Daddy

Sitting in Dad’s room.

The hospital bed is unplugged and stripped of linens, unnervingly silent absent the hum of the air mattress.

Oxygen tank, commode, Hoyer, gloves, Thicken Up, slide boards. It took a long time to amass these necessary things, and now we’re just waiting for someone to come take it all away.

I’m perched on dad’s scooter; the battery is still full. Listening to the Oak Ridge Boys. He used to sing us to sleep, “…leavin’ Louisiana in the broad daylight.”

Bottles of unneeded medicine. A closed computer, lists of passwords. Framed news articles, race day awards, a sock gripper in the corner. A wall calendar still on September. Sterilite drawers full of war novels and TV dramas. His electric shaver sitting charged on the desk.

It’s a gorgeous day, but my eyes can barely tolerate the light.

Less than a week, the onset of the acute dying process until the end. We thought he had another pneumonia, but when the nurse came, his lungs were clear. As soon as I arrived on Wednesday, he came out of his fog and tried to pull himself up in bed: “Mom said when you got here you’d help get me up.” I had to laugh: not even a hello, just a reminder of an all-important promise.

We got him up. He asked to eat, which was a welcome surprise. He asked to go outside and “sit in the sunshine.”

I didn’t realize this was the rally, the brightening before the end. I didn’t know it was his last time up and about.

After Mom and I talked the next day, I texted Shelly that I had been wrong, and she should fly home as soon as possible.

I made it through the work week. Sat in my backyard until dark last night, staring at the fire, a knowing also burning in my gut.

When my phone dinged at 0046, I said I was on my way. I called eight minutes out and told Dad that I was coming, but if he needed to go, he could go.

I pulled up in true ambulance driver fashion at 0224. He took three breaths in my presence, and then he was gone.

He didn’t die in a nursing home, his greatest fear since his dad’s passing in 1990. He didn’t die in a hospital, and he didn’t die in pain, thanks to the loving care from my mom and St. Croix Hospice.

I am not a stranger to death nor grief, but this is a different type of empty. Nothing has ever made me feel so aged. I sat with him, helped clip some of his hair for Mom to keep. I walked with his body out to the funeral home’s van. I’ve held that space for so many strangers over the years that I didn’t know how not to do it for my dad.

No one knows what to do today. We went for walks, avoided the empty room. I went for a long drive, out the country roads where I used to bike along on Dad’s training runs, and out to the Beroun radio tower. Out past the dam, and out to the radio station. I’ve spent over half my life away from here, yet here are so very many memories. I could drive all over this state for memories of all the games I “helped” Dad broadcast.

I don’t know what else I want to write here. Is it possible to be full of thoughts and empty of thoughts at the same time?

I do know that this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write, right here. I hope I did you justice Dad, though I know I never could.

Tyrone “Ty” Laugerman

One or two?

I needed an expert opinion.  My vision was fine, but I just couldn’t trust what I thought I was seeing.  I sent it to Jean.

My phone rang.

Jean and I have been the very best of friends for 20 years now, but between school, work, tiny humans, and life in general, we always just text.  ALWAYS.  I couldn’t make myself pick up right away because OMG OMG OMG SHE’S CALLING ME WHICH CAN ONLY MEAN…

“That’s a beautiful positive!!!”

I still couldn’t believe it (that’s a really faint line!), so she told me to go to the store and “get one of the word tests.”  Which of course I did, and then had to hold out on her with the final answer until Jeffrey finally got home so I could tell him first:

I may have taken 3 more over the next week, just to be sure.

May 19th was a Sunday last year.  I had taken my last final on Tuesday the 14th and joined my classmates for shots at B52’s for the first time in the whole program.  I graduated the next day and had a glass of wine at our celebratory dinner.  And so, cue the instant, crushing anxiety that didn’t ease until the 10 week ultrasound, where despite my “advanced maternal age” they told us that our tadpole looked perfect.

What a year it has been.  Graduating, testing, applying, transitioning, growing, aching, peeing my pants when I tried to keep working out, an insurance change, a forced provider change, months of catching every illness that came through my new job, and then a gestational hypertension diagnosis and a third provider change at 33 weeks.  Followed finally by two trips to labor and deliver triage, a three day induction at 34+6, a Cesarean at 35+1 and a ten day admission which, frankly, is difficult to remember in more ways than one.  A trip back to the NICU to bring our baby home, and then two more trips to the ED before my blood pressure finally started to stabilize.

But then…him.

THIGHS FOR DAYS ❤

We were rocking post-bottle this morning when I started to cry. It would take more blogs than I have time to write to cover it all and probably another full year of therapy (thank you Iris Reproductive Mental Health).  I told him how long I prayed for him: [literal] decades, even when I didn’t know who I was praying to. I told him he was worth four days on a mag drip and a second set of abdominal scars.  I smothered him with kisses and told him how loved he was, even when he’s raging and I’m at the edge of my sanity. I told him that I sure didn’t become a nurse to do the chart review and coding reconciliation that I’m doing now, but that I’ll keep doing it without complaint for him and his daddy until this pandemic is over.

In two days, Lathan will be five months old.

Five. Months. Old.  Just one year after we learned he was on his way.

He loves light fixtures and chin tickles. He hates tummy time, naps, socks, and anyone who sneezes or blows their nose. He drools like a faucet (those teefers will be here any day) and he is almost transitioned onto a formula that works for him.  I’m trying not to cry that we used our last bag of frozen breast milk today and I’m down to twice a day pumping 💔.

We went for a walk today; he needed a nap and the stroller is a sure (only?) way to accomplish this.  At one point I looked down and caught my breath: I was pushing my baby in a stroller.

Not someone else’s baby.  My son.

I can still hardly believe it.

What a year it has been.

One of my first Mother’s Day gifts

Scenes from our walk

42

My dear blog: so very, very much has changed.

I am 42 today, and perhaps the best present ever was to receive a call from work, being low-needed on the day we are rolling out a new [outdoor, unheated] triage process for the clinic and urgent care, during a viral pandemic, on a day when the weather changed back to this.

The herb and garden beds we put in TWO DAYS AGO when spring appeared to be well on its way.

Unexpectedly free, I was able to answer a video chat with Jeanie and her babies, during which she showed me this picture from year 41.

That’s a homemade lemon coffee [birthday] cake, people.  My girl knows me ❤

Nothing like a memory while home-by-myself-quarantined-with-the-rest-of-the-world to get you thinking.  One year ago, I hadn’t even graduated; now, I’ve been an RN for nearly a year.

One year ago, I wasn’t yet pregnant; my son will be four months old next week.

Two words: baby jeans.

I have a new job. I’m engaged.  My stepsons have been back to America twice, our yard is looking very different fenced by cedar planks, my office is now a nursery, and we’ve had Sophie for just over a year.  Jillian is in college.  Thanks to the immunosuppression of pregnancy and now social distancing, I’ve sung with my Basilica friends heart-breakingly little this year, and my voice lessons happen at home, by phone.  Speaking of phones, my mom now owns a smartphone (!) and thank goodness, because the only way we can all see each other is like this (admittedly, far more entertaining):

I keep forgetting it’s my birthday, there’s so much on my mind.  This morning, I listened online to Andrea Bocelli sing Amazing Grace in front of a deserted Milan Cathedral, and then watched a truly wonderful episode of Some Good News with John Krasinski.  I got a drive-thru oil change since they have contact-free service, and filled my gas tank for $1.24 per gallon.  I folded laundry.  I put in three expense requests for work.  I agonized a bit over the next decision, but I redeemed and enjoyed my free birthday coffee at Starbucks (my first coffee drink in over a month, but not before I wiped it down and poured it into a new cup).  My fiancé, my dog, and my baby will be home from their Mom-is-working-in-the-fire-so-we-go-away-for-the-weekend in about 15 minutes, and so I took this time in the [unnerving but lovely] quiet to write again for the first time in twenty months.

It’s a strange world we live in now, and maybe I haven’t wanted to over-reflect.  I definitely had little time before, and now I have even less, or maybe I’ve simply been exhausted (likely).  Yet I can’t help but feel that things are going to be ok.  Different for sure, but ok.

Danbury in August

I wasn’t supposed to be available this weekend for the annual group camping trip, so I hadn’t considered certain things until my plan for August changed.  I didn’t think about it until I looked at the map of our campground, saw the name of the city, and saw the river.  And, you know…August.

But our weekend didn’t include the actual day.  It wasn’t a canoe trip.  It wasn’t coworkers, it was dear friends.  Nineteen years now.  I’m ok.

I gladly dug out my camping gear.   It was fun to prep my foil packet food and peruse REI for the first time in a while.  It was a hot but beautiful drive north on Friday, back to the area that was Home for the first half of my life, and I didn’t cry until I crossed into Wisconsin.

I don’t know why I still cry, sometimes.  It’s not fear or anxiety.  It’s not flashbacks.  I wouldn’t even necessarily call it sadness anymore.  Maybe it’s how near it can all feel despite the years, and yet so far.  The weight of time: all that has changed, all that hasn’t, the experiences, the perspectives.

The gratitudes: for old memories, new memories, laughter, shenanigans, solitude, and teamwork.  Swarms of dragonflies, a few eagles, a few bats, outhouses, bonfires, birthday cupcakes, really intense sun, beer darts and a lot of campfire bacon.

One canoe trip, which I didn’t choose to join.  I wondered, briefly, if the outfitter my friends would choose was the same one I chose back in 2005.  I remember it so clearly: I had driven over to Danbury with a handful of my pictures, hoping to find the places we’d been.  On that morning six years prior, I hadn’t paid any attention to the names of landings or roads.  Leaving town, hours later and disappointed at my lack of success, I noticed a new canoe outfitter along the highway.  I pulled in hopefully, but the door was locked.  I turned around quick for the gas station – the Log Cabin Store, the same one we’d stopped at in 1999 – for a beverage to get me home.  Driving away for good just a few minutes later, I noticed a van out front of the outfitters and desperately swerved into the lot a second time.

The poor man, I can’t imagine his surprise when I approached him not to inquire about renting a canoe, but with a handful of pictures and tears in my eyes.  I explained that I had taken a trip on this river six years ago, that I’d been driving around with only my pictures to go on, and I was hoping against hope that he might be able to tell me where we’d been.   He very kindly took them from my shaking hand and in just a few seconds said, “Oh, sure, looks like you were at McDowell Bridge Landing, and you pulled out at Riverside.  I bet you were up there already today, but they’ve completely rebuilt it.  No wonder you didn’t recognize it.”

You *know* I drove all the way out there that day with his written directions, nearly to Minong.  I don’t think he was too surprised when I called him a few weeks later to set up the trip with him.  On our way out to the landing that morning, I told him the story.  Jean and I’s trip was just as eventful (read: enjoyable but also…well, tortuous) as Derek and I’s had been.  We sat around at the end of our adventure: same clearing, new pavement.  Similar snacks, new friend.  Similar feelings of joy and pride at completing the journey, relief at being done, and lots of sore muscles.

It was our outfitter’s father who picked us up.  Maybe it was the way I looked back down the river.  Maybe I said something I no longer remember.  But I remember that he looked at me and said, “You’re that girl.  My son told me about the girl out here today who had the accident a few years back.”  I nodded.

“Did you find what you were looking for out there?”  It was a gentle, knowing question, and I answered in kind, “I think I did.”

Flashing forward to modern day – Sean and Ashley’s canoe trip was also an eventful one.  Due to a few miscommunications, sketchy phone service (would that this had been a thing back then!) and unmarked landings, the outfitter had to come to our campsite to pick up their canoe, three hours and numerous landings past the scheduled out time, and after we hauled it 900 feet up a rocky hill.  Wouldn’t you know, it was the same guy who took my trembling pictures 13 years ago.  (In fact I think his name was/is Guy.  Ha.)

I chose to hold the memories in my heart rather than bring the past forward into a tense group situation.  But after we packed up camp today, I turned east into town instead of south towards home with the others.  I passed Pardun’s Canoe Rental – abuzz on a scorching summer weekend.  I was glad to see their business doing well.  I turned north on Hwy 35, eight miles up to Riverside Landing.

I stopped at the Log Cabin Store on my way out of town.  I bought a Java Monster, because sugar and caffeine are a balm unparalleled sometimes, and turned down Hwy 48 back toward Minnesota.  Same highway, different highway.  Same casino, different casino.  A few tears, some old songs, some new songs.

New friends, beautiful friends.  Friends who all made it home safely. Me too.

Same woman.  New woman.

Same life.  New life.  Good life.

The strangest grief

This morning, I found myself lost in Rome.

I don’t often remember my dreams, but there I was on a scooter, in a white dress, with only a backpack, where I had mistakenly driven myself to a hotel I didn’t recognize but that was just down the street from 108 Via Cavour.  In the dream I had only my old flip-phone, and although I knew where I was and how to ask for things in Italian, I couldn’t speak or even think, really, how to get to Hotel Cardinal, where I needed to be.

I was starting to panic when woke up in a sweat, sitting up in bed, with the cat yelling at me from outside the door.  I shook it off pretty quickly, got up and paid some bills, checked some email, collected my daily feathers from Angry Birds.  I brought up DuoLingo on my phone: I’ve been using it every day to learn German for the last 16 months, but have switched to Italian lately to refresh my brain.  Before I started my lesson, though, I typed “Hotel Cardinal, Roma” into Google Maps.

Hotel Cardinal is where I’ll be staying in October.

108 Via Cavour was Sharon and Roberto’s home.  My Italian home, la mia casa italiana.

Six-point-nine kilometers, a 25 minute drive.

I zoomed in and panned to Stazione Termini, just up the street, where my friend and I stepped off the train and into the congestion of central Roma.  I am suddenly incredulous as I look around my desk at the technology available to me now.  I got on a plane for the third time in my life, my first time leaving the country, with just an address and a phone number on a piece of paper tucked into my brand new passport. No computer, no map, no euros, and a flip phone that didn’t have international service, with only the instruction to walk out of the airport and look for Sharon by the taxis, where she and Jillian would have arrived shortly after my flight was scheduled to land.

I was not afraid.  I didn’t think twice about any of it.  My Spanish background should enable me to decipher the Italian, and my tall blonde friend would be easy to spot in the crowd.  Maybe I was naïve…or maybe life was simpler when we had no choice but to figure it out as we went. I wrote in my journal every day, blogging my memories at a later time.  I used an Internet cafe just once during my stay, to let people know I had arrived safely and to tell them a little about what I’d seen and experienced on days 1 and 2 (I still have that email).

I panned over on the map to Villa Borghese, where we wandered for an entire afternoon, the merry-go-round, the four-person surrey ride, leaning out over the Piazza del Popolo to gaze at St. Peter’s Basilica in the distance. On this magical online map, I can see all the places we were.  Trevi.  Pantheon.  Circo Massimo.  Navona.  The landmarks everyone knows.  Il Foro and il Colosseo: I paid a $2 fee each to send pixelated texts of those two photos to my dad in America.  The map tells me these places are just minutes apart, but we spent the days walking everywhere.  I zoom in again to the little side streets, looking for the quiet places we knew.

The grocery store across the piazza on the backside of the church…it was called…(give my memory just a minute)…Sma! Now it would appear to be a pizza shop that translates as The Golden Apple. Hmm.

Il Gallo Matto (Maria’s ristorante, who thought Sharon and I were sorelle) and the restaurant just around the corner where Federico serenaded us over vino e millefoglie…the Unicum?  (I only remember that it sounded like “unicorn.”)  Neither place is here on the map.  I hope so much that they’re still there, and sad because I know that this is unlikely.

The ice cream shop by the Pantheon is still there!  This makes me so happy.  Maybe I’ll have a chance to stop into Il Papiro again.  My friend won’t be there with me to linger over the beautiful stationary, though.  She won’t be with me, in her body, in any of the places, and though they still live, albeit in America now, nor will Roberto or Jillian.

Not in the parks or landmarks.  Not at an art show in Ostia-by-the-Sea, or in the flowered walkways and pasticcerie of Assisi.  Not for the beautiful meal in the countryside of Umbria; we were lost in the dark for an hour to find it and it was worth every tense minute.  There will be no homemade dinners carefully prepared by Nadia, and I won’t be waking to the bells of Santa Maria Maggiore each morning.

I was careful to pay deep attention, then.  Traveling to Europe was a crazy, impossible, once-in-a-lifetime thing, my first real adult vacation, and I was aware at every moment how unlikely it was that I’d ever return.

But now, on what will be my fourth trip to Europe, I’ll be returning to Italy.  With new friends.  With Jeffrey.  For music.  I won’t miss the Vatican this time because I’ll be singing within its walls.

The tears are close this morning – tears for me, tears for her, tears for life.  Laughter is here, too (no Little Mermaid DVD on repeat this trip!).  Things will be recognizable, for sure, but it will all feel so different, this I know.  Eleven years ago I didn’t know how to fathom the events of my life, and it’s all the more difficult today.  We can’t go back.  I know better than to want that, because who can say that life would turned out any differently, any better, any worse?  It has been what it has been; I have traveled far in my soul.

In my heart of hearts, though, across the vast expanse of memory and time, I know Sharon will be there, not in the realm of my sight, but in the realm of spirit.

Ostia, Italia, Sept 2007.

In the back of the bottom drawer

Cleaning out my file cabinet wasn’t on the agenda today.  Taking a short overnight trip down to Wabasha to see the studio updates with Jeffrey was the plan, but my early waking combined with the impending rain (prompting a last minute lawn-mow) found me organizing the office after a long (messy) semester.  With time to kill and a penchant for ridding and organizing, I made it through the top file drawer (where the relevant stuff is) and started in on the bottom file drawer (where the old stuff is).

We had a mini-reunion with several of my North family-friends over the weekend, so they finally, finally got to meet my Jeffrey!  I still had them on my heart as I opened the North file.  Each time, there’s a little more I find myself able to part with; this time it was old recert information (all online now!) and some papers from medic school.  It’s a strange place to be: one semester of nursing school done, in the middle of EMS week but no longer in EMS, having busted a gut and fought back tears on Saturday night with those who still feel like my work family.

This was 2005.  So long now, so young.  Only Bryan is left there now (hiding inside the rig as he is).

I got through the many old college files (geez there are so many) and then into the very back file, marked simply 8/18/99.  It had actually started to fall apart; it hangs weighted and heavy in more ways than one.  I learned quickly then to record and save EVERYTHING, and it’s all still in there.

The accident report.  The ambulances’ and helicopter medical records.

The death certificate.

The entire ER record.

The bills and notes from every visit.  The surgeries.  Copays for every prescription filled. Mileage logs to all the appointments.  Letters, affidavits, receipts, check stubs, settlement letters, files upon files from my lawyer.

And pictures.  Pictures of everything.  I am so, so young.  The scars are so fresh.

I didn’t read anything in-depth; too many hours of my life have been invested there already. And so it wasn’t the details but the sheer volume of documents and injuries that made my breath catch.  I was an utter experiment; medicine is so much guesswork, really.  And my God, they had me absolutely pickled on medication.  How am I ok?  Without fail, it’s the question that arises every time. I ran my fingers across the scars on my body, so much a part of me now that I very rarely notice them, but that today for whatever reason made me physically ache.  And then I laughed when I caught myself thinking how cheap health care used to be…and *that,* no less, remembering that the entire $20000 no-fault coverage was spent before I even left the ER.

The actual tears began when I read the denial letter for my psychological care.  The most critical part of my care was the hardest to obtain, and I’m so unspeakably fortunate that I did.  And to this day I consistently cry during Vespers or any service when we recite the Lord’s Prayer.  Sometimes I can barely manage a whisper.

Thy will be done.  Thy will be done.  I couldn’t get past that line, that night, as I lay there in the ditch.  I’m crying as I type it now.

And I shake, always, when I hold this.  I remember picking it up on my first visit to the site, thinking that it looked like a lightning bolt.  I run my fingers along the edges; safety glass doesn’t feel at all sharp, but oh, the damage.  The damage.  I guess you could say it’s the only way for me to still touch the reality of that day.

It was a surprisingly surreal stretch of time, reflecting on the hard work of healing.  It’s so terribly long in the daily-ness, but the years have absolutely raced by.  My friend, laughing in the pictures, gone so quickly and for so long now.  And all the living – so much living! – that has happened since.  My life today is unrecognizable, sometimes even to me.  In this new life, almost no one knows the whole of my story, or if they do, they didn’t know me then.

I threw 2/3 of it away.  I don’t live in that place anymore.  Sometimes I pass the site without even thinking about it.  I do sometimes cry when I see the lights, hear the sirens, and laugh-cry with my EMS-forever-family.  It’s all a priceless and unforgettable part of what has made my life, but they are days gone by.  I find myself today in possession of so many things I didn’t think I could have – or rather the things I couldn’t *allow* myself to have – before now. Today, there is only this “nice sunny day,” a relaxing drive along this special river and an overnight getaway with my Jeffrey to enjoy.

And I don’t need those things in the back of the file drawer, anymore.

Ghosts of two pasts

As I was walking from dress rehearsal back to my car tonight, from MacPhail toward the Guthrie, admiring the night lights, a tear slipped down my face.  I miss writing and I’d love to expand on my thoughts as the tears continued to come, but it was only this:

Why did I ever think I couldn’t have this?

Why did I ever think I couldn’t have this?

At the same time I was feeling such regret, I was feeling the deepest internal sense of rightness, and maybe even of arrival.  Such is the story of life, isn’t it?  We can’t do it all.  Sometimes all there is to do is cry.

Sometimes I feel like two people.  *Was* two people.  And I can’t escape the ghost of either.

Coffee and Thoughts

Maybe it’s the name.  I mean, I do really like the coffee but…Peace.  It is Peace for me to sit here.  Unpretentious people.  Fair trade coffee that tastes good.  Local food.  A chalk drawing, a chuckle, and a cool light fixture.

It’s normal to feel this way before school starts, right?  Like I’m beyond exhausted already, like I have nothing left to give.  After 16 years of caring for people, to feel like I just don’t care anymore?  I went to pick up the last of my books yesterday and sat in my car fighting tears for a few minutes before heading inside.  I paid my tuition and felt a little sick.

I just don’t know what else there is though.

I’m confused; meaning that quite literally these days, I can’t focus.  I can’t remember.  I shiver in a 72 degree room.  I can’t relax, not ever.  I want to scream at the pager every time it goes off, and chuck it across the room.  I never want to set foot in a hospital again, at least not this one.

What the fuck am I doing?

I’m so burned out that I struggle to even make it to my voice lesson each week; I get myself there by remembering that I never regret it, and I always walk out remembering what joy feels like.  I make it there in determination not to waste another scholarship and another significant personal expenditure.  In an attempt at saving time I made the mistake a few weeks ago of wearing my scrubs to my lesson, and it ruined it.  Ruined it.  I didn’t see Amanda in the mirror, or at least I didn’t like the Amanda I was seeing.

It’s not me, this blue minion who runs around like a crazy person at the whim of anyone who wants to page me, who learns little to nothing new, panders to idiocy and laziness.  People used to be relieved and even happy to see me; now they dread me, even if they thank me for a good experience later.  Mostly, their frustration lands on me, the instrument of repeated pain.

Why am I stuck here?  Why do I see no way out?

I thought I was only done with the ambulance.  I hope I’m not making a terrible mistake, perhaps needing to be done with medicine all together.

 

Time

Finally, finally, finally, I got myself back to the woods.  Afton.  It would make a beautiful little girl’s name, wouldn’t it?  I had to search my old photos to confirm it had truly been ten autumns since my last pass-through.

Autumn always seems a pivotal time of year for me, but this seems a pivotal year in its entirety (see: my last post).  It’s been ten years since I left for Italy.  Jillian is 16 today (HOW?).  One year already since I bought my car.  Just three weeks from now marks a year since my last solo park visit, to William O’Brien. I came home that evening and opened my email to see I’d been matched with a man named Jeffrey.

Time took my breath away so suddenly and completely yesterday that I sat down in the middle of the trail and started to cry.  I looked up and watched the trees dancing.  I am so filled with anxiety: about work and future work, about all the things I feel I’m running out of time to do, about family in all its iterations, about money, about music, about missing the man whom I’ve been partnered with for nearly a year now.

I didn’t cry too long; places like this settle me.  I wish I would remember this more often and make the time to come away.   Finally, my breath and my thoughts are slowed.  At long last the anxiety lifts from me and makes space for gratitude.  I have a vehicle, and the resources for fuel, a coffee, and to renew my annual park pass.

I have a dear friend whom I can let know where I am, and who waits for our agreed-upon check in.

I have legs that still carry me for miles.  I live in a state which contains river valley, prairie, forest, and even mountain terrain, that make me want to sit and write again.  And I don’t have to go very far to get here.

I have a mom who takes care of my sick fur-baby.  I still have my fur-baby.

Somehow, I have both music and love in my life – together, again – colluding with German study and so many beautiful new pieces to work on.  Somehow, I found the willingness last year to give these things another try.  I don’t always yet believe it, but here, now, I begin to.

I cry for the beauty and the despair of life, for the breaking and the healing, for joys past, joys now, and joys to come.  For memories and perspective found along this river.  The past feels so close sometimes, but in this place I remember that it is exactly that: past.  Done with now.  Life was and is as it is supposed to be.

 

Then…………………………………………………..Now

June. (Zehn Jahre.)

I went for a drive today.

I didn’t have a plan for where I was going.  I first found myself driving through my old service area.  Fire station looks the same, though I know we don’t base there anymore.

I drove through the parking lot of our old headquarters.  The building where I had my interview fifteen years ago, nearly to the day.  There are shiny new windows where the garage doors used to be, and what appears to be a classroom in the bay.

I’d been told the location of the new quarters, so I sought it out.  There are new logos on the trucks now.  I didn’t recognize a single car in the lot; I guess they wouldn’t recognize my new car either.  Today is a year since I left, a year since I worked a truck.  (I’ve run into three sets of former coworkers over the last two weeks, as if life is trying to remind me.)  *Only* a year, yet *already* a year.

I found myself in Hugo so I drove down Otter Lake Road.  This was my favorite 10K training loop.  I drove around Birch Lake and then out behind my old apartment – my favorite 5K loops.  It’s been four years this month since I moved out, three since I moved into my current place.

Ten years since I sold my home.

June.  Ten years.  Time.

I exited the freeway on Maryland, drove around Lake Como; it’s been five years since graduating college and this is the scenic route I used to take to school.  It’s been five since Sharon died, and I work where that happened now (I’m glad 4B doesn’t exist anymore).  Grad school didn’t happen, but music did.  I spend my mornings job searching, singing, and learning German, since I have a new love and that is his sons’ language.

That last guy spoke German too; I laugh, because you certainly never know what you’re being readied for.  If life isn’t bringing us back around to where we started, then it’s certainly preparing us for the next good thing.

My last stop was Trader Joe’s.

Today is one of those days; a seriously WTF day, if you will.  What *IS* this life, anyway?

When it’s nothing else, it’s beauty.