Not much of a countdown left; day after tomorrow I head out for a couple days break from the stress and workload of caregiving, to spend a little quality time in my own head, taking care of me for a couple days. 3. Three days of downtime. I find myself eager and also a little bit anxious.
Before dawn.
I woke a little early. I got to the trailhead before daybreak. I wait for the sun, sitting quietly, writing. It’s a bit chilly this morning and I am grateful for the cozy warm sweatshirt I am wearing. Sunrise is coming later already. The days are definitely shorter than a month ago.
Yesterday was weird and difficult, but for me that was mostly “second dart suffering”, fatigue, and the chemistry of human emotion. It passed, and the conversations that came out of that were needful and handled with love and consideration. I don’t actually recall the end of the evening with much detail, beyond the lingering awareness that it was quite pleasant.
The morning begins well. I’m hopeful about the day ahead. I watch as daybreak shifts the hue of the sky from its darkest blue to lighter blues and a subtle hint of something not quite green and not quite yellow on the horizon. Sunrise soon. I breathe, exhale, and relax. I think of my Traveling Partner, and hope that he is sleeping deeply at home, getting rest that he needs so much. I lace up my boots. There’s enough light now to see the trail…
I’m honestly not even a “morning person”, in the sense people generally seem to mean by the phrase. I’m just an early riser by habit. I would sleep in if I could. I am not at peak energy in the early morning. I don’t prefer to interact with people in the morning until I’ve been up a good long while and had some coffee and quiet time to myself. I’m often quite irritable first thing. See? Not a “morning person”, but I most definitely appreciate seeing the sun rise again.
This one is hues of orange.
…We are mortal creatures, and there is no guarantee we’ll see the next sunrise…
I’ve grown to truly love seeing the sun rise each morning. I’m often on some trail when the sun rises, or on the road headed to a trailhead for a walk in the morning. It’s a pleasant way to begin a day. I walk with my thoughts. I take a few pictures. I reach some likely spot for meditation, a bit of writing, maybe some yoga. Over the past four years this morning walk has grown from an occasionally expedient use of my time that happens to be pleasant, to become a firm and reliable self-care practice. I often feel out of sorts and unprepared for the day without my walk – and the chance to see the sun rise again.
… How many more sunrises will I have to enjoy? I have no way to know…
…We are mortal creatures…
I walk the trail, happy with the start to my day. Content with my thoughts and my experience. Satisfied with being in this moment. I don’t need anything different than what I have now. I keep walking. The morning is mild. The air is scented by wildflowers. I am alone. I hear traffic in the distance and an airplane overhead; it’s far too rare to truly avoid the sound of humankind busily going about the business of being human. We’re noisy creatures. I shrug it off and keep walking.
Breathe, exhale, relax…and walk on. Life is a journey. The path ahead is built on my choices. When I falter, I can begin again. I am my own cartographer. This is my journey. These are my choices. I walk on, one step at a time.
… My Traveling Partner wakes at home and pings me a greeting. I stop for a moment to reply, and to reflect and write…
Another sunrise. Another new day. Another chance to begin again. It’s enough.
It’s going to be another hot summer day. I remind myself unnecessarily to drink enough water (meaning, specifically, more than usual). Seems likely that the remaining summers ahead for human kind will continue to be hot and then hotter, unless something changes. Stay cool. Take care of yourself. Avoid punishing manual labor in the heat of the day. Be alert for signs of heat-related illness and take steps sooner than later.
Another hot summer day ahead.
I woke early and slipped away into the earliest hint of dawn. The morning air was still and felt somehow warmer than the 67°F than it was. Yesterday the morning felt warm at 60°F. Tomorrow it’ll no doubt feel warmer still at some higher temperature. The nights are not cooling off completely and the days are getting warmer, too. Summer.
The sun rose an irritable looking orange at the edge of a hazy pink horizon, as I drove to the trailhead. It was vivid and beautiful, particularly the view as I came around a bend in the road, with Mt Hood silhouetted a deep smudgy lavender against the vibrant colors of the dawn. I love that particular view, and I am forced to enjoy it in the moment; there’s no place to stop, there, so no opportunity to get a picture, and I never know ahead of time what beauty may appear – and quickly disappear – as I come around that bend in the road.
So here it is another day. Another hot one. I walked my walk, taking note of the increasingly warm temperatures as I walked. Drinking water. At my halfway point, I sit awhile watching and listening. I update my list of things to get done today. I drink more water. I write these few words. The warm humid morning and sense of sharing the trail (though I don’t see anyone else) push me to maintain a brisk pace, and I am eager to get home and have a shower. I’m unpleasantly sticky with sweat.
I walk on, thinking thoughts of balance, perspective, moderation, and sufficiency. I breathe, exhale, and relax, grateful to have remembered to take allergy medication this morning. I watch the sun rise as I walk, and now I am distracted by having to pee. Still drinking water.
I approached the parking lot (and the restrooms), unsurprised to see it nearly full. It’s clearly time to begin again.
… Stay cool. Be safe. Drink water. Know your physical limits. Wear sunscreen if you’re going outside. Take care of yourself; you matter. Be careful with those spoons…
An update, some time later, same day…
My Traveling Partner woke shortly after I arrived home, and not in a good mood. His sleep was interrupted and less than ideally restful. He’s had a change of medication, too, and it’s causing considerable irritability. He’s aware of it, and alerts me (and the Anxious Adventurer) of the situation, asks for our patience, and suggests we keep our distance as much as possible. Practical advice, and I plan to take it. There’s little about my to-do list that requires participation or even input from anyone, so I figure I can keep myself productively occupied for much of the day.
…First things first, a healthy breakfast salad, and a nice cup of tea…
I queue up my art video playlist for some study time over a bite of breakfast. A good beginning, suited to the day ahead, beating the heat. Next, after breakfast, I’ll tackle the housekeeping chores while the day is still cool… I may even paint with these new pastels, today! 😀 I sip my tea and hope that my partner’s experience of the day improves once he is fully awake, and has had his coffee. If not then, I hope he finds a suitable opportunity to begin again, and finds his success there.
I slept well in spite of the noise of fireworks going off well into the night. I woke occasionally and quickly sank back into sleep. I woke up at my usual early hour, no alarm set at all. I rose, dressed, and slipped away quietly into the early light of a summer dawn.
It’s a lovely morning. The sunrise began with streaks of peach and pink clouds across a hazy mostly clear sky. It’s going to be hot today.
I find myself straddling past moments of recollection and future moments of speculation, in this pleasant quiet “now”. The paved portion of this trail is quiet beneath my feet. Small birds explore the weeds and grass for tasty bits as I walk past. The air feels soft on my skin and I hear the sound of distant traffic… and my tinnitus. Squirrels play, chasing each other up and down and around the trunks of trees along the trail. I breathe and walk.
… Summer…
I let my thoughts wander freely as I walk. My Traveling Partner’s surgery is scheduled. I’m not fretting over that; I’m hopeful. Grateful. Eager to see him well (repaired?). I’m thinking ahead to getting some real downtime, sometime beyond the most critical recovery time immediately following his surgery. I’m eager to have a few days alone, spent on creative work and solitary reflection, unconstrained by the requirements of caregiving and service to hearth and home. I’m tired frankly, and any rest I get and all the resilience I can build, have been almost immediately consumed by the next need, week after week, for months. I’m not even complaining; I have been needed and also appreciated. My Traveling Partner has shown me great consideration, love, and gratitude, and I have no resentment in my heart. I’m just tired and eager for him to be himself at 100% again.
I don’t yet have anything specific in mind. Camping? A hotel holiday on the coast? A trip to some glittering metropolis? A quiet stay in some remote bed and breakfast? A stay at some monastery that hosts retreats? “Spin the wheel” and just show up at the airport or train station and grab the next cheap seat to somewhere at random and figure it out when I get “there”? Options.
Rather unrealistically, I want to be sitting in my Granny’s kitchen on a lazy summer morning, listening to the sound of seabirds and the tides changing along the marshy edge of Mine Creek. I’d like to make a cup of fairly terrible drip coffee and pour it over ice, and take it out to the porch, with my pastels and my sketchbook, and while away the cool morning painting landscapes of the shore along Frenchtown Rd. My heart aches for qualities of peace and serene beauty and the joy of solitary moments I don’t find often these days. The world is complicated and messy, as are human beings with their violence and villainy, their petty deceits and corruption. Peace is sometimes hard to find, and difficult to cultivate. I feel momentarily homesick for places that no longer exist outside my memory, and a bit lonely for people dear to me who are gone now.
… Strangely sentimental morning…
The sky is a brilliant clear blue as I finish this bit of writing. The morning is beginning to warm up already. It’s time to head back up the trail to the car, and back to the house to start the work day. I sigh to myself and remember to take my morning medication. It’s already time to begin again…
Sometimes change is hard. Sometimes change arrives rather quickly, and instead of evolving gradually over time, it pulls up out front in a moving van and unpacks over a weekend. 😂
…We managed to get most of the necessary move-in basics handled and the truck returned on time…
Getting the Anxious Adventurer moved in was the priority for the weekend, other than caring for my Traveling Partner, who was effective and handy, supporting various tasks with thoughtful guidance. The whole chaotic endeavor was considerably improved by how we each embraced the circumstances (no doubt each for our own reasons). We’re all in it together and it was obvious.
I’m definitely feeling the strain of the aggressive pace of the weekend’s activity in sore muscles and lingering fatigue. “A new normal” begins with this quiet, pleasant Monday morning. I’ll work from home with much more freedom to focus on work with my Traveling Partner’s son now available to help out, too. Hell, I might have enough left in me at the end of the day to cook a proper meal! There’s more to do, but now it can be handled within the context of the day-to-day living of life, which feels pretty good. I even got to spend some time reading last night!
There’s more to do. The work of adjusting to the changes required is not yet completed. There are boxes to go into storage. Things to change or “fix” about how the household is set up, to be better suited to three people, where there had been only two, before. The living room, though, is no longer filled with the contents of a moving van, and no one is sleeping on the floor. Progress. Today will be my first day working from my completely rearranged office-studio-creative space, which still needs a bit more fine-tuning. I chuckle to myself, still amused and astonished that I managed to move a full-sized couch into such a small room (with the help of the Anxious Adventurer and the guidance of my Traveling Partner giving instructions from down the hall). Funnier still, it manages to be more “cozy” than crowded. It will force me to be quite mindful of the space and keep it very neat, though; there is no room to tolerate clutter. Not one spare square inch of space is left for being careless or messy.
I while away a few minutes thinking about change and wondering when my Traveling Partner’s surgery will be? Scheduling that should happen today. Once we’ve got the date settled, I’ll also schedule some away-time for myself, for a date maybe a couple weeks after the surgery. Damn, it’s good to have the help of the Anxious Adventurer! I feel incredibly grateful and very fortunate. I finally have the emotional “room” to breathe and reflect and consider and exist outside the constraints of holding myself constantly at the ready to handle any/every task, every moment, all of every day… That was a lot of pressure, but I didn’t know how else to handle things.
… I’m so tired…
It’s a new day. A new opportunity to begin again. There’s more to do (nearly always is), but life has “less weight to it” somehow and I feel pretty good, generally. I woke at my usual early time, and I’ve had the trail to myself this morning. I watched the sun rise as I walked, and these quiet minutes to write and reflect don’t feel snatched from the limited time available for everything else that needs doing. It’s nice.
I don’t yet know what the new normal looks like, but I’m on this path and I’ll know soon enough. I stretch and yawn and smile. It’s time to begin again.
Evening Light 