I'd love to tell you I held some super hippie celebration for Earth Day. It would be a great story to tell for the blog. But I can't lie. I put a handful of miles on my car (fuel efficient, but not earth-savingly so) and used a bunch of water from the hose to wash a couple years' worth of cat vomit and dog body oil out of a rug. The rug looked great until I left it draped over the railing while I went out for the evening, and it rained. I am an Earth Day failure. The best thing I can say that I'm doing for the planet these days is that I have not yet turned on the air conditioner for the year. I'm going to hold out as long as possible. I'll take consolation in that, and the fact that I'm getting a wee bit better at recycling. Baby steps.
When I started writing this a year ago, I had a lot of repressed anger and pain to work out. I had been unhealthy for months, and until I removed the biggest source of stress from my life, I wasn't getting any better. I put myself up for that stress, or at least to be stress-adjacent when I suddenly inherited a swirling mess of it. I spent a lot of time last spring working loose a lot of demons, some of my own making, some thrust upon me. Once I finally finished my time in office with the social and charitable group to which I still belong, I felt like the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders. I stopped spending all my energy on surviving the stress, and instead discovered just how large my capacity for joy was. I feel like an entirely different woman from who I was then. Tonight I brushed up against a little of that stress again. I still have friends who sit on the board of that group, and they are elbow deep in the sausage making side of the group. There are budgets to set, fundraisers to organize, elections to hold, and all sorts of nonsense that I am allowed to walk gleefully away from now. I offered to be available for questions regarding how things were done last year, and who did them, if they need to text me during meetings this week, but it all seems like the distant past to me now. While I sympathized with my friends who were discussing the upcoming meetings and work to be done, I felt absolutely no desire to re-enter that world. I told my friends, it's nice being an EX-president. I get to show up once in a while, wave, and not take it personally at all when they don't need me to dive in and organize anything. I don't need a big picture of myself with "Miss me yet?" written on it. They don't, and I'm okay with that.
There was so much to give me hope for the future today. I will be going to the mah jongg master's house to let her dog out during the days this week, and while the water in her pool was still quite brisk, putting my feet in ankle deep counts as "being in a pool" already this year. Swimming season is coming, soon, soon. And my hydrangea bushes are starting to hint of the beauty to come. There are tight little clusters of dots, that will be giant pom-poms of blue by the end of next month. I thought my tea olive thicket would be blooming by now. But they must be holding out for the perfect moment. Sometime next week, this little Park is going to be heaven on earth, all over again.
No comments:
Post a Comment