When We Miss...

I awoke in the night, as we do sometimes. We wake and we stir, shaken looser, more careless. Thoughts flirt with us then, take us to odd places, different from our day trips. One wound its way, around and through, as I hopped with my walker. From the bedroom's dark, eyes squinting, to the bathroom's light.

A singular thought, one little thought...

...how I miss. Ah I miss. Yes I miss.

And a lie came to me then too. The lie I told my son, when I said that sometimes I drive by our old home, his childhood home. For I go there frequently these days, with music or podcasts. Rounding that familiar block, my archeological dig, searching for what used to be. Looking for them, for her, those who used to be there. To see the driveway where my little boys rode their bikes, giggles and squeals, snips and snails and puppy dog tails. As balls whizzed by and I handed out popsicles.

I miss my children being young, our family together for hours, no college breaks with an end. I miss having two legs, jumping to errands and yoga classes, quickly tossing on pants in the morning. All that fast action, no thinking required. I miss time before Covid, before masks and rational or irrational fear and disagreements and excuses for absence from social gatherings, before vaccine debates and hospital troubles. I miss swim meets, endless races and conversations and cheers, misbelieving it could go on forever. I miss friends, when I was just one of a gang, more normal and average in my appearance, less shocking somehow. More like all of you, the two-leggeds.

And I miss my naivete before I knew how sick our bodies can get, and what has to happen to heal us. I miss that Julie, the one who sweated out an annual mammogram, who lamented about hot flashes and mood swings, debated the merits of Vitamin D.

In the middle of all that missing, in the dark of night, my mind formed a question.

So we miss...what happens Now?

My heart replied, a singular answer...

...be kind, be kind, be kind.

Be kind to ourselves, patient in our journeys and all that is unresolved, not expecting resolution in a perfect place and at a perfect (preferably soon-ish) time. Perhaps stop, look around, rest awhile. Be kind to one another, patient in our fumbles. Our mistakes and errors and opinions, with disregarding slights. Assume the best more often, give extravagant benefit of the doubt, take a bubble bath. Be kind to animals, as they run through the woods, hungry, so perhaps toss some oatmeal out your back door. Offer a treat, have a brownie.

Be kind, friends, for everyone is fighting a battle we know nothing about. Every single one of us, no exceptions, is pulled in stretchy ways that confuse us sometimes. Render us unrecognizable for awhile, to ourselves and one another. Make us wish we were somewhere more sure of itself, a 10-step program to happiness or an exercise class perhaps. But disorientation is real in these thresh hold and liminal times, between Before and After. As we go from Winter to Spring. Snow be damned, flowers will come.

Let us trust that we are right where we need to be, the perfect place...

...for as long as it takes, no longer, no less.

And so I hopped back to bed, my mood a little lighter, a little sweeter, a little kinder...