I can choose

I can walk through the days numbly, or I can choose to keep my eyes and heart open to the bits and pieces.  the unfurling fiddleheads carpeting the forest floor, for instance.  we were looking for morels on papa's birthday, walking in the woods.  we tried so hard to balance the wants and the joys of the day with the challenges and worry that have been our recent reality.  we didn't have the easiest time in the woods, but we muddled through words said wrongly and through frustrations, and we found some good moments.  the toes in sand and water, sunlight dancing on fiddleheads moments.  you can't really deny those moments.  they need to be let in for the medicine they are.

back out to winston salem for a few days~ another weekend of ups and downs, but I stole some moments here and there to sit on the patio on a warm spring night and watch the moon rise full and sweet, casting a beautiful glow over the reading material and yarn in my lap.  another small dose of medicine, if I let it be.  turning in early, solo bananagrams.... a good night's rest.  I woke feeling ready for the big day ahead.  a big procedure, recovery, the seemingly inevitable crash of certain stats following the sedation and myriad other tolls on her body.  but then some calm again.  a goodbye until next time, a return home.

raindrops on solomon's seal, the comfort of my own bed, a proudly handed over work of art as I walked through the door.

french toast with my girl on a sunny spring morning following two very cold nights (I still need to go get the garbage cans, plastic sheets, regular sheets, and trash bags off of the blueberries, strawberries, peach blossoms and apple blossoms...)

and a text coming in with updates from the morning rounds at the hospital, telling me that everything looks to be improving, that she is awake and alert and smiling, that they will move her back to intermediate care this afternoon.  a text that made my heart soar and my shoulders feel a million times lighter than they've been feeling.  oh happy, happy day. thank you, thank you, thank you.

yes, I can choose these things.  I can choose them, focus on them, and allow them to fill me up.  that text alone will get me through just about any crap the day (week? year? lifetime?) wants to throw in my direction.  yes indeed folks, it is a bright and sunshiny, happy day.