In spite of my best intentions I doubt very seriously that I’m going to get to bed at a decent hour tonight. I feel like a kid the night before her first day at a new school abuzz with anticipation. Well, technically it is the night before my first day at a new school, the main difference of course is that I’m well past being a kid (except at heart, perhaps.) Tomorrow marks another step in my latest transition; it is a commencement, the start of the next phase of life. If tomorrow is a beginning, then tonight is an ending and I’m not quite sure how I feel about that. I was lamenting to one of my sisters this afternoon that I hadn’t gotten as much done today as I’d wanted and was feeling a little out of sorts. She listened and replied, “Well you just spent weeks packing up and moved all the way across the country. You can’t expect to be all unpacked and settled in three days.” Oh yeah.
I guess I have underestimated the impact of experiencing another big transition. On the top ten list of stressful life events, I’ve experienced a good number of them in the past two years: death of a loved one, end of a significant relationship, loss of job, loss of home, and all the grief, sadness, turmoil, struggle that goes along with all of that. And while the reason for packing up and moving across the country was positive–to start a new job–the process of packing up my life, hiring a mover at the last minute, making housing arrangements by email, fax and Western Union, and leaving behind a part of the country that has been home for seven years (and leaving both my children on the West Coast) piled on additional levels of drama, trauma, and stress. I fully expect that in the days and weeks ahead I’ll begin to settle down a bit and get into the rhythm of life out here and finally take a good, long exhale.
I still have lingering financial concerns I have to attend to–the remnants of the “how-m’ I-gonna’s” still hover around me and likely will for a while longer. But I no longer take daily rides on Mephistopheles the mechanical bull, getting whipped to and fro by the various vicissitudes of life (or anxieties about them.) And while I still wake before the alarm, my mind whirring and buzzing with an astounding variety of ideas, memories, scenes from movies, worries, music lyrics, random thoughts, my body is no longer electrified by the adrenaline of fear and anxiety that often greeted my waking a few months ago.
So here I sit, at my computer in my home office (my new place is big enough for me to once again have an office separate from my bedroom), writing about gratitude. And grateful I am indeed. For the breath I draw in and breath out, the breath that calms me when I let it. As always I am grateful for my connection to my family and that today I was able to give a little back by listening to the concerns on the heart of one of my siblings. I plan to be more present to each of them as best I can and to give in the ways I know best–by listening carefully and lovingly, offering suggestions and assistance when and where I can, by simply being there as I have always tried to be. Over the past 18 months I have learned to humble myself and reach out to ask my siblings for help. It will be a while before I am able to return in kind even a fraction of the aid I’ve been given, but I definitely can and will give back in other ways. It’s easy. I love them and it’s what we do when we’re at our best.
Tonight is an ending, tomorrow is a new day, with new beginnings and new possibilities. Kahlil Gibran says, “Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.” I believe I shall, as best I can, and move into the day with gratitude for transitions and changes, endings and beginnings, and meeting life as it unfolds. I don’t think it’ll be Mephistopheles I’ll be riding…perhaps Pegasus.
