What I Would Have Missed

Welp, in true Indie form, it looks like my uveitis is back. For those of you who don’t know, it is an autoimmune condition that impacts your eye. We’ve already ruled out the brain tumor playing a lead part in this and yes, I’m seeing another one of my specialists to help with the flare. Besides the pain, I was more annoyed than anything else as I had cleared the weekend for some screen time to organize and work on some projects.

So I took it as a sign to spend time outside. Resting, which I’m not especially good at, and puttering around the garden emptying out beds to get them ready for fall. Which somehow resulted in placing a much bigger Home Depot order than I had any intention of at the start of this weekend. But more on that in another post.

Here’s the incredible part I wasn’t expecting, Jacob decided he was going to spend the weekend at home with us. We had him to ourselves, which at 26 is not something I assumed I’d still get. Cooking, laughing, just doing things together. If you haven’t had a couple of days like that with your grown kid and you get the chance, I highly recommend it.

For those of you who don’t know, my son is a glassblower. When we found this piece of land, one of the things that came with it was an old barn. When I say old, I mean dilapidated. It came with a fox, and I’m sure a few other houseguests I did not personally invite, and years of things left behind by whoever was here before us. Jacob is slowly bringing it back to life as his glassblowing studio. What else it turns into, no clue, but that’s the fun of it. We dream, we ideate, we see what’s possible and then figure out how to fund it (man lumber is expensive).

I walked down to see him while he was clearing more of it out, getting ready to do a little light construction. He knows I’ve been begging him for another one of those little beehive watering stations he made me. So he rigged up his torch, set up his tanks, grabbed a rod of glass, and started.

It was mesmerizing. It wasn’t only watching him work, it was the conversations we had while he was doing it. I even got to give it a whirl. I filmed some of it too, because people find it so fascinating, and then the two of us sat and edited the video together and laughed our way through trying to pick the music. I’m including it here in case you don’t follow me on IG (also hint… https://www.instagram.com/indielee shameless plug but I’m trying to get to 10K).

If I had spent the weekend in front of my screen doing what I’d planned, I would have missed the whole experience. Why do I keep needing to relearn this? It must be my type A personality.

Sometimes the thing that stopped you is the thing that moved you. Not always. I am not going to tell you every hard day arrives with a gift attached, but it’s happened often enough that I have stopped assuming an interruption is a loss.

This weekend, it turned out to be what I needed.

XO, Indie