Five Things on a September Monday

September Mondays are tricky and lovely at the same time. There’s something about their fleetingness that makes them precious, like if you died this very second with the sun shining, the wind blowing and the waves up, you’d be fine with that. It’s all theoretical, of course. We’re never fine with it. Dying.

So walking on the beach, a list came to me.

1. I’ve never had 100% of my four kids be fine at once. So since that’s never happened, it’s going to cease being a hope of mine.
2. I have one grandchild who tells me she doesn’t like being outside. This is astonishing and distressing to me in a thousand ways since I think being outside a lot is a big deal and fundamental for healthy living. I look at her pale face and big brown eyes like she is a  mushroom growing in the cellar. How could such a creature be related to me?
3. Once I had strep throat and thought that driving home from work, picking up my daughter at the sitter’s, and walking up a flight of stairs to my bedroom was the most heroic thing ever done by any woman anywhere. I am so sick. I am so sick. I leaned over the steering wheel at every stoplight like I had yellow fever, pain and agony oozing from every pore. Which is why I feel such solidarity with Sister Hillary. I’ve walked that path, my friend.
4. Hearing loss is so last year. Oh, I still have it but now I run around town with this thing on my head (cochlear implant/receiver) so I hear a lot of things I haven’t heard for a while but not everything. But what years of hearing ‘not much’ gave me was a huge shield called “I don’t really give a fuck.” This is the gift of disability that my non-disabled friends will never have. They will keep caring about things long after I’ve gone to bed.
5. I resolved today to always stop the car. That when the surf is up and the sun is shining, it’s a good thing to pull over, throw my flats on the front seat and walk barefoot across the sand to the water and stand there like I own the place. Because I do. This is my earth and I’m done always putting that off. It’s my earth and I want to stand on it barefoot.

So that’s my Monday. Oh, there’s more to it than that. I got a big project done, made the world safe for homeless people one more year. It’s not everything but it’s something.