Today is my six-month’s birthday. I wouldn’t mention this. I wouldn’t make note of it or think it significant or even remember, except it was pointed out to me recently. Except years ago I dreamed that something was going to happen this year.
Six months ago, my oldest friend, a survivor from our hometown, a man just a few days older, wrote: Today is light snow, cold wind. Today is colder than yesterday, colder than tomorrow will be. It is just for you, a tribute to our frozen beginnings.
I was born in a blizzard, right on time, in a tiny town named for a flower.
Years ago I dreamed that something was going to happen this year, and it did. The most extraordinary. The best thing ever. And we’re only halfway done with this year. We’re only halfway started. So much still to do. Sometimes this is overwhelming. A 80,000 word manuscript, and I still have to do things with it? I’m not done?
I’m not done.
I still have work to do. I thought this yesterday in the shower when I cut my leg shaving, a long accidental line. I still cut myself shaving. I still burn toast was the ad campaign for a public service message featuring Paula Abdul years ago (what the message was, I don’t remember; don't give up?). I still have moments of doubt and insecurity, days where I rearrange sleepy sentences, days where I count every freckle, days where even writing an e-mail seems like a chore.
I still have work to do, work with my books and my pencils and with my career and with my ability to be a good partner and teacher and friend.
The air is wet-feeling, cool like a cotton sheet on a sleeping porch. The light has the quality of an after-storm, though there has been no storm. Except there was a storm, years ago, when I was born, and years after when I fell in and out of love, when I tried and tried and stopped trying. Lightning and a downpour.
My mother’s best friend in college was hit by lighting, running up a hill in a storm. She was fine; she lived.
I am fine; I lived. I am better than fine. I am six months in to the best year ever, and it is only the start. There is so much to see and talk about and write down and learn and teach and sing and turn into ice cream.
Here’s to the extraordinary. Here’s to the rest, the next six months, the next; here’s to the ever after.
