Busy, busy, busy

I have dreaded the month of September since last September, but it is going so fast that I haven't had too much time to think. I have to be gone from school tomorrow, so I spent today trying to get lesson plans ready. Friday night we have concert tickets to Sugarland, Saturday morning I have to give the ACT and then go home to watch ballgames. Sunday is always busy; next Tuesday and Thursday are those long days when we do parent-teacher conferences. Next Friday is a day off. That's the day I'm worried about. Last year I did a lot of cleanup outside on that day, the day before our family was forever changed. I'm going to pray for good weather that day, so I can do physical, exhausting work--the kind that makes you sleep good.
I'm trying to exercise daily because it makes me feel better, so I'm not at home all evening to think about this time last year. For some reason the one thing I used to be able to do to take my mind off worries or grief is not working with this. I used to be able to read when I needed an escape, but that doesn't work now. I can't escape this. I have ordered a Max Lucado book called For the Tough Times that I'm hoping will give me some good advice about how to step into year two.
I have some books on grief that people gave me last year; I may get them out and re-read them.
My friends are trying to help. They are inviting me to go to happy movies and banning me from some of the sad ones out right now. They don't have to worry; I
don't want to see any movie that had a sad story to tell. Life is sad enough; I don't need to make sadness a part of my entertainment, but I never really have done that.
I keep thinking of Jason--the person he grew to be from the baby and boy we raised. What do I remember most about him as a baby. He was always happy; he loved to eat; he was loving and cuddly and wanted to be rocked. The child was never sick. I think he was over a year old before he ever had a doctor's appointment for anything but a well-baby checkup. Somehow he knew we didn't have the money to go the the doctor and to buy medicine. He took his first steps at my mom and dad's house at eight months. When he was about four months old, we visited my brother's house. They had a huge aquarium. Jason would sit in a bean bag in front of those fish and just be mezmerized by those colorful fish. He would look out the door at our house and say, "doors" when he wanted to go outside. Most kids say "side" but not Jason; he spent a lot of time with my parents and Tony's parents and his baby sitter. I don't know which one of them taught him to say doors, but I'm sure one of them did. We took him to the zoo when he was a year old. If the animal was big and had four legs, it was a Hor (horse); if it was small, it was a Dau (dog). As he grew older he played with my long hair to go to sleep. When he was four, he had to take his naps with a little girl named Toby at daycare because her hair felt like mine. He loved horses and anything to do with horses. He spent hours as a little boy pretending to move imaginary cows around the corrals and pens. He loved to be read to. When he was little and it was time for bed, he would go get a stack of books, as many as he could carry, and climb up in my lap. If I stopped reading for a second, he would reach up and hit my mouth and say, "Read, Momma." It used to make me so mad. One of his favorite books was the most annoying book, but he loved to hear it. It was Hi all you Rabbits. My mom, Janna, Phyllis, and I all read it so often that we had it memorized. It was at my mom's house, and I never volunteered to take it home with us. We would hide it, but he always found it.
It said, Hi all you rabbits, what do you do? Hop and Stop Hop and stop, that's what all rabbits do. Hi all you horses what do you do? Whiny and gallop, Whiny and gallop; that's what all horses do. Then it continued with several other animals. Why do kids like that kind of book?
What's interesting to me--these memories don't make me sad. That precious baby has been gone for so long. What I do grieve is that he never got to have the experience of bringing a child into the world and watching that child grow.
I know he had bonded with the children of many of his friends, but that's not the same.