Accidental Peace

Here it is Friday and I'm just now posting about Tuesday. That's how this week has been.

I've told you before that a babysitter watches the girls for me every Tuesday evening. Being a full-time stay-at-home mom who does the accounting and taxes for our eleven-year-old home-based business (that operates in three states no less), meets the needs of our special-needs girl and deals with rheumatoid arthritis, well, I've got to do something to save my sanity. That something includes hiring a babysitter once a week.

You would think this would be a no-brainer: hire a sitter, do something re-creational, come home revitalized and ready to take on another six-and-a-half days, another 156 hours, another 9,360 minutes...you get the idea. However, it's not a complete no-brainer. Leaving requires that I have a meal prepared, the girls have their homework completed, and everyone (read: Hannah) has clean pajamas and pull-ups.

Once I leave...where do I go? I have approximately four hours. Do I spend two of them driving to and from Joplin? If not and I stay in our small town (population 2000), what do I do? Pizza Hut? The library? I've done all of the above. Some Tuesdays I come home more revitalized than others. When the weather is nice I sit in the local park surrounded by beautiful landscaping and a fantastic natural bluff overlooking the river I hear flowing 75 feet below. On these colder, darker winter Tuesdays I often sit at the small-town Carnegie library with headphones plugged into my laptop, listening to relaxing music while I sit in a comfy chair reading a book, uninterrupted...well, except for the occasional friend or acquaintance who says hello and carries on a brief conversation.

This past Tuesday I read Simple Abundance by Sara Ban Breathnach while sitting at the library, pondering my wants versus my needs and being pummelled by the sounds of rambunctious kids in the next room (no headphones that night). I returned home an hour later to deliver money to the sitter so she could take the girls to the local basketball game. Afterwards I returned to the library for an hour, but frankly...I just wanted to go home.

I pulled into the garage thirty minutes before the girls were scheduled to return from the game. Entering my kitchen, I was met by...silence. Complete silence. I wandered through my dark house for a couple of minutes, closing curtains and relishing the solitude of my quiet cocoon. My heartbeat slowed, my breaths deepened. After lighting several candles, I sat down in the flickering light with a plate of my homemade chicken tetrazzini and a glass of wine to listen to the nothingness.

The phone didn't ring, dogs didn't bark, nothing stopped the stillness. I savored thirty solid minutes, 1,800 seconds, of accidental peace.