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data

~ onehopefulyear ~ 5 Comments

I discovered this morning my watch now measures the amount of time I spend in daylight.

In addition to this new feature, I’m able to access up-to-the-minute functions of my health: my blood oxygen level, how steady I am while walking, the rate at which I climb stairs and how many flights I’ve climbed, the duration and quality of my sleep, my respiratory rate, and my heart rate under a variety of conditions. Among other useful health data checkpoints.

But what I ask myself most often is … how do you feel?

I’ve been keeping my own sort of data. Little colored hearts on a calendar. Each color a measure of how I feel upon waking. Do I feel calm? Anxious? Rested? Happy?

I am (and feel) more than the sum of my data. And if I’m honestly able to answer how I feel, I’m more likely to ask and answer the next question … Why do you feel this way? And the next … What will you do about it?

These are important questions for me to ask and answer.

I know the health data my watch provides is helpful, and even necessary as I monitor a heart condition. And for the record, I’ll try to spend more time outside in daylight today than I did yesterday.

But my watch provides no measure for hope.

That’s one data point I’d like to keep track of on my own.

chasing light

~ onehopefulyear ~ 4 Comments

This time of year, I follow light around the house like a puppy after its best friend. I am sun hungry, and I measure rays stretched across hardwood floors and count minutes of daylight like coins in a bank.

It’s easy to feel miserly, hoarding each minute of light, a bit bitter at the hours of darkness.

Much better to feel grateful and celebratory for the minutes I have. To delight in howsoever I choose to spend them.

I sit on the porch, cupping my tea, on watch as the sun recedes from view. Wrapped in a blanket against the increasing chill, I’m basking, sun on my face. Today’s last rays a deposit I took the time to make.

The light of faith and hope and prayer notwithinstanding, It is up to me, I think, to find my own light. Make my own light. Be my own light.

Live the light.

when finally

~ onehopefulyear ~ 4 Comments

Oh, when finally I feel better, the promises I’ll keep. The good will I’ll spread and gratitude I’ll share.

I’ll remember how I feel about most things. I’ll know how to string several words together to express a coherent thought. I’ll read fluently, keeping track of plot or ingredients or news. I’ll remember decisions I made when I was was well, when I was able to think clearly, when what was on my mind and in my heart was more dominant in conversations than my symptoms.

When finally I feel well, I’ll buy balloons for no other reason than balloons make it a party. l’ll revel in good health and confetti the floor, toot-tooting the New Year – no matter how many days late I am for the celebration. Big, red balloons. Full. Luscious. Bright. Happy. Healthy. Whole.

When finally I feel fine, the big, beautiful breaths I’ll breathe … fully and with utter appreciation. I’ll fold up my fatigue like a quilt at the end of my bed, ready – as it should be – for the very end of my day, not throughout it. I’ll taste. Smell. Smile.

Oh, the walks I’ll take, the hope I’ll feel, the life I’ll live.

When – finally – I feel better.

silence

~ onehopefulyear ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been craving a bit of silence.

Is there such a thing as sound fatigue? A resounding societal din I’m no longer able to tolerate?

Last week I sat outside after dark. It was cold and raining. Rainfall, I thought. A sound to soothe the dissonance. A remedy.  

Maybe peace on earth begins with a little bit of quiet. 

One second of silence between drops of rain. Or an overnight swaddling of snowfall. Or the soundless caress of candlelight.

Deep, restorative, necessary.

Helpful.

Hopeful.

reminders

~ onehopefulyear ~ 4 Comments

Pen on notebook. Notebook under keys. Medication next to the sink, next to the soap I use to wash my face every night. (If I remember. Which I do. Now that my medication is alongside.) Moisturizer at home atop the dresser from which I pull my clothes every morning. A list of daily important-to-mes tucked nearby as I ready my face to greet the day. Just this morning, I dropped a single tissue on the stair landing so I’d remember to add tissues to the grocery list.

Whatever it takes. However to manage in this life full of never-ending and persistent distractions.

More than ever before, our home is organized, room by room, item by item, so each possession has a home, a place where I’ll know exactly where to find it time and again without a hunt and seek. Take it out. Put it back in the same place, over and over and over. And I’ve weeded our things. Fewer possessions to manage. If it doesn’t meet a purpose – function, beauty, meaning, memory – and won’t in the future, out it goes. I store like with like. I’ll find what’s needed where it’s most often used. Clear surfaces calm me, freeing my thought paths to help me remember whatever it is I almost forgot.

These days, I find hope – and comfort too – in the familiar, the known, and routine.

So, I set reminders. Reminders to do what’s good for me: a water glass next to the fridge. Reminders to meet responsibilities: a timecard left on my computer. Reminders for function: glasses on my book, lunchbox in front of the door, masks in the car. I own many too many notebooks – an organizational problem I’m helpless to overcome. Still, I love to list. And list. And list. There’s remembering in the writing.

I’ve even texted myself on occasions when I absolutely must remember to do something and don’t entirely trust myself to remember to do it. What about you? String on your finger? List on the fridge? Timer on the stove? My husband used an elastic band on his wrist. What’s sensible for me, might not be at all practical for someone else. I think I feel most successful when I find my own solutions.

If I’m to have any hope of managing all that’s on my mind and in my heart, strategies are necessary. If I’m ever to keep myself whole in an increasingly fractured world, I’ll need to remember – somewhere way down deep inside me – just what being whole feels like.

take good care

~ onehopefulyear ~ 4 Comments

Yesterday I let myself feel all the day long.

If it sounds easy, it was not. Grief. Worry. Loss. Some sort of nondescript longing which comes and goes as an aspect of aging. I felt wistful. Wary. Proud. Driving in my car, windows wide open and I too open wide, singing along with the radio, wind in my hair. Up one side of emotion, down the other. I felt it all.

Some days, it’s easier to pretend I don’t feel what I feel. To push feelings away or replace them altogether. Shopping as panacea. Scrolling as anesthesia. But I’m learning I can care for myself in these times of strong feeling. I can allow myself the good grace to be exactly who I am. And feel.

Sit here, right here, I speak to myself.

Go ahead, cry. You need no reason or because.

Feel free to feel. You are a living, breathing, feeling human. So honor you. Care for you. Tend to you.

And feel.

It’s a vulnerability I simply must allow myself.

Today, I am refreshed and ready. Hopeful and happy.

Take good care.

slow

~ onehopefulyear ~ 4 Comments

I will not hurry. No rushing around for me. I will not slave for function over form. I will keep my heart rate at resting, returning to my breath as often as necessary. At the end of today’s living, what I want to remember most is how I felt – – not what I accomplished. I want to whisper gratitudes into my pillow tonight with nary a complaint on my lips. I sometimes daydream about a day to myself, but truth is, each day comes with a demand or two. Much better to live a come what may day, especially since life has a way of working itself out one way or another without much intervention from me. With a little faith, some hope, and a sparkle of fairy dust, I’ll find my way from the top of the day to the bottom by allowing myself to simply BE. Imagine a day – – a slow day – – because I decide it so. Imagine.

collective nouns (of summer)

~ onehopefulyear ~ 4 Comments

a snip of zinnias

a straggle of petunias

a cheer of sunflowers

a wonder of days

a sweat of nights

a hum of fans

a goosebump of air conditioning

a drip of cones

a slurp of popsicles

a sizzle of cookouts

an aura of fireflies

a glee of children

a boom of thunderstorms

an anticipation of farmers

a plethora of zucchini

a nest of tomatoes

a clutch of green beans

a delight of peaches

a fantasy of corn on the cob

a harvest of gratitude

notice

~ onehopefulyear ~ Leave a comment

At the top of a morning, I notice the energy of possibility. Hope, wide awake and willing, greets the day face-forward. Counting on roadside petals, life loves me and I love it right back. How fairy-taled the deep green velvet of a moss-covered path. How gladly sunlight dances with daisies and trumpets daylilies. How fun to chick-a-dee-dee-dee with chickadees and honk with geese flying over the lake. How gently the fog lifts as the day warms. How delicate a thread of web stretches from flower to flower to flower, a tell-tale trail of one spider’s travels. I marvel at the intricacy of a gravel road, two miles into my day. And returning, notice now how I feel right this very minute, tip-tapping on keys. Happy.

luxury

~ onehopefulyear ~ 4 Comments

What a luxury to let dappled sunshine dry my hair this morning. Walking the rise of hills hurried my breath and released it again as those hills sloped back down. I crossed paths with a chipmunk and good morning-ed fellow walkers, all of us waving away the incessant deer flies.

Walking the dirt road today, I remembered other dirt roads, childhood roads, where I walked to school, never once thinking about anywhere other than right where I was. So I practiced that kind of presence today in honor of that girl I used to be.

Sweat bubbled on my nose and streaked across my forehead as I walked, only a hop, skip, and jump away from summer. There’s hope and happiness and freedom in summer, and I’m ever so happy to be out in it, grab ahold of it – deer flies and all.

I’m thankful for those who plant their gardens alongside the road for the pleasure and enjoyment of walkers-by like me. Roses climb a trellis while springtime pansies linger awhile longer under the mailbox. Chalk drawings in a driveway welcome summer as only a child just out of school can.

I want to remember this morning. Remember the breeze taking me by surprise and the glorious green surrounding me as I walk. There’s the swoop of a sparrow flying to rest on a fence post and the bounce of a robin across the neighbor’s front lawn.

Make no mistake – I saw that poison ivy spreading its way and growing alongside wild roses and the purple tufts of clover. So I’m reminded to admire not only the sunshine but the clouds too. I know rain sometimes ruins our plans and hopefully waters our plants – both. There’s the duality. Learning to savor the comings and goings, hellos and goodbyes, summers and winters. To spend these days wisely and aware.

Soon the sunflowers in the bed out back will stand taller than I do. Pumpkins will one day be ready to carve with our granddaughter. Summer’s car washes in the driveway will be replaced with new chores, with gathering, and nesting, layering and readying for rest.

But just for today, a warm breeze ruffles the ferns, tosses the buttercups, and distracts the bugs.

And I’m grateful.