I live with my mom

How did I get here? Well let’s start where I am now and we will get back here together.

My name is Jamie, and I am a forty-something mother to a nine-year-old boy, a daughter to a 77-year-old unicorn (that will make sense sooner than later) and a wife to a go with the flow husband of 13 years (together for almost 20) that humors me with my outlandish ideas and plans. I spend my nights saving the babies and my days rushing out the door to catch the school bus, wrangling our combined four dogs, relishing in the time I get with my mom in our own home and waking up fifteen times because I am sure I am going to sleep through my alarm to go gather my kiddo from the school bus. On the weekends you can find me watching my kid do his best “Ronaldo” impersonation on the soccer field, watching him perfect his front flip on the trampoline, calculating his “miles per hour” in the 37-meter dash in front of our house or listening to him “film” to his imaginary “chat”. My husband works a regular schedule day job and sometimes he is solo parenting so I can sleep during the day. There are many benefits to having only one child, but the exhausting part is the entertainment of the child falls directly on the parents. At least so far. I am sure I will miss it when he has his own friends and a little more freedom but for now, elderly parenting of a young child is not for the faint of heart and can pose challenging for my artificial hip when he wants to kick the ball for hours on end. So, you may wonder why I titled my writings “I live with my mom”. Short story that will turn long is that my dad died, my mom got cancer, and I not so gently encouraged her to live with us so that I can keep her alive without an hour round trip commute and frantic phone calls to her neighbors when she didn’t answer my call. Now we have settled into a lovely home full of laughter, pillows and dogs. The only thing I can confirm in my years is that life is challenging, sometimes more than others, but there is always something to bring happiness, you just have to make sure you don’t miss it. I’ll take you through some mundane days and nights and sprinkle in the laughter, I’ll show you how we got here filling our buckets along the way.