Good Enough

 I have the warmth of a small dog on my lap as I type.  As good a reason as any to stay sitting in my recliner. It’s a very snowy day although the temperatures are more liveable than the bitter cold of the past while. You know it’s bad when the high temperature for the day is in the -30Cs, with the windchill much colder.

Christmas was lovely. Dearest One and I exchanged gifts, which we haven’t done in many years.  We need so little and want less and less the older we get. We’ll see more family yet this week. It will be the best kind of noise and chaos within our four walls for a few days. The quiet that will follow will be both welcome and sad. 

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions anymore.  I try to look with compassion at my earlier self who was convinced that this would be the year that I’d get my life together and I made lists to that end. My oldest grandchild reminded me the other day that there was no perfection and I responded with, “ Right.  There’s just good enough.” So good enough it is even though I’m mulling over such things as what author Parker Palmer has shared - with the time I have left on this earth, what do I want to give myself to and what do I want to let go of.

I stopped reading the self help genre of books over a year ago. I have not missed it at all. Even when I’ve gotten the odd one out of the library I haven’t been able to stomach reading them. I’m not sure what that’s all about other than knowing that there’s no magic 3 or 5 or 7 step formula to becoming self compassionate. Which is what I’m after. And am gaining in brief moments here and there. 

The only non fiction I’ve been able to read has been memoir. Novels are increasingly my book of choice. I read one recently called The All of It by Jeannette Haien. Hauntingly beautiful. 

There are beds to be made and groceries to buy, in anticipation of grandchildren arriving in a few days.  It’s amazing what can be accomplished in 15 or 20 minute increments of energy. Gone are the days when I had to do it all in a day or else. It’s not the expectations of others that do me in. It’s my own fabricated ones.

~ Hope

Still here

My office, where I have always written these posts, looks almost like a hoarder’s office.  I never go in there anymore, even though my job switched to being a work from home one during Covid, and will remain so until I retire. 

I turned 60 this past summer and while it wasn’t a hard milestone, I’m grateful for every trip around the sun that I get, it has made me keenly aware that most of my life is behind me. 

I’m on oxygen 24 hours a day.  It has greatly improved the quality of my life. I’ve had lung issues for years and slowly my oxygen level has decreased. Thankfully we have managed to avoid getting Covid so far. Dearest One travelled on a plane this week though, so we are crossing our fingers that he didn’t bring home any sickness despite being n95 masked.

We have 5 grandchildren now and they are the joy of our life.  I’ve often said that I was never the mother I wished I’d been, but nothing is stopping me from being the grandmother I’d hoped to be.  To find out how deeply I can love, how abundant my compassion and kindness can be, and how there’s nothing to get all wound up about - has been pure joy. They are the most delightful children. 

Well, I need to go get ready for work now.  I don’t know how to get my signature on this post so I’ll have to sign off without it.  Talk again soon.