Hole in the Hourglass

   Life flies by when we're not looking. It's a fact that we've been warned to prepare for since we were children. Childhood is a flash, school is a blur. Some of us marry, and "settle down" - what a joke - some of us hunt for our purpose in life. Some of us just wander.
  
   Technology both saves our lives and sucks it out of us. We sit at our computer one day in our teens and before we know it, we're only leaving the house for funerals and doctor's appointments; companioned only by our empty photo albums and faltering memories.

   The hole in the proverbial hourglass.

   This is MY journey to plug that hole and live my life...OUR life.

   I am a mother of two who works from home. I have two sons and a spirited husband. We like to think we're a typical suburban family, with a dog, two cats, three vehicles and a 5 bedroom, 2 bath house in a decent neighborhood in the middle of Long Island, New York.

   We're not.

   Our eldest son has Muscular Dystrophy, a disease that gradually deteriorates every muscle in his body. MD is the invisible thief. It started with his legs, stealing his ability to climb the stairs on the slide at the playground when he was only three...and it will end with his heart, sometime in the future.

   As one can imagine, this has had a major impact on our lives. My husband and I found out about this genetic killer when my youngest son was just four months old. Looking back, I realize our youngest son has never known what it feels like to live a "normal" life. At least our eldest had that luxury for five years.

   As our eldest son's condition worsened, we became hermits of sorts. I stopped attending church immediately after the diagnosis. I stopped working shortly after. Since he now relies on a wheelchair for mobility, we are restricted from going to certain locations and nearly all of our friends' and family's homes.

   We have become a family disconnected.

    Oh, we appear connected alright from the outside. Our home is loaded with state-of-the-art technology including iPhones and laptops, multi-room DVR system on each of our four 800-channel-cable boxes. Wi-fi, Cloud, Wii, Playstation III and other systems that I can't remember, all connected online. A cellphone boost tower in our living room to better power the phones that we all have on our person at every minute of the day...and that's not to mention the required electronics that we depend on to keep our eldest going with his disability. The boy could open a shop with all of his gadgets.

   No, we're not connected to us.

   We lose hours and hours to our "upgraded technologies." We do share a family dinner every night at the table but even that is dulled by buzzing cellphones, the drone of the television , and kids who want to rush back to their game system/movie/chat.

   Time is not a friend of ours in the first place and yet we continue to slam the door in its face.

   Before we know it, all of our sandy minutes will be used up. Gone. Vanished. Remember the empty photo albums and faltering memories? This is where they come into play.

   I'm taking the initiative to savor the minutes. I don't have a concrete plan yet, but I would like to spend more uninterrupted time with my family, bonding over cooking and gardening. I'd like to see the sun at least once a day. Bask in it! Get our hands dirty! Plant something! Play in the yard!

   I admire the people who have taken to "living off the grid" and I would love to steer my family toward that way of life. I don't think we will ever reach that lofty goal of being totally self-sufficient but it would be wonderful to stop being wasteful and start caring about our planet and our home. It's going to be hard and it's going to cause some issues at first but my hope is that maybe we can pile up enough togetherness and memories to make the hole in our hourglass a little less noticeable.

   I'm going to start by shutting the damn computer down.