Today has been a busy and reasonably productive day. I am grateful to be sitting down and essentially calling it a night in terms of physical work. Once again I spent most of the day on my feet or walking around, organizing, packing, throwing things away with a ruthlessness that would have made my friend Pat proud. As I mentioned during yesterday’s blog, I wanted to invoke the voice of Pat as I sorted through things and accomplished that in some good measure today. In spite of all of my ruthlessness and working, I am still surrounded by piles of junk: perfectly good things become junk when they congregate together. What I would really like to do is to create another space where things look relatively orderly. One room I can go into and say, “Ahhhhh, this room is done.”
I have that with Jared’s room. He moved out over the course of a about a week or so, finally getting 98 percent of his things out of his room. Today I removed the last remnants he’d left behind: a bunch of wire hangers in the close, two mismatched shoes and the air mattress on which he’d slept for some 15 months. I deflated the bed, storing it and its accessories in it’s carry bag, removed the last items and ran the vacuum cleaner in there. It was a very good feeling to clean the room up and long for being able to do that in other parts of the house, though I think that won’t happen in any meaningful way until I am actually ready to move out. I can’t yet say when that will be, though I am hoping it will be within the next few weeks or so, certainly by the end of September. October 1 won’t find me here, not if I can will this plan into place. We shall see.
I was quite shocked to be turning the page of my calendar from August to September. I remain baffled by what happened to the summer, it blazed by so quickly. The line from one of James Taylor’s songs popped into my head just now, “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time…” It’s a reminder to me that, while time marches inexorably on, I can choose to be overwhelmed by how fast everything seems to be moving, or I can enjoy it, learning to live in the moment with whatever that moment chooses to bring. Some days I am better at this than others, but it does feel like a worthy thing to strive for. Gratitude for each day, for something in each hour of the day helps contribute to my overall sense of wellbeing. It offers me a refuge during those times when I am overwhelmed by life and trying to make sense of what’s happening in my world. Even when I’m not sure what else to say, “Thank you, God” is simple enough.
This evening as I took a break to take Honor outside for brief walk, I reveled in the sights and sounds of nature in a little wooded area right behind our condo complex. I saw birds I hadn’t seen before, standing and admiring the beautiful colors and streaks of white in wing and tail. I basked briefly in the warmth of the sun and realized with startled surprise that we are rapidly approaching Autumn, my favorite of the four season. As I drove home from errands the other day, I noticed the leaves of the sweet gum trees already turning brilliant reds and oranges. So much beauty around me, how can I help but be grateful, appreciative of the wonders all around me.
Tomorrow when I rise, I will run a few errands before settling in to another long day of work. Tonight before I put my head on my pillow, I will flesh out a few more items on my to-do list, with a goal of getting a a bunch more accomplished. We shall see how it goes. Whatever I do manage to get done, it will be that much less I’ll have to do the next day. Still, I need to “rear back and pass a miracle” as my mother used to say. I’m not sure about the miracle part, but I’m going to dig in and work as hard as I can to get as much done as I can. I’ll be sure to report back in here as to how well I manage to do that, all the while holding a grateful heart which in the end is a very good thing.
