Page 5 of Big Island Sunset
Somehow, she had added an entire business on top of that.
It had absorbed the time that she used to spend preparing food for her own family, because now they ate the meals that she cooked in bulk for delivery. She had sacrificed her animals (literally, in some cases). She’d sold the cows that her daughters loved and downsized in a dozen different ways. Her garden was neglected and overgrown.
And even so, it felt as if she could never quite catch up.
Cody handled all of the deliveries and kept the jungle from swallowing their land. Piper kept the chickens alive, and Paige took care of the rabbits. They all pitched in to help her with the goats and geese and dogs.
And even with all of their help, Tara was drowning.
The hard thing was that there was no part of her life that she didn’t love.
She loved living on a piece of land that was bursting with life. She loved her animals. She loved to cook, and she was proud of the business that she had built from the ground up. Above all, she loved having her children home with her every day – or most days, at least, now that Cody worked multiple jobs and the twins attended Pualena Playschool three days a week.
Andthatwas the hard thing. She loved every part of her life, and yet she felt like she was too scattered and busy to truly enjoy any of it. She was constantly sacrificing things that were important to her – like time with her children – to keep a roof over their heads.
She wasn’t willing to give up her goats or put the girls in school full time or let the quality of her meals slide. She could never abandon her dogs or rehome the two macaws that she inherited from her mother.
What she really wanted was to reclaim the things that she had lost: more time with her children, more time in her garden… never mind time to read or just sit back and catch up with the man she loved. Whenever she took even half a day to rest – and those reprieves were few and far between – work piled up in a dozen different places.
People talked about building a life that you loved, but no one talked about the tremendous amount of work required to maintain it.
She’d created a life that she loved, and it had swallowed her whole.
Something had to change, but she didn’t know what – or how to make it happen.
“Hey Mom?” Piper popped up on the opposite side of the counter holding their favorite board game. “Do you have time for Catan?”
Tara scanned the food that she had on the stove, calculating the remaining cooking time, how long it would take to cool, the time needed for evening milking… and then she looked into her daughter’s hopeful amber eyes.
“Sure, let’s play.”
“Yes!” Piper tossed the box onto their dining table and ran down the hall. “Paige! Cody! Catan!”
Tara peeked into the oven and then turned down all of the burners on the stove. Each turn in Catan tended to run long, so she would have plenty of time to monitor everything as they played. She would be up late packing up tomorrow’s meals, but that was already inevitable.
“Help me clear off the table,” she said when Piper ran back in.
They stacked up all the detritus of life with homeschooled kids – crumpled papers, library books, workbooks, journals, art projects, science experiments – and cleared off the dining table to make room for their game. Piper set up the interlocking pieces and additional tiles that created a different map each time they played.
Paige came out wearing full stage makeup; Tara stared for a minute and then let it slide.
Cody walked in dragging his feet, looking morose. Apparently Juniper still hadn’t responded to his texts and missed calls – either that or she had broken up with him. Tara very much wanted to know which, but she wasn’t going to grill him in front of his sisters.
“Is there anything to eat?” Paige asked. “I’m starved.”
“Nothing’s ready yet,” Tara said apologetically. What a strange existence, to spend her entire day cooking while her children scrounged for themselves. “Let’s see what we can cobble together.”
While Piper finished setting out all the cards and game pieces, Paige helped Tara pull together a platter of food: lots of sliced veggies, a bowl of ‘ulu hummus, and the last of their goat cheese. Cody emerged from the garage with some canned goodies from the previous year: pickled longbeans and li hing mui mango.
“It’s a feast!” Paige declared.
“Come on!” Piper said. “Roll to see who goes first! I got a nine.”
They were halfway through their snack platter and just one round into their game when someone knocked on the front door.
Piper looked up, puzzled. “The dogs didn’t bark.”
“Juniper.” Cody jumped to his feet, chair scraping against the tile floor.
