Home Again: Day One of Staying Calm

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Want to hear something wonderful about blogging?

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How about meeting the most wonderful woman and her son in person for the first time, friends holding and joining hands from across the ocean to place a token of friendship amidst the stones and shells in a little spot under a deck on Cape Cod?

Aw Marianne, I still can't get over it. Aw Lo, thanks for making it happen. Aw JB, thanks for everything. Aw, Felix, ♥

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JB and I left Provincetown yesterday. This was my last view of Commercial Street, walking to breakfast. I am determined to keep the shimmer of the water in my mind, to be able to call it up when I need to tone things down. I am experimenting this week, remember, wanting to hold on as much as I can to my vacation style way of living and moving through my day.
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I won't see the dunes again until late next Spring. I have returned to my home in a college town surrounded by other several other college towns but all of that surrounded by farms, plenty of farms. This is Western Massachusetts where today, my first day here in almost a month, I bought fresh corn and just picked sweet strawberries at the farm stand.

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This is what I woke up to this morning: snowballs just outside my bedroom window. It is not the ocean, I don't feel the breezes, my bedroom here is not white and spacious and airy like it is in Provincetown, but oh these flowers. They were the first thing I saw when I woke up and thank God, because I didn't sleep as well without my ocean breeze. Mim said being near the water heals and I know she is right. I'm sure this is true of the breezes too. My bedroom here is going to be an adjustment. (Just a fact....) :)

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We have tomatoes in the garden. Plenty of them, and they are lushly red.

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I look to the porch and I see Stella's cookie in the middle of the futon. I think if Stella can mark her spot then I can too. I don't want my life to be difficult because I am unable to settle down, or because I am clueness about how to pursue the details in the way I choose, or because I am unwilling to stick my neck out to recognize and appreciate and participate. I got myself cracked open in the recent past and I got hurt in the process. Healing is still an effort, but I know I getting closer to dancing with abandon. I know I want to love deeply, even still, and I want to laugh my ass off.

And I want to be an improving writer.

And I want to have fun.

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I have several things going for me. For one, I have happy zinnias. This morning I am setting up the French Press for my beloved Peet's Major Dickinson coffee and the zinnias are waving to me outside my kitchen window. I can hear the g.d. bulldozers and trucks digging up the street outside, a mess of a road project I didn't support and don't like one bit. But I'm doing my best to ignore that because I prefer to wave back at the zinnias.

My first day back from vacation and I have bills to pay, chores to do, calls to make, tomorrow's work to organize. I want to keep it simple but the car is stacked with about 20 bags of coffee makers and gifts and clothes and pillows that first must move from the car the kitchen floor. Lucky for me that JB gets us focused tonight and we empty each bag, put things away. I have managed to effectively tackle about 65-70% of what is mine. That is progress for me.

So how did I do today in my experiment (and desire) to stay calm? Not bad. It's not easy to overlook the bulldozer digging up my street or my tendency to feel overwhelmed when I have more than two things that have to be done. But I'm still aware all that is small stuff. The big stuff is I want to competently and comfortably handle the demands and moments and opportunities in front of me, one at a time. I want to do it that way as often as I can.

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I'm no saint, and nobody complains better than I do, but I want to love and laugh and appreciate whenever and where ever I can. If that sounds corny, I don't care. I think not caring is a very good sign.

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I'd give today a B. That is a good grade considering I had to unpack.

Love

kj