While We Were Sleeping

Not long after I posted a blog entry on Dec. 5, 2014, saying I was taking a sabbatical from blogging, but would return if I had something to say, all of sudden I felt overwhelmed with potential blog topics.

For one, a week after the Dec. 5 post, I flew to Texas to help younger daughter pack, clean, and move on from her life and studies at the University of North Texas. That same trip I stayed with and had what I fully expected to be the final farewell with my beloved aunt. (And, it was.) Eager to put miles and memories of Texas behind her, my liberal daughter couldn’t drive east fast enough.

Some 1,076 miles later, my daughter and I got home in time for Christmas and a California family crisis. A bomb, of sorts, had exploded. This turn of events – medical crises, hastily arranged visits, roiling emotions, amongst an abundance of dysfunction, was simply too intense, too personal, too much to blog about.  Someday, maybe I can transform the characters and events of that time into something, perhaps a dark story or bleak play. Now, I could barely craft a Tweet on the topic.

The good news:  my mother is alive and well. And, my “nuclear” family rallied. I am gratified by the stoic support of my husband and daughters. Even Piper pitched in with unwavering canine support.

This is what unwavering canine support looks like.

Teaching and driving to App State in Boone over the spring semester was a welcome distraction, except for the day a hurried pickup truck driver slammed into my daughter’s car. In a sweet change of roles, she was driving me to school. Fortunately, we were uninjured, but we said goodbye to a trusted means of transport.  I loved that car, originally mine, but blogging about a car. Okay, it could have been about loss, fragility, the unfairness of fate.

April brought another possible blog topic:  my brand-spanking-new Medicare card. I turned 65 and getting that card seemed a big demarcation point. You are young, or at least not old, and you don’t have Medicare.

Then, suddenly, there’s a Medicare card in your wallet and you are old. Okay, I’ve been hearing from AARP for years, but this is different: 65 means senior citizen. As an official senior citizen, I am grateful for my health and for the Medicare benefits that will help me maintain it and my quality of life. Oh, I’m checking into those senior discounts. Oooh, thank you, Delta Air Lines.

It’s mid-May, my sabbatical over. I’m restless and feel as if I should be working.  I don’t feel retired. This phase of life remains unsettling and uncharted.

I think I’ll go pull some weeds.