This Week

Wednesday is my least favorite day. I'm ready for the weekend, but smack dab in the middle of the week. That being said at this time and place in my life, I don't find myself longing for the weekend very often. This week I am.

I think this has everything to do with my lack of chi right now. I feel like I'm spinning my wheels. I need to get centered, to find balance, to quiet my mind. I need to exercise. That's what's missing. 

Another piece of my zen puzzle is reading and that's something that's been absent from my life for way too long. I picked up a book I started at Webb Lake last summer that I haven't touched in the 12 months since that vacation. Tom Lake was still familiar. That fact is proof that Ann Patchett is a character artist. I will finish it before the end of this summer in a few days. Then I'm going back to finish the book I started in Mexico earlier this year. I've got a nice stack of almost reads piled on my bedside table that could take me through the end of the year.

I can attest that getting my groove back in the kitchen has been a good thing. With Teddy home, I up my game because he is maybe the most appreciative and voracious eater in the house. He can and does cook for himself and sometimes us, but I love to cook for him. This week's wins were potato chip chicken fingers, croquet  madam pizza and smashburger tacos.

This is a tricky week for me. My Mom's birthday is Saturday and while I feel somewhat at peace with her passing, I am still sad. It's not paralyzing or debilitating. It's like a constant ringing in my ears. It's distracting and I want it to go away. I know now that it never will and many of you know that too. It just is. It is what it is. It's a marker of time passing, seasons changing and life marching onward in spite of missing parts. Missing, but not forgotten.

This week is also a bit of a reset for me especially in the years since my mom's untimely death. It's not just the back to school and the change in seasons...it's the before and after. It's more a point of reflection for me than my birthday or the start of the new year.

I did an illuminating exercise in my 20s that prompted me to define the pivotal, defining events in my life. The first was my parent's divorce when I was four. There were about seven. I'd say thirty years later there are no less than twenty. Losing my mom was a big one.

This week I'm going to be kind to myself. I'm going to lean into vulnerability and let myself wallow a bit, but I'm also going to look for the everyday joy moments and remember to say thank you for this life that is full of much more light than darkness. More love than loathe, more laughter than tears, more tribulation than trial. And I'm going to do so remembering the woman who gave me this life. What a gift...life...her. My Mom.