Banana Bread

The kids and I made three loaves of banana bread today. It was fun to watch Buckaroo mash the bananas while Polly ran the mixer. The recipe belonged to Reader Number Two, my bonus mother. She used to make it for me about twice a year when I was younger. Hopefully my bread will be half as good as hers. Today's memories were good. We had fun and laughed.

Then I sat back and reflected upon my blog journal entries for the past year. What a year! This time last year we were in the early stages of closing the accidental business. We knew it was coming, but not when. Mr. Ex-Partner was peppering me with lots of questions, most he didn't like the answer to anyway. It was as if, he knew what the logical course of action happened to be but was hoping for a simpler and happier outcome. Sorry 'bout that.

Closing the business was emotional, but the true, raw emotion consumed me a couple of years before we made the decision to close. When the inevitable was in front of us the process was mechanical, though once in a while self-doubt and self-disapproval haunted me. Moving on wasn't tough, I was ready. Looking back, it was probably for the best that I had emotionally unattached myself a couple years prior.

The truth is, I know I did everything I could. There were other circumstances too. I learned. My conscience is clear. The end.

Growing away from that chapter of our lives this past few months has been interesting. Of course, the past four months and one day have stunted me a bit, as I mourned my dear friend and mother-by-heart. But now I smile when I make her banana bread. But looking back, I can see I have been healing from the accidental business stuff too. It wasn't only financial that plagues me. It is that fourteen years went by without a better ultimate outcome. If I hadn't done this, where would my life had taken me, I wonder.

Would I have been more emotionally available to my children and their education? Would we have needed my income? Would I have gotten terribly ill in 2009, to the point where I needed surgery in March and thought for sure my life was over that October? In those situations, there isn't room to panic because it takes too much strength. I didn't have it. Both illnesses I attribute to stress. Would we have had a nice retirement nest egg by now, or would we have squandered the money because we didn't know any better and only through this accidental business process did we learn these lessons? These are things I wonder.

My children don't feel like they were abandoned--I have asked. They don't feel like they "missed out" a childhood or specifically, additional opportunities. They tell me they have happy memories in the past 14 years of our family being a family and special times with me. I am glad to hear that. Hopefully making banana bread will be another memory for them too.