Home for a Day

September 2, 2017

I found myself today with a day unscripted:  no agenda, no place to be, no to-do list.  It is a rare day. 

There is something to be said for the unpainted canvas, the uncharted territory, the day yet unspent. As my day meandered from a lazy morning in bed with two slightly clingy pups to a spirited walk with a dear friend to a run on the trail to a book in the sun to music in the kitchen and some laundry and cleaning in between, I found myself so happy that at one moment tears sprang to my eyes. Being happy like this is a gift I never thought possible.

A few weeks ago I ended up in the hospital with a kidney infection that had turned septic.  In the words of the urgent care doctor who was explaining why I would be admitted, “you are sicker than you feel.” Well, I felt awful, but I just wanted to go home.  As I begged to do just that, the doc explained that it would just get worse and possibly become lethal. That’s when I shut the hell up and got in the ambulance. Hours later with drugs and fluids, I was a new woman. And grateful. Deeply, deeply grateful. But I was still desperate for home.

I returned home the next day to a rainy, fallish early August day.  I opened every window and reveled in my health and my freedom.  I savored the feeling of home. 

There is not a day that passes here in Freedom House when I don’t pinch myself at my great fortune. As I’ve watched the horror unfold in Texas this week, my gratitude for dry land, for my home and my babies who aren’t babies, for the absence of strife, for life, has overwhelmed me.  And as I’ve met new students the past two weeks in my various teaching locales, I’ve been Lifetime-Original-movie-aha-moment-overwhelmed at how lucky I am I get to meet them.

I am well aware that the other shoe can drop at any moment.  Everything can go up in flames or under water or to hell with one phone call, one bad decision, one blink.  But not today. Not while I’m watching the sun set from the porch swing.  Not on this unscripted day at home. This rare, lovely, unseptic, sunburned day. Amen.

Halpert can read. She is very advanced.