My walk this morning was short, local, and drizzly. It is a drizzly morning. I walked with my thoughts, and headed home to begin the day. The drive back to the house felt peculiarly nostalgic – something about the drizzle, and the way the sheen of water on the road reflected the light of the gray skies over head – and I found myself thinking about sick days on rainy Spring mornings as a kid. How is it that all my recollections of missing school due to being sick seem to be rainy days? I guess with the average number of rainy days where I grew up being about 111 days per year, falling primarily in the months between March and November, it would be better than a 1 in 3 chance of any given sick day being a rainy one. Maybe they really all were? lol

I arrived home to find my Traveling Partner awake, and it was lovely to see him. I made coffee for us both, and headed to my office to begin the day. All so very ordinary, so routine that the days sometimes seem to blur together except that the precious loving moments we share stand out, each unique and worth appreciating. It’s strange that when I look back on my childhood, there are really only a small handful of recollections I can count on as “my own”, and many of those are rather archetypical – conflations of many similar events becoming just one “memory”. When I look back on the past 15 years with my Traveling Partner, it’s not that way. There are many many memories, each built on small details that linger in my recollection. I don’t know whether this is a sort of before/after contrasting what remains of my memory after my head injury with how my memory works now, but there it is; I have relatively few childhood memories, and some of those are rather suspiciously recalled “in the third person”, as though I am remembering something I was told, not really remembering something I experienced.

I think about memory awhile, and rainy sick days. I remember those almost fondly. The rainy gray drive to the doctor’s office. Bundled up at home with chicken soup, saltine crackers, and a book to read. Sitting at the dining room table playing with Play-Doh, or coloring in a favorite coloring book. Napping. Waking. Reading. Before my head injury, my sick-day recollections are mostly to do with headcolds or the flu. After my head injury they are more often about headaches. I missed quite a bit of school, even through high school, over headaches. I don’t miss much work over headaches as an adult; I’ve learned to live with them. It’s an uneasy truce, some days, and I’d for sure prefer not to have a headache at all, but since I generally do (of one sort or another), it’s probably best that I don’t just give in and quit, eh?

You’re not alone with your pain. Not really. We’ve all got some kind of pain – well, most of us, I feel fairly certain. There are no doubt those rare few individuals with charmed lives of such good fortune that pain hasn’t become a thing to endure day after day after day after day after… You know? I’m not even sure those people are to be envied; they may lack some useful perspective on endurance, and what they are truly capable of, perhaps. (I don’t know; I’ve never lived that life.) I sip my coffee and notice that my mind has wandered on to other things. The garden. The roses. Pain management. Nutrition, diet, and exercise. The shit I’ve got to get done today. The things I’m eager to do for myself once the needful tasks of the day are behind me. My garden. Work. Life. Love. I let my mind wander on for a few minutes of self-reflection before I get started on work in earnest. Sometimes self-reflection feels a little self-indulgent, but it is actually an important bit of self-care (at least for me); it tends to keep me “on my path”.

…What are you doing to care for yourself? What are you practicing?

I breathe, exhale, and relax. The clock ticks on. The rain continues to fall. I notice that it is time to begin again.