Intensity

I swear, I did not know this about myself.  I am, like, the least insightful person on the planet.

Today, in two separate conversations, it was brought home to me that my life has been lived a bit on the, shall we say, intense side.

"You didn't lose your mother in your fifties, and not to an illness. You lost your mother AND your brother, when you were seven, in an instant."

How many times have other women said to me, "I don't see how I could have finished school, college, law school, without my mother"? 

I've just said, "Um hmm."  It's not unusual to me; it's my life.

"You didn't have one baby the first time; you had two."

How many times have other women who have had twins later in the sequence of childbearing said to me, "This is completely different; I had no idea"?

I had a bit of a sense of that, because when Marissa was born it seemed that she was the easiest baby in the world; as if I could just tuck her into my pocket and go. Just one small baby.  Four or five hours of consecutive sleep, every night in a row.

"You lost a child, and he didn't just die; he died of suicide."

It has been only in the past couple of months that a friend whose son died shortly before Josh did has lost a friend to suicide and said, "I had no idea what you were talking about.  This is completely different."

That I did know.

And this afternoon, as we talked this all over, my son said to me, "Mom, you live at a VERY high level of intensity.  You have a lot of things you care about doing, and you insist upon doing them all well."

Hmmmm.

Maybe it's time to move to a secluded little adobe house in a desert somewhere.  I could spend a couple of years watching roadrunners be intense.