Weathering the Storm

Deep inside the brambly marriage of a rosebush and a climbing trumpet vine in the backyard is a nest, where a tiny new-hatched cardinal baby waits next to an unhatched speckled egg, it's mouth wide open and ready for its mother and father to deposit food. When the parent birds come, the baby makes no sounds, but the proud cardinal parents chirp and sing and squeak as they patrol the backyard, hunt for bugs, and care for their baby. Since it hatched, there have been two huge lighting storms, with torrential rains, and I often think about the baby bird and wonder if it's able to curl up into a tight ball and withstand the rain, or if it's mother is standing over it, protecting it from the tempest. Meanwhile, there have been four human babies running around the yard, squealing and squalling, laughing and jumping, swimming and sunning, having a grand adventure during the week they've been here at their grandparents' house. My sister and her brood have come to roost with us here for a week and a half while they transition from Idaho to Raleigh. They're moving back East, to be close to the family, to start fresh, to try new opportunities. And I've been so glad to spend time with my two nieces and two nephews. There has been no time to blog, of course. Anyone who spends all day playing with four kids, or has planned a wedding must know that.

I'm grateful to my mom who insisted that I get my own bedroom in the house even though everyone else has to share and squish and sleep on floors. There are some perqs to being the bride-to-be, apparently. So I have had a place to escape to when the family drama gets too hot, or the kids too demanding, or I just want to talk on the phone to C in a quiet place. In fact, the past few days I have felt like I am in the eye of a turbulent storm. People all around me clash and have differences and not everyone in my family gets along with each other, and there have been (minor) setbacks with wedding plans and things like that, but at the center of it all I am still just floating along in my bubble, able to brush aside things that might have once felled me, but which now seem so insignificant in comparison to the joy and love I feel toward my fiance, and the excitement of being married to him. If the entire world fell apart and my whole entire wedding went haywire, as long as we could be together none of the chaos would matter to me. It sounds so cheesy to write it out like that, but it's true.

Yesterday was a hard day. I can't really talk about it because it involves deeply personal issues within my family. Suffice it to say that it was a long and exhausting day both emotionally and mentally, but at the end of it was the dinner where my parents were going to meet C's parents for the first time. I knew that C would be waiting for me at the restaurant, and that when he embraced me, the world's cares would slough away, and all would we well with the world. He was, and they did, and it is. The world is inherently riddled with day to day problems as well as huge catastrophes every once in a while, but when I close my eyes and lean my head on C's strong shoulder and he whispers "Everything is going to be all right," then I can't help but believe him.