Vivid Living

All week I’ve been a grump. Blame it on a full plate and empty fuel tank.  You know how it goes…squeezing work and then writing time on my off days, hauling my kids all over town yet still catching slack for not buying the Halloween costumes in time for their school parties (hey I’ve still got six days!), catching still more slack for not wanting to spend  $39.99 on the puffy suma wrestler get-up my son yearns for, squinting my eyes at the two loads of laundry waiting to be folded as I climb the stairs each night (by now there’s three more loads crying to be washed so why bother with the first two?), watching the leaves make a dense collage on our lawn. And so it goes.

Perhaps, I’m also grumpy from my trip back East.  For the first time since my husband, Brett, passed away, I visited the hospitals and hospice where he fought and ended his long battle with cancer. I did this for writerly reasons, as research for my memoir. More on this visit at a later post, but yes, the trip left some residual clotting.  How could it not?

And then.  In the midst of feeling scattered and overwhelmed, I received an e-mail this morning from a stranger who read my recent column about leaps of faith and the courage to change in the new Colorado View Magazine.  She wrote: “The past six years, I have felt stuck in Colorado…afraid to make a move because of money, support system, job, etc., etc.  If I move will I be able to find a job at my age?  Can I sell my house? My heart is on the East Coast, warm sunny beaches.  I’ve been researching the coast of South Carolina and Florida, and want so much to just say, “Do it…you can do it.”  After reading your story, I realized that I CAN….thank you for giving me that courage to at least begin my journey home.”

My words may have helped this reader cast her life forward, but she, too, taught me a lesson about service and gratitude.    This is why I share my experience so freely: to give hope to others that in spite of the shits of life – big or small – hope and possibility exist.   Always.

In the footprint of helping others, I also freed myself.  My mood has lifted.  I’m still staring at the laundry and the leaves but there’s always tomorrow.

We’re having a bee problem: yellowjackets are swarming our house.  They’ve infiltrated the kitchen and hallway, and built a small army in my daughter’s room.  Rebecca refuses to sleep there. I can’t blame her.  Just the other day we pulled back the bedding and discovered the queen bee staking new territory amidst her floral blue sheets.

Seems like wild things are everywhere.  A Denver friend tells me, “we’ve got squirrels in our home.  Isn’t it just the way things happen that their house is on the market?

My friend, Sarah, too, says a pesky mouse is fluttering about their New York City apartment.  A mouse that apparently likes physics as it moves into the open when her husband reads Disturbing the Universe.

Bedbugs, too.  Infestations and exterminations and the pests of life.

Do we coexist with these creatures? What kind of nuisances are we willing to accept?

Perhaps we shrug them off, make a beeline for the movies, and reel in the real Where the Wild Things Are.

A new friend recently celebrated her 40^th birthday.  Happy Birthday Mary! Her big day brought me back in time to my own 40^th birthday, and to reflecting more broadly about markers.

Here’s what I wrote in an essay for Woman’s Day in May. “I had always loved the mountains, and moving to Colorado meant moving toward life, committing to a future that had once seemed impossible to grasp. I was about to turn 40. If not now, when?”

That mantra, If not now, when?, became as vital to me as food.  The more I breathed those words, the more they sustained me; through them, I came to feel the power of instinct and passion and faith.

Anniversaries, holidays and zero birthdays ought to be commemorated, sometimes in ways that prod us in new directions. So, too, should less formal rites, like the start of a new semester at school, finishing a blog post or purging a closet (which reminds me….) Why not allow the ordinary to feel extraordinary? Why not celebrate simple pleasures?

Tonight I’m taking Steve out to celebrate his new job.

How might you begin to see the gift of everyday as cause of celebration?

I feel like a slacker for not blogging this week although I do have a good excuse.  A sick household.  First, my daughter, Rebecca, came home from school on Monday with a fever, and then, POW, Steve got swine flu the next day.  I don’t think our daughter had “the thing,” but Steve’s been knocked out hard for days, in bed, with fever, chills, nausea, a ferocious cough, heavy chest and total exhaustion. “This is the worst I’ve ever felt from the flu,” he’s told me repeatedly. I believe him.  It’s day six and he’s still lying horizontal in bed. 

And now…Casey, Rebecca’s twin, is running a fever, too. 

So far, my 16-year-old stepson, Dylan, and I are the only ones to have escaped the wrath of illness this week.  Dylan, of course, is mostly hidden in his basement quarters, otherwise known as the media cave. Now that Ryan, 18, is away at college, Dylan’s quite happy to rule the underworld with days-old socks, pungent sneakers and empty Gatorade bottles strewn haplessly about.  He, however, doesn’t notice this mess as his vision is reserved for watching ESPN and Madden’s NFL video on the 51-inch flat screen television.  Naturally, “D” surfaces for pancakes and pizza and anything that begins with letter “C.”  You know, cookies, cake, croissants and candy. I’ve been sleeping upstairs in the guest room on a cardboard mattress that sticks to the springs when I change body positions.

The week hasn’t been all bad. Steve was offered and accepted a position as director of communications and community relations for the Adams County 50 School District.  He’s thrilled about the opportunity to help this upwardly moving district tell its story and more broadly, to contribute to the national debate on education reform. Congratulations Steve, this is your Act 2! 

The technology gaffe I blogged about last week has continued to reopen contact with long-ago friends and colleagues. Imagine…I’m now Linked In with my first husband’s oncologists. 

All this illness in our house has me thinking about the flip side of the flu – good health.  I treasure mine, and I can already see the teachable moments of gratitude this week of poor health will allow for our children. 

Armed with Tamiflu and a healthy perspective, I’m taking care of my crew while guarding myself, too. If the going gets really rough, I figure I can always camp out with Dylan.

THE UNDERWORLD