Stepping Back

There is a lull this week, a quiet and much needed stepping back from doctors and testing and imaging and bloodwork... Yet even in the lull there is busyness.

It has been two months now since we moved to this state, this community, this home. I am still searching for my quiet, reflective center. It's in there somewhere I know!

I still feel the need to keep working on creating home in this new space. The nest doesn't quite feel complete just yet. This week the project has been to neutralize the purple, pink and gold hues of Scooch's bedroom. Somehow that combination of colors on an almost thirteen year old boy's bedroom wall and might I add, ceiling, don't do much for his self-image! I find myself pushing through the days, and pushing is the real word for it. I don't find myself as tired as I had been, thank goodness, but I do find myself reaching for the ibuprofen bottle at some point every day, hoping to stave off the malaise, hoping to stall the aches, hoping my stomach can take it, hoping I can finish the project...

I got to visit with someone in the hospital this week. She works at my children's school. She drove herself to the hospital after work last Friday and they admitted her. She couldn't speak two words in a row without coughing. She has COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder) and an immune defficiency. She is a music teacher, has her doctorate in music education, loves drum circles, is a vocalist, loves to teach. But one day twenty-three years ago a steam pipe broke outside of her classroom. No-one bothered to fix it. She's been sick ever since, fighting with her body ever since, visiting doctors ever since, hoping to get better ever since. Her body is mis-shapen from steroid medications, her bones twisted and brittle, she walks with a cane.

Today she told me that she can't do it anymore.

I don't want to end up like that!