Letting Go

Last night I said goodbye to a good friend as she finished her time as a pH.D student here in Cleveland and now has to run full force into the next phase. The Post Doc. She picked Miami as the place to spend this part of her career which has the potential of lasting almost forever. Smart girl.
Last night it was rainy and chilly. As I hugged my friend goodbye I joked that she would never have to be that cold again. I will miss her.

When summer loosens her grip on the world, I must do a lot of letting go as well. I love summer--I am like summer at my worst. I squeeze and squeeze, explode into furious storms, and sometimes start out as a gentle day that fizzles into a relentless heat.

Still, I have a hard time letting go. The leaves are growing tired and brown and you have to strain to hear the rise and fall of the cicada song throughout the day. I will miss her.

Reminder from the Universe, aka Patti Digh.

It is 6-something AM. I just sat down at my computer to open my work email, with apologies swarming around in my mind to tell my boss about why I am not caught up on this and that. Instead I find an email from the amazing Patti Digh, author of the blog called 37 days (look to the right of this page and click on 37 days, every day) AND a book called Life is a Verb. From what I have heard, Life is a Verb is a book that should just be read. By everyone. So go do it.

I was so struck by her urging to think and write about what we would do if we had 37 days to live. Not too long ago, I took up the challenge and sent it to her. I was surprised at my own loss of words. Usually I have so much to say about death, as I have devoted so much time and energy to hospice. My book shelves are filled with titles that contain the word "dying." My dream is to counsel humans through the beautiful transition of death and show that death is a remarkable opportunity for healing and letting go. However, when it came to writing about my own last 37 days, I felt small, like I had nothing to say.

The responses that she has been posting from other readers are so moving, I did not feel my words could match up.
They may not. It does not matter. Part of the deal of dying, which we are all doing, is to stop caring about those things. But look!

http://37days.typepad.com/37days/2008/08/day-10-remember.html

If you read what I wrote, you will see that another part of the dying deal is to stop apologizing. This is almost impossible for me, but at least for today, I will not send the apology emails that I intended to send to work folks. I will just simply start my day.

The part that makes my heart jump is when she says she is in Cleveland in early November. Coffee with someone who devotes her time to making people feel connected and focused on the important things in life? It has been a long time...

Signs of Loneliness?

I have been working since 4:30 AM. It is now 5:44. In that short period of time, I have had two spiders crawl up my arms, and I did not have the heart to kill them. No, I am not sitting here with spiders crawling through my hair, I did move them and say, "crawl in my coffee and I will take you down and every other thing with more than two legs in this house."
Yes, this includes my cats.

Communication-shmaken

I guess I can add "to teach the names of animals" to my list of reasons why having a child is a good thing. This will be added right behind "to eventually clean my house" and "a good excuse not to travel for every holiday because she is no longer free to fly." Now my pro-child list is longer than my con-child list, which consists of "sometimes makes me want to jump out of a window" and "exhausting."

Anyway, this morning Sophia was holding a plastic figurine of an animal that came as a part of a Go! Diego! Go! Rescue Pack set I bought for her. I was thinking that the only good thing about this toy was that the noise feature that constantly screamed AHHHHH! RESCUE PACK! COMING TO THE RESCUE! broke within a day. That was the only good thing until this morning when she held up the animal that resembles a dog with an extra chromosome, but what do I know, since no one seems to care about this genetic probability with all of the pure-breeding that goes on in the dog world.

"Mmm-hmm, Dog," I muttered over my lukewarm coffee.
Sophia twisted up her face and stared at me point blank. "Tapir!"
Honestly, I thought this was toddler mumbo-jumbo and correcter her, "Yup. Dog. Maybe wolf. Do you like wolves?" I thought I should get a mom-of-the-day award for having such an interactive conversation at 7 am.
"Nooooo, Tapir!" She held the thing up higher.
I sighed, "No, that is not tape in your hair. That is yogurt in your hair. It is sticky like tape though, and there is no way that we are going to get a brush though it, so you just going to have to walk around with it sticking out of your head for the day because there is no way I am giving you two baths."
This caused her to move onto something else, as I felt the mom award slip away. However, after that last bit of coffee converted itself to brain cells I had a memory of an animal from the Zoo? or Biology Class? with the name Tapir.

I had to check it out. Lo and behold.
At least one of us is paying attention.

What will I be drinking by Friday?

Motor oil?

Husband is leaving town for 6 days.
Childcare provider is also out of town.
Have quite a stack of work that is piling up.
So, that will be it for a week...me, trying to negotiate with a toddler about, oh, EVERYTHING, while pretending to be a professional, toxicology consultant at the same time. And, OUCH!, and, GRRRR, and ARGH, I just got my period.

I still know I am lucky. A new day is dawning before my eyes and I am about to see it. Not every human in the world can say that today. I try to remember that when things start to fly out of my illusion of control. I call it getting back to the fundamentals. As in, Oh! I woke up! Okay. Go. March ahead.

So am I kidding about the motor oil? We'll see.

Signs of Neglect

My two-year-old daughter just zerberted her own belly.

Tomorrow morning I expect she will be waiting for me to wake, sitting at the kitchen table, reading the paper and drinking a cup of coffee.

Back

I would like to say that I am back. I am sick with a chest cold though, and I am finding it hard sit up, let alone write.
So much is going on in the world right now, I mean The World, not my little world, that I feel like the earth could reverse the direction of it's spin. It does not scare me, it distracts me.
It makes every day of my comfortable, blessed life seem _____________?
Help me fill in the blank.