The Good Old Days

Vicories for today: first bloom from a cutting of my favorite flowering bush that died last winter AND a blossom from one of the potted camilla trees I started from cuttings two years ago.

It is strange to see myself now as I think others must see me. I see someone who ends to hunch over when I sit at the computer and the grey in my hair is artificially covered. I don't like loud music and I drive slower than most when it is raining really hard. I don't like being around noisy children and when I want to be alone, I have no problem letting others know.

I remember being cheerful and smart and flexible and energetic and thin--with smooth skin.

Of course, like "the good old days" that never were good or all that old, just as soon as I start to write about how I used to be, I remember dozens of things that have also been true of me during my life: pregnant and swollen and grumpy, stick thin without the ability to digest food and also in such a depressed state that I stayed in my bedroom (a huge place with 20-foot tall ceilings, a library, our computer desks and TV) for three months, just a year or so ago I was 30 pounds heavier than I am today, sick to my stomach with the flu, flat in bed with my right leg above my head so that a clot wouldn't block the blood to my foot or to my leg, sleeping by sitting sraight in an old recliner for two months after the first reconstruction of my right shoulder, left hand immobilized in a cast, in labour with Megan, in labour with Lauren, in labour with Nathan, in the hospital on continuous IV antibiotics to take down the infection in the left side of my face, walking across Ricks College campus in -20 degree weather, singing aloud as I walked home from a flubbed audition for a performing group that was visiting BYU, waiting in the airport after having missed two flights, driving--lost and frantic--around the back approach to the airport just an hour after dad had called and told me that mom was dieing, sitting in the back corner of the clothes closet sucking my thumb, hearing my children call Brent and telling him that I was curled up on the floor of the kitchen and couldn't stop crying, laying in the hospital in Ohio with food poisoning and infection raging in the skin of my right arm and side and face, missing Brent so badly when he has had to be away for work or church or with his family somewhere else, sitting on the floor by Megan's crib and patting her back while we both cried because we both had the stomach flu and I was too sick to pick her up, having to work on Thanksgiving Day at a grocery store in Texas while I was pregnant with Nathan because we needed the money, walking to teach an evening class at Drake and eating a peanutbutter sandwich and meeting one of my students who had just come from a really nice restaurant, listening to Meg call a classmate and asking if she could come to play and hearing her say "OK, well how about tomorrow? OK, well how about Saturday. OK. OK, good bye then," hanging up the phone from talking to Lauren and knowing that she was sick with mono and that she didn't want me to come and take care of her or bring her home to get better, sitting in a planning meeting with the administrators and counselors and teachers at Nathan's school and then beginning to yell very determinedly that THEY didn't know what my son needed THEY had not even known him or spoken to him more than an hour THEY were to teach math and history and english and NOT independence to a child who had been promised protection and help from school administrators and counselors and teachers and then abandoned after leaving the counselor a note on her door that said: I am having a VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY BAD DAY please come get me to talk.

No, on second thought, I am healthy, my children are all safe and well, Brent will be home soon from work, I get to go and spend a week with both of my sisters next week--there is money in savings, Brent has a good job, I am thin and tan and stable on my meds.

The internet is up, the thunderstorm that is over now has watered the yard, the lights are still on, all three cars work well, Nate has already taken the garbage out for collection tomorrow morning.

I have wrinkles underneath my eyes and on the back of my hands.

There has been no time better than right now. Today is the "good old days."