Chronicle, I was invited to speak at The Sacred Heart Garden Festival, and I began working as a contract writer for Catholic Stewardship Consultants. When I published my book and gave book talks, the blog was the source of material for both. Even the idea of sponsoring the Girls’ Trips to Italy was born of the blog.

But if everything I write is grounded in my little blog and my sweet life with three sons, and if now my muses—Nicholas, Jonathan, Timothy—aren’t here anymore, what then? Who will I write about now? Will my life still be sweet? Will my days be as interesting or funny? Will I be as interesting and funny? These questions sent me into a little panic the other day. I mean, I already like to wear black and now I’m going to be uninteresting and boring?

Deep down I know this is a transition period and it is okay to feel different, to change, to shift a little.  Acceptance will come, along with the peace that this is as it should be, and it is going to be okay.

And it will be okay. Even if I have to reinvent myself.

An Ocean, an Airplane, and Two Countries Full of Kisses 

(sketch, Chapter 2)