This was posted to my personal timeline less than 2 years after a time that I was in constant pain and in utter despair, certain that I was dying.
I remain flabbergasted at the miracle of how my life has changed.
I’m overflowing with gratitude.
I have herbs growing here in the apartment complex, but also have done most of my seed-starting for my garden at the farm over here. I have trays and pots all over my tiny little “yard” all of which are going to be transported to the farm this week.
I went out to my car to get the wagon I use for hauling stuff to and fro and noticed that several trees here were in bloom and dropping pretty pink blossoms all over.
When I pulled my now-loaded wagon back to the car, walking through those trees seemed almost magical. I felt like a character in a fairy tale. I couldn’t remember when I last felt this way.
The ride from here to the farm passes a lot of farm fields, sometimes lined with weedy patches, but sometimes lined with ivy-covered trees that grew up along fence lines.
There are also houses, some older ones with lawns like ours, gloriously filled with blooming dandelions and johnny jump ups, random wild onions and clover, and wild strawberries which will bloom a bit later before the orange lillies are everywhere.
But there are also a few modern houses that are less aesthetically pleasing, with perfectly manicured weedless green lawns… and it delighted me to see their perfection marred by the blossoms falling all over them.
Life will persist. Though I’m a gardener, trying to maintain a small section of our yard without weeds and growing only what I specifically plant, I generally like my life wild… wild and magical.
And as I pondered this, wondering when I last felt the magic of spring so intensely, I remembered that for over a decade, my entire attention was consumed by pain, fatigue and diminishing abilties – today’s beauty was utterly invisible to me. But even prior to that time, I was a very typical Type A personality, always fully aware of my to-do list and rarely in the moment. I was always thinking about later today, tomorrow, next week… worries and concerns swirling in my head.
I think the last time I looked at the world with this much wonder and awe rising in my heart was in my childhood. I’ve been too busy.
I still have a ridiculously long to-do list, but something has changed in me. I have 3 days for my work on my diabetes site and YouTube channel, and I add things to the list regularly, and everything takes longer than I think, so it seems I’ll always be behind.
And yet… when I know it is NOT one of those days, when I turn off my computer and leave my to-do list behind, it’s no longer in my head nagging me.
I can enter a fugue state and work for 10-12 hours, but… I can stop. I can stop and not have the work trapped in my head stressing me out until I can get back to it.
Today was a day for hauling things… plants to the farm, get packages and a few things out of the freezer there, go to Wegmans with Denise for my groceries, the groceries I need to cook for Steve, and the groceries delivered to him directly, then his delivery unpacked, everything else home, hauled back to my door in the wagon and put away.
And I enjoyed Denise’s company, focused on the tasks at hand, and was able to appreciate the blossoms scattered across the sidewalks and yard again when I hauled the groceries in.
Is this what living in the moment is? And why did it take me almost 60 years to remember how to do what I knew as a child?
How many years did I miss these pretty, pink blossoms?
