Relevance

This post goes with my last one which I just wrote a few hours ago.  In the last post, I was irrelevant; now I'm relevant.  Here's how.

I didn't get much sleep last night- it was just a few short hours ago that I posted (about being irrelevant)  before going to bed.  When my alarm went off at 6am, I was not amused.  I ignored it longer than usual. 

The Child has to be on his school bus before 7am, which I think is rather ridiculous, but the school board never consulted with me......The Child is most definitely NOT a morning person, so I have little choice but to drive the lifeless child to his bus stop half a mile from our house to increase my odds of getting him on that bus.

Unbelievably, he sleeps in the car as I drive the half mile to the bus stop and since he's already asleep, I don't awaken him until the bus is actually in sight.  (It's pitch black outside at that hour!)  This morning was no different from the usual routine up to this point.

I always get out of the car and walk with The Child to the door of the bus.  He's in 7th  grade now, and it may seem a bit, shall we say, overprotective?  The other mothers do not accompany their boys to the bus- they remain seated in their SUVs and mini vans.  I have wondered if it bothers The Child that I do that.  He never says anything, so I persist, even though last week I found myself wondering why I do it.  What do I think I'm protecting him from?

Well, today I found out.  As we exited the car and started crossing the street to the bus stop, a car came careening around the corner, heading directly toward The Child who, although upright and walking, was still partially asleep.  I miraculously came to life and shoved The Child as hard as I could out of the speeding car's path.  Heart racing, I yelled at the driver,  "S-L-O-W  D-O-W-N !!!!!!" before picking The Child up off the ground and guiding him to the bus.

Everybody who witnessed this event was speechless.  Had The Child been unaccompanied by his hovering mother, the result would have been tragic.

As Annie said in her comment on my last post, even though my caring sister is gone, my relevance is not.  Lesson learned.

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Irrelevance

Most likely, balance will always elude me.  This month, I'm lucky if I focus on 2 things each day (jogging and work) instead of one (work).  And that's seems to be as good as it gets.  Somehow, when my sister died last month, my life derailed as far as organization and domestic responsibility.  I suppose the unplanned trip to Boston to deliver her eulogy threw things off, and I never recovered.

Most of the time I keep busy, enough that I "forget" she's gone.  But it hit last week.  There was big news at work, and my reflex was to inform my sister, the only person in my family who had any interest whatsoever in my life.  When it hit me that she was no longer there for me to send press releases, news articles and videos to, I broke down.

I have lost relevance.

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