Usually when
I return to this space after a while, it's a cheerful thing. I was hoping this
would be the same. Unfortunately, the crisis that drew me away has not resolved
neatly. It’s a family member’s illness, more complicated than was immediately
obvious; there have been hospitals, doctors, sleepless nights, re-shuffling of
which children live where. By this point it’s a matter of adapting to the new
normal. So, I can’t just avoid blogging because there’s a Giant Emergency going
on. Call it Chronic Mild-To-Moderate Upheaval. I will pick up in a different
place and start again.
(For the
Trifecta, there is actually an upside to this saga: one more important person
in our lives is in the loop, so the closet is almost obsolete.)
The
challenge is to keep all the focus from being always on the Upheaval, because
that skews our sense of what’s important. I try to be mindful, in a moment of
decision or anguish: will this matter tomorrow? In a week? In a month? In a
year? Five years on? Sometimes even if the answer is “not one bit”, my
emotional self does not care. But it’s worth at least checking, in case sanity
is an available option.
Depending on
the day of the week, it might be only one of the three of us who has access to
sanity. I’m extra grateful lately, for those shining moments.
For example:
this year Chloe took matters into her own hands when it came time to find a
Valentine’s card. There being only two owls on the cutest card in the store,
she carefully fashioned a third owl almost identical to the originals, hanging
it upside down on the same branch. Beautiful. To me it reflects how we’re all
MacGyvering this whole thing as we go along.
