1. Breathe.
2. Assume success. Take a moment to imagine what success feels like. Close your eyes and let it wash over you. Know that you are successful right NOW and that is all that matters.
3. Clean your office. Throw away everything that doesn’t serve any more.
4. Refill prescriptions. File insurance claims. Make lunch. Take the car in for service. Pay attention to the details that help life run smoothly. Keep putting one foot in front of the other.
5. Take a walk.
6. Camp out at the school silent auction to ensure that the little boys who make your heart sing score the winning bid for a night at the movies with their Math Teacher.
7. Cry when you need to. Cry until you find yourself laughing.
8. Schedule dinner with an old dear friend and be prepared to laugh until you cry.
9. Embrace the fact that the brokenness is what saves you. Revel in the fact that you are never not broken.
10. Go to bed early. Sleep as late as you can.
11. Drink water. A lot of water.
12. Hold a warrior pose as long as your legs will allow you. Channel that warrior energy.
13. Play guitar. Even if its awful and you can’t really make it work because you are so distracted. Keep playing anyway. Come back to the notes. Stay with them. Over and over. Softly. Loudly.
14. Tell a friend everything you have done to make your dream come true. Report the facts without analysis about where its getting you. Know that every step you take is carrying you somewhere.
15. Take a shower and feel the cool water running down your back.
16. Make a list of everything you are ready to let go of. Prepare to let it go.
17. Breathe.
When I was a little girl, I was often afraid. I was afraid of missing the bus, afraid of upsetting my parents, afraid of not doing things right. I was afraid that the kids who said they were my friends didn’t really like me. I have no idea where it came from. My childhood was far from scary. I am not sure how much people knew how scared I felt. I can’t say whether I hid it well. I just remember fear being a constant companion, an imaginary friend who stuck to me like glue.
My fear protected me. I didn’t do a lot of dumb things kids do because of a healthy dose of fear. But at the same time my fear held me back. There were a lot of healthy and exciting things I wanted to do but never tried for fear of being bad, fear of looking dumb, fear of simply failing, fear that if I tried I might just drown.
In Chinese medicine they say that fear is the energy of water. Think of wild rapids that make your heart race, or dark murky depths that press on your lungs. Think of rivers that flood, or hurricanes that sweep us out to sea. We can’t control water, no matter how we try. It scares us. Because it is that strong.
The other energy of water is strength. Think of the power of water as it moves, carving canyons, changing coastlines. Water which turns deserts into blooming paradise. Water which sustains life.
Fear and strength are two sides of the same coin. To stand in the energy of water is to know both fear and deep unyielding strength. And we carry the potential for both when we face any great trauma, challenge or transition.
One of the ways to frame the story of my life (and maybe yours too) is a journey of understanding both sides of the energy of water. Sometimes it seems as though in the beginning I only knew fear. But in the last decade or so of my life, I am coming to embrace the quiet, fierce power of my strength, of knowing that no matter what comes I am going to be OK. And that strength is what has been allowing me to transform, to move beyond my fear and into my real potential.
*******
Sometimes I feel nothing short of wimpy. A career change should be no big deal to a woman of my age and experience. And yet as I am readying myself to go part-time at work, to enter school I am feeling wave after wave of fear. Its exhausting. The fear–it is making everything so hard.
You would think that at this point in my rather mature life that I would have the where with all to make this shift without much issue. But, the truth is, nothing can trigger these fears, like money issues.
From the beginning of my working life, I have never made enough to create a cushion, the kind of cushion that I tell myself would help me feel “safe” about making a leap. First a teacher, then a government staffer, then an activist, I have always worked for “just enough”–the desire to help and do something meaningful always trumping my desire for money or material things. There were moments when I felt more comfortable than others, but truth is every raise came just at the right moment as my expenses increased.
While I have never been motivated by the prospect of accumulating money, I am a creature of certain comforts. I like the convenience of having a car (even if it is a beat up 14 year old one). I cherish the protection of my house. I like being able to eat meat when I want to, and to be able to serve a variety of organic foods. I like being able to offer wine to my friends and I like being able to buy new sheets for my bed every few years. Most importantly, I like being able to give Max a chance to do the things he loves–like playing hockey and swimming and camping in the woods. I can’t imagine living without health insurance. And these things, alas, they do require money. And I am afraid, deeply afraid that if I make this switch all this is going to blow up, the fragile balance I created will turn upside down and we will end up homeless or hungry.
When I first became aware of my desire to do healing work, years and years ago, I told myself I needed to wait until I could get ahead, until I could save something–someday. When Juan left me, and my finances took a tumble I told myself I needed to wait until I found a partner to provide a safety net. All of this waiting was born of fear–and my attempts to hold her at bay.
But after years of waiting for circumstances to change, it is clear to me that they won’t. As much as I would like a plan that will allow me to put fear aside, I can’t run away from fear. I am going to need to stand in her. And the only way to do it is to embrace her other side–strength. But I don’t know how to be THAT strong. I don’t know how to be fearless. I never have been.
When I was reflecting on this to Bonnie, my very wise friend she said to me, “Its not about completely dispelling fear for strength…its about moving the line–and you my friend only need to move it a little.” I didn’t know what she meant.
“When you were small,” she told me, “you were like 80% scared and 20% strong and so most of the time that fear stopped you. As you grew up, went to college, as you became a mom, as you lived through your divorce you transformed your fear to strength because you had to. It was the gift of your journey. You moved the line from 80% scared to 60% scared to 52% scared. That’s where you are right now–you are 52% scared and 48% strong. Problem is that 4% differential might just stop you now. That would be the greatest tragedy. So instead you just need to move the line. Not much just a little bit.”
At that moment it hit me. I don’t need to be fearless to do this. I don’t need to be bold beyond measure. I just need to be 52% strong.
I think sometimes when we look from the outside we see women who have moved mountains and assumed that they were fearless. I think, I am beginning to see, that most of them may have been 52% strong when they got going. They had just enough strength to not let the fear paralyze them And that was all they needed.
I don’t have a picture of him.
It was a simple enough assignment. Gather old photos of him for a collage at the restaurant, ones of him laughing, cracking a joke, the fishing rod in hand heading out to the boat, calling out over his shoulder, sitting on the dock with a cigar and a neat glass of tequila, watching the sun coming down, coming in with the kids, standing at the grill, loading the truck, playing light sabers with the little one. I looked through all the hundreds of photos I took over years of vacations together and there wasn’t even one. Not one of us watching the TV show about haunted New England lighthouses together. Not one of him bringing in the boat. Not one of him untangling a rod.
The only photos I have of him are in my mind, my memory. The moments when we were together we not the ones we photograph–they were the simple everyday moments, like when you pour a drink or flip a burger, or break open a lobster. Now I wish I had marked all those moments as spectacular–worthy of capturing on film for posterity. They were ordinary in the most extraordinary of ways. I wish I had photographed every one so that I could make a thousand collages, line the halls with them, one after another. See how he lived! He lived.
I think that even though I know that saving his image, freezing it on paper, would not have saved him from cancer.
My cousin Larry died a week ago after a short, intense and courageous fight. He was 43. He taught Max to fish and use a pocket knife. He fixed things that got broken and loved his daughter fiercely. He made me feel like a rock star whenever I made my guacamole. The way he gobbled up my guacamole healed thousands of tiny holes in my heart.
I don’t have a picture of him, but if I did, I can’t imagine that it would capture the brightness of his spirit, his gentle ferocity, his wry and quiet sense of humor. And knowing this, I know, I have everything I need.
In gratitude for having known him, I bow my head and lift one small glass of high end tequila poured neat and settle in to the crook of the couch and smile wryly. This is how he will live. This is how we all keep living.
I sometimes feel as though I am whipsawed between two polar opposites who war in my body, and my mind. The “responsible me” who makes choices based on what is “safe” or “smart” and “dreamer me” that is trying to push past my fear, take risks, be brave and who (if I listen to my gremlins) risks sending us to certain doom.
Truth is I am neither of those people. I am fiercely resilient and a problem solver and someone who can look at any situation and give you best and worst case scenarios in the time it takes to say my name. I am a planner and an implementer and a person who can see all sides of a situation with a clarity that is alarming. I can see into hearts with tenderness and know what frightens and gladdens you without needing to hear your whispers. But, when you do whisper, I cherish what you shared as though it were the secret to everything. I am not religious but I am deeply spiritual, even when (especially when) I seem to lose my faith. I have known deep pain, and real loss, and given myself over to the Universe time and time again, only to find a new way emerge out of what at times felt like an impossible tangle. Several times over I lost sleep desperately afraid that I would lose everything. Indeed, I have lost lots of things (more than I would like) but never myself. No, even though its been very dark at times, and I have stumbled and tripped and turned about in circles, I never lost hold of myself.
Let me tell you a little secret. I am both extraordinarily happy and flat out scared these days. Often both at the exact same time. The happiness and fear–well they stem from the same piece of news in my life. I am, as a single mom, with no other means of support and barely any savings, planning to head back to school to open up a new life that has been calling me.
It is a choice that will mean student debt and a reduced salary and a choice to stop climbing the career ladder that has for so long defined me. It means financial gymnastics and the end to luxuries like bookstores and movie theaters and take out food and new clothes and air conditioning (and who knows what else). It means the end of my own house as I take in a housemate and the end of saying “of course” to Max without thinking about what we give up. Its means thinking about the price of gas before dashing across town. Its a choice that may mean giving up on providing Max a solid chunk of change for college in exchange for teaching him about following his heart and doing what others might say is impossible.
It is also a choice that means embracing something that feels as natural to me as breathing–finally choosing a path that may at times be challenging but never is hard.
The fear shows up sometimes as that exhilarating kind of scared you get right before jumping out of an airplane or riding the latest roller coaster. Sometimes its a dark kind of scared, like you feel when all the lights have gone out and the snow is piled up and you think you might just never get out again. But then, when my mind stops and I can listen to the song of my life, there is a happiness, a contentment, a feeling of relief and peace that comes when I no longer thinking– just doing–taking steps, shuffling one foot in front of the others, knowing that slowly, slowly I am making my own life– not simply making do and dreaming of a way out–but making my own way.
I am making my way as I make my bed and I sit in meditation and take my vitamins and drink my water and eat my breakfast because I know that self-care is fundamental especially when going through transitions.
I am making my way as I make Max’s lunch and discuss what we learn from TV (good and bad), as I drive him to school and help him with homework and put medicine on his feet and read him to sleep because even though he and I are both changing and growing with dizzying speed, my love for him is the North Star, the one true constant in my life.
I am making my way as I make my train, make appointments, make my meetings, make conversation, make eye contact because I know the most important way (perhaps the only way) that I make a difference is simply by showing up.
And yes, I am making (and remaking) budgets, making choices, making phone calls, making proposals, because this forward moving action, however slow or small, is the only way I will welcome in the change I seek.
I write here on this blog to a small circle of friends. Some I know in “real life”, others only by your sweet comments or lovely emails. I never mind the silence here but on the scarier days I need to know that I am not alone. If you come here, tell me so and hold my hand as I keep making way.
The daffodils that Max and I planted with John are now in full bloom
Six months ago, by the light of the bright moon, my friend John and I dug in earth and planted a daffodil with a wish wrapped around it. He had come to the house, after hours of writing his law school essays. He was frustrated and blocked, momentarily out touch in with his own amazing potential–the big dream of his life loomed huge, a mountain insurmountable. So he came to take a break and I dragged him out to plant daffodils.
Max and I wrote our wishes for John on pieces of paper and he too played along. We went outside and planted them, and then having declared what we hoped for him we all gave them over to the earth and recognized that like the daffodils–they too would bloom in time. I told him that now that the Earth was holding those big dreams he could let go of the “biggness” and focus on what was immediately in front of him. I think he thought me a bit crazy (as he often does when I drag him out to do these things) but he listens to me because I cook him dinner and tell him I am old enough to be his mother.
We watched the Caps game and cleaned the house. We stayed up late talking and even spent some time trying to break open the stickiness he was feeling around his essays. Somehow the weight of that essay–the need for it to be amazing as though it was a magic key that would unlock his dreams (or forever keep them hidden away)– made it so big. But I told him if he could just let go of all the meaning he was putting on the essay and write he would have no trouble. He is a gifted writer.
The next morning after Max’s hockey game John went home to write one of the best essays in the history of law school applications. I am sure it would have happened anyway but some how letting go of the big huge massive vision of the change we wanted, trusting it to the Earth or to God or to whoever makes sense to trust, made it easier to take the immediate steps. Its a lesson I keep forgetting but remember frequently with joy.
This weekend I have a heart both heavy and full. Yesterday, 6 months to the day when John planted his daffodil, he left the city where we became friends and headed out to begin his new life at his first choice law school, a top ranked school which not only accepted him with open arms but offered him cash as well. I am so incredibly proud of him for all the tiny steps and big leaps he took to walk the path toward his dream and I miss him because he was in every way a daily inspiration.
For so long now I have been overwhelmed by a very big dream myself, a dream of becoming a healer. On a good day it feels still just out of reach and on a bad day I can think that I am bat-shit crazy. To even get to the place where I thought I might be able to do this has required so much transformation and change and release of fear. All fall, I planted hundreds of daffodils myself, each one of them a prayer that I asked Mother Earth to hold. The flowers are blooming now and for me well its time to get cracking.
All spring, I have been consumed by hundreds of small steps that may just open up the path for me. Truth is I have been walking it already but now after months of slow wandering, it feels as though I am sprinting down it at lightning speed. There are thousands of tiny (but huge!) things that need to be done to pull me a long and I run the risk of getting paralyzed by each of them. We are renting our basement and I need to find the right tenant, line up the contractors to do work on the house (so said tenant can come in). Line up my financing, apply for scholarships, restructure my current paid work, figure out new ways to plug the gap between what I will be making part-time and our current expenses. And yes, I am doing all this while trying to keep our life humming along. To quote a dear friend of mine, I feel like I am balancing a refrigerator on my head. I could at any moment just give up and let the whole thing come crashing down, declaring that it is too damn hard.
But instead I keep remembering what I told John that chilly October night. Give the big dream over to the Earth and let her hold it and just do what is in front of you–right now. Don’t give it too much importance. Just walk, tiny step by tiny step and trust that if you do that, one day, that dream will blossom.
Sometimes in the most unlikely of places, you will find a tiny treasure that represents a world of potential. Look carefully! Pay attention! It is not always in plain sight. But there right under your nose you will find something that holds promise of sweetness and goodness. Something that promises that this sweetness, this goodness, it is yours for the taking.
Maybe you have been hunting for a long long time. Maybe you just stumbled upon it. Maybe the bright colors caught your eye and made you stop and look again.
You hold it in your hand, turn it over, can’t believe your luck. Even before you open it, even before you you know that its biggest promise is that the cold dark days have passed–at least for now. The sun is shining again and there is work to be done!
Happy (belated) Easter.
Seven years ago this weekend, Juan and I stayed up all night and he told me he was leaving. It took him another year to leave and several more for the divorce to become final. Its taken 3 years for other details to be laid to rest, property to transfer, documents to be signed. Years later we are still navigating and negotiating–consulting about rides to karate and child care back ups and sick days. Nothing is ever gained or lost–it is just transformed and so too it is with the kind of commitments one makes to our children. But something feels big about crossing over the threshhold of seven.
Even as I write I am crossing a big milestone. I am putting stamps on the final document I need to send in–at least what I think is the final document to lay to rest another detail, the final big one.
One last big step away from an us that ceased to exist that night 7 years ago and one more step deeper into the magical and marvelous life that I am building–step by step, breath by breath, glorious morning by morning.
Seven years is a very long time. When things take that long to fully dissolve it can create a kind of inertia. The documents that needed to be mailed sat on my desk all week. In a timeline that has unfolded this slowly, a week is but a blink of an eye.
Sometimes I can get so frustrated with myself and the slow pace with which my life has seemed to unfold lately. Even the simplest of tasks seem to take longer some days. And yet, the landscape of my life has not changed by earthquakes but has instead been shaped by a slow steady rain, years and years of patient life giving rain that has worn new paths, shaped stones, grown trees and moss. Looking out at my garden I am in awe of the beauty that has resulted. Yes it is transformed, quietly, slowly. When I look at the results, who am I to curse the pace?
Some things take longer. Lifetimes or centuries. Millennia even. In the scheme of things, what is seven years? Seven years to finally put to rest something I thought would last a lifetime doesn’t seem that long, even as it feels like an eternity.
And yet there is something about the passing of seven years that makes me stand and take notice. Springing out of bed, as though an alarm has sounded. Enough already. Lets get moving.
Seven feels like a complete number, magical and round. Time now to dust off my hands and whatever inertia is left and move up and out and all around. Shake the earth and move the boulders. Its time. Its time.
I just made the mistake of reading a long back and forth on someone’s facebook page–the kind of rants inspired by wars and Wisconsin. I never should read those diatribes. They never lead to anything good. Case in point: I am having a hard time breathing.
I am having a hard time these days with lines drawn so firmly in the sand. With open hands turned into tight closed fists. Mine. Yours. Fights and struggles over who deserves what. Name calling. Power plays. People not wanting to share.
The illusion that seems so real to so many, the illusion that we are separate seems to be all I see and hear and feel these days. It hurts my heart. The constant infusion of fear and hatred (You are going to take what is mine! you have more than me! You don’t deserve the (fill in the blank)! ) is suffocating. Crushing.
Truth is we are one. Connected and intertwined whether we like it or not. Your poverty hurts me. You joy creates space and openness in my life. Its that simple. When your blood spills it pollutes my water. We are in it together though we like to pretend that its a zero sum game.
I don’t know how to stand in such a mindset anymore–that place where someone has to lose so that someone can win. One where we only get richer by making sure that someone doesn’t get what we have. One where we are constantly vigilant for the thief who will rob us blind, or the neighbor who will take too much if we are not careful.
I am not naive. I know that thieves and liars exist. I know that those who worry that no one will ever feed them in the lean times will horde now leaving still more to starve. I also know that those who share everything they have risk going hungry by giving. Recognition that we are so interconnected and acting upon this recognition requires the greatest act of faith.
And yet I am beginning to see that there is no other way forward.
Tuesday nights are rink nights. After hockey practice I untie Max’s skates and while he is undressing get in line at the grill at the rink to order our dinner. Its always the same–a piece of pizza and a red gatorade for him, chicken and fries and a small coke for me. And his friend D. is always right behind me with a $20 dollar bill and his order: two hot dogs, a coke and a venti skim cappuccino for his dad. He leaves a nice tip for the grill guys. I like that about this kid. I always let him cut me in line because I like that so much.
One by one the 9 and 10 year old boys piling in to the booth next time mine where I sit with my computer. Dads are allowed to hover nearby but this mom needs to stay at a bit of a distance at least one booth away. This is male territory. They laugh and tell stories and quote movies and run around turning the grill into a basketball arena. No one seems to care as these cubs tumble about. Everyone seems to acknowledge that these young men are the princes here. And when their dinner is finished they each dig for pocket change and head for the rink’s arcade.
It brings such heady joy, this ritual of ours. The air is thick with silly boy joy. I can’t help but smile, reveling in the simple sweetness even as I hang back–a witness. I bring my camera because I want to capture its sweetness, so that I can remember that this is our life. Our life is a string of moments like these–moments of connection and friendship and learning and laughter.
Our life is also tears in the locker room and homework not yet done. Its it chores and messy cars and spilled milk and a frantic desperate gymnastics to arrive at school and work on time. It is forgotten lunches and major disappointments and sick days when I have to do the conference call anyway and he thinks that means that I don’t want him with me at work. But it is a steady stream of nights like this when love is a piece of pizza and a handful of quarters and your buddies all around.
*****
Hockey is now over. I started to write this post sometime in January I think when it felt as though that rhythm of our life would never end, when I was awakening to the joy that that slog to the rink and the late nights and early mornings offered. But it has ended. All things shift and so we are spending our Tuesdays doing homework and setting up tents and getting the laundry done. We spend our weekends cleaning up the house and the yard, getting ready for baseball and swimming, plotting sleepovers and catching up with our our life locally.
I wanted to hold onto the sweetness I discovered this winter so dearly. I spent many tortured minutes second guessing my decision not to put Max in spring league this year. I knew our schedule would not abide it but I wanted so badly to not let it go.
And that is precisely why I held firm. My resistance to letting the season shift and change is why I decided we wouldn’t. I needed to practice letting things evolve naturally. I knew that holding on so tightly would not serve. Pushing ourselves to keep it going–just to keep it going felt wrong and counter to the easy way that hockey unfolded for us this year. As hard as it was to let go of something beautiful I know I needed to just to give space for more sweetness to be born. I want to teach Max how goodness comes into our life and how we can’t grasp at it like sand but instead need to let it go, transform, develop–that goodness is abundant and will flow differently, never stopping but always changing, always changing.
Not going to the rink means I need to call those families that I loved and miss seeing and show up at their house to eat spicy red kidney beans and brown rice. It means plotting sleep overs and reunions at stick n pucks. It means sending pictures in the mail and yes it means piling into the car and heading to the rink with the boys to watch the dads’ game and to cheer loudly for the men who had become so dear. We can do that now that we have the time. Creating the open space opens doors to new goodness.
Tuesday night we had no hockey practice. With a championship won and spring upon us, the long nights and early mornings at the rink have come to a pause. We have left the hockey season behind.
Once upon a time, there was a boy who didn’t know how to stay on-sides and who was tentative on the ice. Now there is a hockey player who is aggressive but does not cross the blue line without the puck, who passes with precision. In between was a coach who praised and encouraged and sat and taught and quietly smiled when he succeeded, who would tap him on his helmet when he got off the ice.
I opened the fridge at dinner time and realized there was nothing there. I had long since stopped cooking on Tuesday. For the last five or months we had rushed right from school to the rink, done homework at a table in the diner and after practice, ate our dinner with the team at the tiny diner. The boys would take over the booths, then dash to spend allowances at the arcade or shoot neon bouncey balls around with their sticks while we adults lingered at the counter. I give up and order pizza. I will have to shop for dinner tomorrow.
Once upon a time was a boy, all alone, who stepped onto an ice sheet full of strangers with head bowed, wondering if he would be accepted. Now there is a hockey player, who bursts through the locker room door with his head held high. In between was a kid with a hot dog in one hand, a goalie stick tucked precariously under his other, who pushed his way into a booth with the new kid Max. In between was another kid who knelt at his side when he was down, another who taught him to play the games at the arcade, the boy who always told him something positive about his play and one who told him that his mother was “the source of his greatest strength”.
On my coffee table is a stack of CDs with photos I have taken, labeled for each boy who face appears on the disc. I am shipping copies of my photos off to all the parents this week. Each of these boys tugs at my heart in different ways–it might be his soulful wisdom, his bouyant energy, his fierce loyalty, his joyfulness, his drive, but each boy carried a gift with him into the locker room, a gift I watched blossom with awe. I know each of their numbers by heart and have called their names over and over again out loud. Their parents too stick with me, and I think of them throughout the day, wondering when the adoption they have been dreaming about will come through, and praying that they stay safe while they fight that big fire, wondering if they will stay warm on this cold cold day while they work outside. Thinking about the miracles of family life that unfold in each home each day.
Once upon a time was a woman, who felt so small in this huge rink with its activity and the crush of strangers, who felt shy in the tiny locker room, tripping over other people’s bags. Now there is a hockey mom who walks into the rink with open arms and ready to wrap around someone in a hug, who holds her breath when any child has fallen, who tells the boys their stats while she tells them to pick up their clothes. In between were skates to be tied, equipment to be helped into, quarters to be loaned, juice boxes to be passed, penalty boxes to be guarded, scoresheets to be filled out, clocks to be run and photos to be taken. Thousands of tiny inconsequential moments that strung together, changed everything.
The championship trophy sits on our mantel, a central place of honor. Hockey was the center of our schedule for so many months, a pulse that pushed us through the darkest days of winter, so it seems only fitting. The golden trophy reminds us of what 15 boys can do when they learn how to work together, and how interconnected they all are but it also reminds us that this season was once magical but is now passed, the battle won, the trophy gained.
After a weekend of togetherness and parties, it was at last time to leave on Sunday, without any firm plans of when we would see each other again. No games on the schedule, no practices to make, the last party was over. Max stepped onto the driveway of his coach’s house and in the safety of the darkness collapsed against me and started to sob, saddened that this wonderous journey had come to its end. I held him, practically carrying his big boy body to the car, biting back my own tears for his sake. “I know baby…I know.” It was all I can say, it is all I can say.
A wise teacher once told me that nothing is ever gained or lost, it is only transformed. As I manage my own grief over the loss of such a sweet adventure, I repeat this wisdom over and over. Not lost, just transformed. Not lost, just transformed. Truth is it has always been transforming, always changing. The beginnings and endings are sometimes clearly marked with ceremonies and trophies and parties, but often they are blurred and more subtle. We have all been transformed all season by love: a love of hockey, of our children, of coffee at 6:30 am, of quiet time with our kids in the car, of pizza and hot dogs and pancakes, of arcade games and stories, and and lastly of each other. That was the magic we all felt. That transformative, alchemical love.
Emails are flying around tonight. We are camping together in June. Watching the Caps in the playoffs in May and yes…meeting at the rink for a stick & puck session on Saturday. The spring will give way again to a hot summer and the pool and grills. We will run around in sunshine instead of huddling in the cold rink. Some will fade away, others will join.
And we will not be lost, not at all, just transformed. Over and over again.
