The penultimate post

Since I've come home, life - in all of its to-do lists, color-coded schedules, and long-term agendas - has rushed forward to meet me.  In the spring, I'll need to start apartment-hunting.  On June 16, I'll graduate from college.  Two months later, I'll receive my white coat.

But I'll come to those bridges soon enough.  For now, a narrower focus will suffice.

Tomorrow marks two weeks since I arrived.  Two weeks.  And a week from then, I'll be moving back to Schenectady.  This is hard to believe.

Because quiet time is precious

There is a little boy curling into my side, breathing soft and slow.  I wonder if he's dreaming of Spiderman.  Spiderman's his latest hero, you know.  How I've missed this...

I'm home...and it's good.  So good.

Because it's important to be real

On some mornings, it hits like a wave.  A tidal wave.  Out of nowhere.

I hadn't cried for days.

For days, I'd been preoccupied with "lasts": my last weekend with dear friends, my last time at church, my last hug with this person or that person.  They're bittersweet, these "lasts".  Each one pulls me away from the ones I'll miss, yet nudges me toward those whom I've been missing all this time.  And it's simple physics, isn't it?  Two equal and opposite forces, battling it out...and I'd been motionless, pleasantly lost in the distraction of it all.

What happens afterwards?

I'm 21 years old, and yet have been told that I sometimes read like a 35-year-old mother of two.  But there are days when I feel more like I'm 21-going-on-3: like today, for instance.  Today feels like a prime day to throw a toddler-sized tantrum because my heart hurts and that's not okay.

Don't get me wrong; I've traveled a long way since the end of October.  Getting out of bed used to be a chore.  But I've finished my exams and am now using these final days to reflect and process as much of the past four months as I can.

And by this time next week, I'll be home!  Yes.  This is a thrilling prospect indeed.

In fact, I'm halfway packed.

Why waking up early can be rewarding

5:30 am: Silence usually spooks me before it stills me.

Regardless of the context - conversation, driving, trying to sleep, writing, studying - I generally need a fair amount of time to settle into silence.  There's something about the early morning hours, though, that renders all of that settling-time unnecessary.

In the interest of full disclosure: it could be the coffee, kicking in.

I'm strongly considering a refill.

But it could also be this hush, this undisturbed calm before all of the day's demands begin to clamor into the places where they ought to back off, thank you very much.

Handling the "no"

Yesterday, 10:35 am: Saturday.

There is a measure of relief in Saturday.  All is quiet - so quiet, in fact, that I can hear the clock ticking away on the mantle.  We don't use it because it runs slowly unless it's on its back, where only the ceiling gets to know what time it is.  And when I sit still enough, stop the trembling, I'm surprised by what I sense: a heart, beating, a pulse, steady.  I don't even have to feel for it.

That's how grief used to be - like a pulse.

And nearly a month later, there is a measure of relief in what it's become.  These days, it's more like my breath.  It ebbs and flows, draws back for a moment before it crashes on the rocks.  In every day, though, it's always in the background...a reliable sort of soundtrack.

On Wednesday, I donated my old boots and promptly bought a new pair.  They weren't very expensive, friends, and I do like my heels.

The milkman

My friend Emily spent her October writing a series about rest - or, as she so endearingly dubbed it, hush.[1]  Now, I'm the type of person who's in constant pursuit of rest - yes, I mean sleep, but rest is broader than that.  Rest is different.  Rest - at least, for me - is more buoyed by perfect calm, more intertwined with joy and its lightness, more anchored by the hopeful heart.[2]  So as October slipped by, I eagerly followed, read, commented, absorbed the lessons she was teaching me, and delighted in walking beside her.

I almost finished October beside her, too.  But toward the end of that month, life dealt my family a rough hand.  The cards haven't been staying in my hands, either - on the contrary, they've been flying everywhere, bouncing off the walls.  And on examination, none of them say anything resembling rest.  (I may be asking too much when it hasn't even been two weeks yet, but like I said, this is a constant pursuit.)

Normal

As a junior, I was really lucky in the campus housing lottery and landed myself a "dingle".  (For any non-college students reading this, that's a single student living in a double, a room meant for two).  I had more space than I knew how to use.

And this was just my side.

This arrangement, which came without the company of a roommate, did get lonely sometimes, but it also gave this introvert the privacy she treasures.  It had a thermostat just for me and a carpeted floor beneath my toes.  It was able to contain all of the family and friends who surprised me there, on two separate occasions, for my twenty-first birthday.  The two beds gave me the freedom to have sleepovers whenever I wanted.

But do you want to know the best thing about that room?

I had my own bathroom.