Something old, something new… things I’m currently listening to.
The body keeps the score.
Many painful events have transpired around this little town over the last several weeks. At the risk of sounding trite, it’s amazing how preciously short life truly is. Each of our existences and journeys and relationships, miraculous blips on the map of this great universe. Lives lost, marriages upside-down, careers sideways, plans askew. And still, the world turns for those who show up for it.
My husband and I watch the Hornets play, convinced we’d make excellent coaches or commentators despite our amateur couch status thousands of miles away. We laugh a lot and groan a little, counting the years we have left before we’re allowed to complain about the aches and pains associated with living and working and playing and loving and parenting during a pandemic. Today is Papa’s 95th birthday. We wonder if he complains as much as we do. Probably not.
We may be running out of TV to watch and picking at each other and forgetting our Vitamin D some days, but we are also re-potting plants and apologizing and drinking lots of water. We’ve been smushing our lives together for seventeen years this winter – bodies, minds, souls. Onward.
Today’s Saturday morning is spent around the table, with last night’s challah as today’s French toast. We allow ourselves to get excited about an adventurous weekend for which we are long overdue. A birthday party! A snowshoe hike! Perhaps a film screening! Let’s get out there today! I brought rapid tests home from work! There is the usual flow of the breakfast hour, with giggles and arguments and the extra moment to sit and stare and notice a rubber tree unfurl a new leaf before our very eyes. Is there anything more glorious?
Momma was so cheap, she split the two-part covid tests between two of us every time… my husband and I fortune-tell of the pandemic stories our kids will share decades from now.
Sometimes the most obvious thing, also often the hardest thing, is what sets us free when said aloud in the moment. As simple as I feel insecure or please be kind to me or I’d like to be honest and say what I see. I did that a lot this week; feelin’ free on a Friday. Shabbat shalom.