One year ago.
20 September 2018
Today I was pedaling home from an appointment and spotted a tiny guy walking his vintage Fisher Price pull-toy dog, exactly the one I’d had and loved. He was excited to see me, kept saying “HI!” in his biggest voice.
When I said hello, and he bent over laughing, grasping his knees like an old man.
“You’re walking your dog!”
And he popped right up, looked behind him, astonished, and his eyes and mouth became perfect, round O’s.
Then I wondered, what if adults behaved the way children do, with so much enthusiasm and delight?
And then I remembered my staff meeting yesterday.
My favorite student walked in, spread his arms wide, and in his best movie announcer voice, said, “NICOLE! I had… a FEVER… last weekend! I HAVE MONO!”
I was making some jokes about “the kissing disease” when another favorite boy walked in, looking lost and confused. I said hello, and he looked around and muttered, “Where is my husband? When will he return from war?”
“Who is your husband?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” *sigh* “I guess I’ll find out when he gets back from war.”
My work re-entry this last month has been hard. Post Mortal Peril, my brain has dumped so much information that I’ve had to relearn almost every damn thing. I have to think hard to remember events last year, students’ names. I’m tired. I don’t have time to write. It’s just hard.
Thank heavens I have these loony kids on my staff.
I was not yet weeping every day I wrote this. That would come a week or so later, when I’d count it a good day if I could hold off on the crying until after the noon hour.
The previous August I had spent a glorious ten days in Sitka, Alaska, house-sitting for friends. My sole responsibilities were feeding the cats and myself and watering a few plants. I took walks, met many lovely people, practiced fiddle tunes in the evening, and whipped out a draft of my book proposal.
By October, I was so strung out with exhaustion that when friends would ask about the book, I would have entirely forgotten that I had written 40,000 words.
Today, another year of healing and a new doctor who listens and has an actual damn plan to get me “back to medically boring,” and the world is new. Or, you know. Better.
I have the energy now to go to my job AND do other things. Like this “platform” for my “marketing plan,” gods help me. I foolishly spent the summer working on content, not realizing that even with the help of kind James at WPBeginner it would take infinity weeks to get launched. But, this website, with my own domain, is finally here, hallelujah.
And in the last week I have written two article drafts, a long-form essay, Sunday School with Ted Bundy and a shorter essay about my trip last July to explore natural burial sites with my friend Barbara.
Every day is a miracle.