Lessons in Gratitude

Sometimes waiting is not fun. It can be nerve-wracking, frustrating, exhausting. But I have to believe that there’s something to be gained when I have to wait. After my 2800 mile trek across the country, I really want to move and settle into my new abode. But, I can’t move in without my “stuff” which seems to be held up yet another day. My stuff left California two days before I did, but in a big semi-truck that no doubt picked up a lot of other people’s stuff along the way and has to deliver their stuff to them before they can deliver mine. I had been hoping it would come this past weekend, but they called me and said it would be here on Monday. This evening the driver called to tell me it wasn’t going to get here until Tuesday morning. I was bummed and texted my sister Ruth in my dismay. Ruth, ever the glass-half-full optimist remarked, “Hmmm, let’s find the silver lining.” I had to smile at that.

So, I have to wait one more day. I have another day with which I can do something, at the moment I know not what. And, that’s alright. If there’s one thing I’ve learned through the challenges of the last months it’s been that I can choose what I’m going to do with what I’m given, with whatever is handed to me, whether it’s “good” or “bad.”  Learning that my “stuff” was going to be delayed another day and my subsequent reaction to the news reminded me how much room for improvement I still have in the patience department. I have had more opportunities than one could wish for to practice, so you would think I’d be better at it.

I have the opportunity to sit with the question, “what will you do with this day?” I could sit around and fret about how I will have “lost” a day, or I can turn it around and recognize that I have gained one. At this particular moment, I have no idea what I will do with the day that I’ve been given, but I hope to make the best of it. It’s another opportunity to turn an idea around–I might not be able to start unpacking things and getting settled in my house. So what can I do? I won’t be able to sleep in my own bed in my own house tomorrow, so what will I be able to do? I can choose to be cranky about the situation or I can be grateful for the generosity of my sister Sandy and her husband to allow me and my dog to stay at their house until I can get situated in mine.

I am grateful for being able to choose. So I choose gratitude over grumpiness and to exercise the muscle of patient waiting rather than thrashing around in frustration and irritation because things aren’t working out according to my wishes. In the scheme of things this delay won’t matter one bit; a week from now I won’t be thinking about it, a month from now it’ll be a vague recollection. So I choose to remain calm and do something different with my energy and time tomorrow. “Let’s find the silver lining,” my sister suggested. Good idea. Tomorrow I’ll start with that.

Tonight I am grateful to be living within 15 minutes of each of my sisters. I have spent time every day with my sisters Ruth and Sandy, and as soon as my sister Michaele returns from traveling I plan on spending time with her too.  Of course I have to keep reminding myself that I don’t have to squeeze everything into a few days with them–this is not Christmas where I see them for a day or two or a few hours here or there before I jump back on the plane and head back to California. Now I live here, a short drive away. I am still wrapping my mind around this fact. I have been getting down the route between my sister Sandy’s house (where I’m staying until my belongings arrive from California) and my house and between Sandy’s house and Ruth’s house. Next I need to get from my house to Ruth’s house and from my house to Michaele’s house and I’ll have completed the family circuit.

The other major route to get down is the one to my new job. It will be a long commute–over 25 miles each way. I have the option of taking the subway, but for starters I’m going to drive to see just how bad the traffic is. When I was in California I had a 23.5 mile commute that took me about 40 minutes in and about 60 minutes home. We’ll see how this one goes. I don’t start work for another week, so this week I plan to take a “practice” drive from my house to workplace. I’ll leave during rush hour at the time I will normally leave for work–probably around 7 a.m.–and see how long it takes me. These are the kind of things I’m thinking about at the moment. Once my job starts, I’ll have a whole new set of things to focus on.

This morning I woke a little anxious, though nothing like what I experienced throughout many months of uncertainty. I did not feel that adrenalized fire in my heart and arms and my stomach wasn’t knotted. I wondered if I’d made a good decision in choosing to live closer to my family and have a longer commute to work than living closer to work but farther away from my sisters. But the more I thought about it over the course of the day, I am confident that I made the decision that is best for me right now. It will play out in the days to come, and I’m sure I’ll have days when the long commute is wearying and irritating. But I’m confident that those times will be far overshadowed by the days when I can pop in over at one or another of my sisters’ houses just to hang out or go get coffee or spend some time working on some yard or house project with one of them.

I expect I’ll have more anxious days in the weeks ahead as I get into the flow of my new job, the commute, living in a new place, navigating my way around, etc. I still have a few financial challenges–leftovers from 18 months of unemployment–and a few things I need to work out before I can fully exhale, but I am grateful to be well on the road toward reestablishing a sense of equilibrium that has been missing for quite some time. I know that being able to hang out with my sisters is a major component of the healing process that I’m undergoing. I am grateful for being close by and having the opportunity to connect with them on a regular basis. It will no doubt be a gift that keeps on giving, and I am delighted.

One of these days I’ll feel rested again. I’ll get acclimated to living back in an Eastern time zone. I’ll remember what humidity and mosquitos are and adjust myself back to those eastern phenomena. And when the snow flies, it’ll come back to me about how to deal with that. When I start my job in a little over a week I’ll be getting accustomed to that too. I haven’t really spent too much time thinking or feeling over the past few weeks; mostly I’ve been reacting. I think I’m still mostly in react mode, but am no doubt gradually moving toward feeling as it really settles in and dawns on me that I no longer live in California. Because I visit the Washington DC area relatively regularly (at least once per year on average), it still feels like I’m simply here for a visit. As soon as the truck bearing all my earthly belongings shows up at my little house in Maryland (it’s due to arrive on Monday) and I move in and spend my first night there, then it will become a much more present and immediate reality.

I am up way too late this evening: I’m still in that nether world between time zones. I just spent an hour talking/Skyping with my daughter. She’s in the Pacific time zone which I left just five (or is it six) days ago. It is nearly midnight here on the East coast. My body still hasn’t quite made the adjustment. One of the things that drove me nuts when I was in California–and I never really got used to it–was the three hour time difference. Nearly everyone with whom I wanted to talk with on the phone lived in the Eastern time zone. When I would normally call my family or friends after I’d finished dinner, I realized that by the time I was sitting down to dinner, most of them were headed toward bed. Now I am the one heading to bed when my daughter is free to be chatting with me. And I’ve only been able to talk with my son once since I left on the last day of September.

I am grateful for the grace to make these adjustments and transitions. They needn’t be bumpy. They might be weird, but I’ll settle into it. I am looking forward to getting myself and my dog into a routine once we get into the new place. For now, I’ll do the best I can to prepare myself for the next wave of changes that are coming: transitioning back to full time 45 hours/week working, commuting either by driving 45 minutes one way or taking the subway, which I’ve not done more than occasionally, and most importantly reconnecting myself with each of my sisters and their spouses and families for the first time in many, many years. I am looking forward to these various transitions–some with a bit of anxiety and trepidation, others with delight and anticipation. But that’s life, isn’t it?

I am grateful for the many lessons I’ve learned throughout my life, and over the past several months in particular. Like the old folks say, “I wouldn’t take nothin’ for my journey.” I think some people would want to trade the hard times in for an easier life, and I definitely understand that. But there’s a real gift in understanding what you’re made of and learning from all experiences, including and perhaps especially the difficult ones. No, I wouldn’t take anything in trade for my journey, and while I don’t always understand what’s happening while I’m in the midst of it, often I will grasp it at a later point. Armed with this awareness, I can tolerate and sometimes even embrace what’s happening in the moment because I know that after a while it will make sense. That is definitely a good thing, a very good thing indeed.

I have so much to be grateful for in my life. I spend time each day recounting in the blog the many ways I am blessed. Lately I have spent a lot of time expressing my deep gratitude to and appreciation for my siblings and their families. Each of them has held and sustained me over the course of my lifetime, and in particular the past 18 months or so. They have “had my back” in so many generous and wonderful ways I find myself hard pressed to describe them.

One of the more challenging lessons I’ve learned during my recent struggles has been to ask for help. I’ve never been particularly good at it; I was much better at offering help, responding to the needs of others, assisting and providing for other people. Asking for help, not so much. I had always thought it much easier to work it out on my own than to ask for help. I’m not sure if I thought it was a sign of weakness to ask for help or that somehow I should be able to manage alone. Whatever the case, it had long been my habit to limp along, suffering and struggling to do something rather than revealing to other humans (I prayed a lot to God…) that I needed their support in a particular matter.

Handling the series of unfortunate events that befell me in 2011 was no exception. I worked really hard to figure out how to do things myself even though this approach resulted in my getting farther and farther behind in what I needed to do to survive and move forward in my life. And asking for financial help was the last thing I wanted to do. When I’d left Michigan for California seven years ago, I was doing financially better than I had in my entire working life–I had a really good salary that enabled me to be able to help other people as well as give to charity, take care of my family, and meet my financial responsibilities with money left over that I could save and put away for my kids’ college educations, etc. I gave all that up to go to California with the hope and expectation of a good and satisfying emotional life bright with new possibilities. In the end, it didn’t turn out that way and I suddenly found myself without a job at all, loss of relationship and home, and a number of related, semi-calamitous events. From this place of difficult and desperate straits, I was forced to do what I had hoped not to have to do again: ask for help from the only people in my life to whom I could turn–my family.

It can be a very humbling thing to go to anyone to ask for help of any kind. For me, having to ask my siblings for financial help was humbling at best. After all, I had gone from living fairly comfortably to having very little income and no prospects in the foreseeable future. I was 50-something years old, graduate degree educated, with a 25-plus year career in higher education and I was starting from scratch. Going to my family to ask for money has dealt a serious blow to my pride, which is probably a good thing. After all, pride of that sort is not a particularly healthy attribute. I have learned to ask and to receive as graciously as I possibly can.

It still is not easy–over the past few weeks as I’ve prepared to move myself across the country to start a new job, I’ve continued to lean on the financial and moral support of each of my siblings. And they have contributed without question or hesitation. I pray that I can repay each of them in kind–not so much about the money, which I will find ways to repay as best I can over time–but more so with the loving, selfless attitude that each of them has displayed as they’ve helped me. Once upon a time I was in a position to give. I look forward to being in that position once again. But in the meantime, I will remain a gracious receiver and offer gratitude and prayers for each of my siblings for their generosity toward me and my children. May they receive blessings a thousandfold. So let it be.

Tonight I am grateful to be sitting on a bed in my sister’s house after having driven the last 600 miles of my trip from California. Tomorrow morning I don’t have to drag myself up at 5:30 and get myself together to sit in the car for 10, 12, 14 hours. I’m not sure how long I’ll sleep, but what a luxury to be able to move around in a leisurely fashion without a particular agenda. Soon enough the pace of my life will pick back up, but for tonight and probably for most of tomorrow and part of the weekend, I’ll be somewhat footloose.

This morning I was rolling along the Indiana Toll Road headed for the greater Washington DC metropolitan area. It was a trip that I’d made dozens of times from the time I was a child riding out with my parents and siblings to visit my older sisters who’d moved there for college and career. In later years I made the drive myself, carting my kids out to celebrate Christmas in an every-other-year family tradition. Today’s trip was different; I wasn’t coming here to visit, I am here to live for the foreseeable future. It felt good to know the names of the towns and counties and rivers as I drove across Ohio and Pennsylvania before dropping down into Maryland.

After three days of passing through unknown territories in Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska and Iowa, when we reached Indiana yesterday, I was back in familiar territory. In fact, the terrain began to feel much more like what I’d grown up with by the time we crossed into Iowa from Nebraska. The farms and rolling terrain, the autumn leaves already changing color, and the greenness of the land were comforting in their familiarity. After days of traveling through the brown grass headlands in California, the desert of Nevada, the craggy mountains of Utah and high desert mountain passes in Wyoming, the land flattened and greened up the further east we drove. In Western Ohio one into Pennsylvania and Maryland, I was back up in the mountains again, but these were the greener, less rocky ones that I’d grown familiar with from living 12 years in Pennsylvania and frequently driving down to DC or back and forth to Indiana.

As tired as I was when I dragged myself out of bed this morning from my brother’s house in Indiana, I was anxious to complete this trip. Now that I have it will soon dawn on me that I really have moved myself all the way across the country from what had been my home state for the past seven years. I’ve no doubt that a variety of emotions that I have been keeping at bay for many months now will begin welling up as I realize the enormity of the change I just made. Recently I’d seen a list of the most stressful life events. In reviewing the top stressors, I realized that I had experienced at least a few of them. While very few mentioned moving, a few did. I would certainly add it to my personal list!

I am grateful for traveling mercies today, for having arrived at my destination safe and relatively sound. Over the next few days I’ll transition from living with my sister and her husband to living in my own place. I’ll practice my commute to work a few times before I actually have to do it. I’ll do a dozen things to begin to orient myself to this new place–different traffic gridlock and other urban challenges than I experienced living near a West coast city, but many similarities as well. It’ll be important to establish a routine, like continuing to write in my journal each morning and this blog each night. Right now I need consistency in my life, particularly after the last month or so of uncertainty and upheaval. I look forward to getting into a groove fairly soon. In the midst of it all I’ll be patient and gentle with myself as I take these first steps forward into my new life.  Now as I prepare to take my rest it will be with the knowledge that I have arrived at my destination, at least for this phase of my life. I am ready to get on with life and see where it takes me next. For tonight, I rest in gratitude for those things that have sustained me over these many months and look forward with grateful heart toward what’s next.

Another long day on the road, the longest one yet. Today we drove from Salt Lake City, Utah to Lincoln Nebraska–a distance of 882 miles. We left our hotel at 7 this morning and arrived in Lincoln after 9:30 p.m. My brother drove for all but two hours–I drove through part of Wyoming. It has been a good two days. I have received many messages of well wishing, phone conversations with and text messages from various siblings wanting to hear how the trip is going. It has been good.

I am weary but grateful. Still many things on my mind, but overall life is good. What I am most grateful about at this moment is the time I’ve spent in the company of my brother. We’ve talked about a lot of things: our families, our siblings, our individual hopes and dreams. He has been rock steady, calm, and kind throughout the trip. We’ve had many hours in conversation, laughing, serious, enjoying the scenery as we drove along. We were continually amazed and in wonder at the mountains, red rocks, salt flats, high desert, and at the wildlife we’ve seen as we’ve driven along.

Tomorrow we will make the last leg of our trip together: I will drop him off in Indiana and keep going by myself on to Maryland. It will be nice to be back in our hometown. Our other brother lives there, so I’ll get a chance to visit with him and his wife before I head out on Wednesday morning. I could myself as very blessed to have the love and support of my family; it provides a strength that so eases any difficulties I face and I find myself brimming over with love for each of my siblings as well as my children and various cousins and other relatives. Without them I simply would have completely come unglued.

It is time for me to take y rest for the evening. We’re getting an early start tomorrow and it will be another long day. Still, I am grateful to be spending another day with my brother. That indeed is a very good thing.

Regular readers of this blog know today typically try to post before midnight every day. On September 29th I didn’t get started until almost 3 in the morning. Tonight but I want to report that I am grateful for good friends,for new possibilities,for a fresh start. September 29th was day filled with goodbyes. Perhaps when I have had time to process everything I’ll write a bit or about what the last week in California has been like but it 3 a.m. I find I am simply too tired to think. Plus,I am writing this in the dark using my smart phone. I can’t say I recommend it.

The next few days I will be driving across the country with one of my older brothers. I am looking forward to the trip but I suspect tomorrow I’m not gonna be doing a whole lot of driving early on. I’d best sign off as I’ve almost lost this precious work once by virtue of writing it in the dark on my phone at 3 a.m. I am grateful for this long,exhausting,wonderful day of farewells. My alarm is set for 6 a.m. and my brother wants to leave no later than 7,so I will take my leave to get what rest I can. I still have work to do,but it’ll have to keep for these two hours I plan to sleep. “What has not been done has not been done,let it be.”I agree. Good night,California.

I posted last night’s blog at about 11:57 p.m.–very nearly pumpkin time. I finally turned out the light at 1:30. I had to get up to turn off the big overhead light because I had packed my bedside lamp (which had been sitting on a box because I carried my bedside table downstairs with other furniture in advance of moving day. And suddenly, it  was moving day, today that is. I had gone to sleep not knowing what time the movers were coming– the people arranging it had neglected to call and tell me, so I didn’t know until I woke this morning and checked my email that they were coming between 8 and 10 a.m. I won’t go into the full, longer story about how I woke this morning with a radical moving idea that meant I had to get over to my storage unit at 7 a.m. to rearrange and modify work I had spent two hours yesterday setting up.

The last several days I’ve been waking up at 5 a.m., no matter what time I go to bed. So it was a bit unpleasant to wake at 5 this morning having gone to bed at 1:30 last night. Perhaps my body is getting me ready for Eastern Standard Time, or perhaps I’ve had so much on my mind that it wakes me up whether I want to be awake or not. So as one might imagine, I am worn out. But, my house is now mostly empty, save for some furniture and household types of goods I will donate someplace tomorrow, some junk that needs to be hauled to the dump, and general garbage that I will put into our dumpster and ask someone to put out for me on next Wednesday. By next Wednesday I’ll be pulling into my sister’s driveway in Maryland. Thursday morning I will probably get up and drive over to the house I’ll be renting not too far away from her. I am excited, but can’t quite think about that just yet as I still have much work to complete here and then there’s the matter of the 2800 mile drive between now and then. Nevertheless, walking through my nearly vacant, very echoey condo brings home very clearly to me that I am down to my last hours in the state of California that has been my place of residence for seven years.

It is a very odd feeling. I continue to realize with a start all the people and things I will not have the opportunity to say a proper goodbye to. For instance, it has been a few months since I walked the mile and a half at Chavez Park. When I started working semi-regular hours in Oakland each week, my schedule no longer really permitted it. My walks at Chavez Park were a mainstay of my week and one of the things that helped me regain a sense of equilibrium and wellbeing in the first months after my series of unfortunate events in 2011. It is not likely in the few hours I have left in the Bay area that I can carve out enough time to walk the park or even sit in my favorite place and look out across the San Francisco Bay toward the Golden Gate.

I came out here seven years ago with a sense of excitement and hope for a happy life. I leave here with a number of emotions I haven’t really allowed myself to feel, particularly over the last couple of months as I began to realize that I would likely be leaving by late summer or early fall. I know there is some regret at things not having worked out as I’d hoped or expected, but also some deep gratitude for the friendships I’ve formed out here with people who will remain friends for the rest of my life. As I work through the days ahead and get myself situated in my “what’s next” in the greater Washington DC metropolitan area (I’ll actually be living in Maryland and working in Virginia), I’m sure I’ll find greater clarity in my emotions and thoughts about leaving and all that it means. (My therapist alerted me to the probability that the emotion will eventually hit as I finally exhale, not just from the drama of the move, but of the past 18 to 24 months of my life.)

I am grateful for this day and for the next 24 hours as I wrap up life in California and hit the road. I am looking forward to sleeping a little better in the days ahead. We shall see. I am conking out, nodding off at the keyboard, so I will close for tonight. My wireless will be iffy tomorrow, so I might end up writing my blog post on my phone–that should be interesting. Once I hit the road on Sunday, we anticipate driving anywhere from 10 to 12 hours per day. My guess is that my blog posts will be short and sweet. Grateful to have you along for the ride, though! Any time.