A Year Has Passed

I started blogging in August of 2007. In a few months, grace every day will celebrate its fifth birthday.

This blog has had over 72,000 page views. Sounds like a lot, but half of them might be me, just visiting my old self.

It's become my journal, this blog. A place of record, a holder of memories. Because life is just going too fast, too much, too soon. I'm not ready for half of it, it seems; and then it's gone and I realize that I never even had it. This blog helps me remember it.

I think maybe this has been the hardest season since I moved to Powhatan, these last 12 months. Sunday marked a year since my friend Bob's passing. I still miss him, and the waves of longing for him hit - though less frequently - just as powerfully as they did in the days and weeks immediately following his death.

I miss Bob.

And then we changed so many things - started a new business, left our home of five years to move into a new place, which we promptly began to renovate, which means we never really nested. The work on the house is taking longer than I hoped - which is always the case, isn't it?

And so we are in a season of upheaval, with a child graduating high school, another hoping to begin art school in a month (and move away from home), growth and transition in my job that are both rapid, terrifying and exhilarating. There was a serious bout with skin cancer. There was knee surgery.

And then there's the slow changes time brings...I am approaching the end of my forties. My feet are dragging; I was digging in my heels, but I couldn't gain traction. I'm at the mercy of the endless motion of time, being drug through the days and weeks and months, captured by the relentless carousel of time. I am struck dumb, paralyzed, unable to comprehend these changes. I have gained weight. I am not comfortable in this body, with these lines on my face, these changes in my skin and my joints.

I went back to read where I was at this time last year. I hardly recognize that woman. I was sad and in mourning and overwhelmed but I was so centered. And it wasn't just something I conjured up to make a blog post: it was valid and it was real and it was me. I was present, and focused and functioning and thoughtful and articulate.

What happened?


It hardly seems possible that an entire year of my life could have been sucked into grief, and life stage changes, and simply growing older. It's like a dark drape settled over my everything for the past eleven months. No sunshine, not enough time, too much angst, not enough energy....

But maybe it IS possible; maybe I just have never been there before. Of course I haven't...I've never been almost-49, with two daughters out of high school and one almost done, with a 16-year old son and 12-year old giant boy and a husband of two years and a cat and a hole in my heart where Bob Pino used to live and a music store and a new kitchen (almost) and and and and....

I am so sick of listing my circumstances.

I want to remember who I am.

And discover who I am becoming.

And it is not easy.