The Rain is Calming

It's the perfect rainy day. Not too chilly for Northeast winter. Heck, we could be getting a pile up of snow and have to shovel repeatedly. But instead, it's a gray, drippy day and I love it.

I woke for the puppy, then went to my yoga class, forgetting it was canceled. So I'm researching literary agents for my YA fantasy novel; I'm pursuing my dreams. My son is singing a song he wrote; he has band practice later. My daughter is showing me her photography from her walk with friends last night. My husband has homemade chicken soup steaming on the stove. The puppy follows us all first with her eyes, and then with her long, spindly legs once we move from the room.

The glass bottom fell off of the coffee pot this morning as my daughter was washing it. Naturally, I did what you're not supposed to do--picked up the large broken glass fragments with my fingers. And lo and behold, my finger was bleeding. Never happened before! (Duh!) It's a typing finger, of course (they all are.) I'm fine and we gave the kids a couple of dollars to walk down to the store and buy themselves a cup of coffee. The kids are drinking it, not the adults now, in our house. So they did, taking an umbrella with them. 

It's the way things can be, for today.

Part of me keeps waiting for the bottom of my world to drop out from under me, again. Why hasn't this happened yet? For years now, we've traveled from trauma to illness to adrenaline crush. Now, for a few months, we've had stability and success, happy voices and healing. When will this calm break? 

My idea of success has changed, there is no longer perfection, my views of the world have shifted. Happiness can be found sharing a riddle or joke with students in my class, or having lunch with a few. Happiness is my son calling out, "Hi, Mom!" when I come home from work. Happiness is my daughter finally loving her super curly hair.

Lyme has been haunting me, though, and at last, I'm treating again. Yes! A chance to improve, to feel better.

An increase of symptoms slammed into me on and off for the last couple of weeks but today is a no antibiotic day, a pause day, and I'm at rest, in every way. I'm grateful for my medical provider, who believed in my symptoms and took a chance on treating me again. I'm grateful that I do respond to medication and hopeful that I can regain not just my energy but that little extra something I used to have. One of my best friends likes to remind me of our trip to Greece many years ago, when I would wake cheerful, early and revving up to experience every single wonderful thing two people could possible take on in one day.

I want that energy and that part of me of me back. I want the me who used to waltz around the living room with my babies, singing Shall We Dance. I want the me who could bicycle Friday nights, Saturday mornings, Sunday mornings AND go rollerblading in the afternoons. 

But right now, I'll listen to the rain pouring down. And to the puppy's collar as it jingles whenever she runs about the house, the older dog barking at something outside, the keys of my keyboard. And feel grateful for this series of moments in which everything is warm and as good as it needs to be.