emerging

Spring was never my favorite time of year.  Growing up where I grew up, spring meant tornadoes, mosquitoes, and the impeding doom of summer weather that was quickly approaching.  However, either I’m getting older and wiser or I live in a tornado free, low mosquito, mild summer world in Oregon, but spring is one of my very favorite times of year.

The rain starts to slow down, the sun makes a debut, the days are warmer, the patios at our favorite places are cleaned up, and hiking to the top of a butte is rewarded with vast views of wild flower filled valleys and mountains as far as the eye can see.

Okay, so this isn’t our spring reality this year.

While the world has been turned upside down, I am thankful to be home during this time.  Daily walks or drives through the neighborhood unveil more color, more flowers, new growth – these were things I missed when everything was “normal”.  Sure, I’d be wowed by the rainbow of flowering shrubs as I drove home from work, but I didn’t seek them out.  Now I look for them, as a sign that things are moving forward, that things are prettier than when we started, that things are somewhat normal.

Daily walks through my yard turn into a time-lapse camera as I can almost watch the hostas grow, emerging from the earth, slowly unwrapping their leaves.  It happens so quickly that 10-11 hours away from the house each day when things were normal meant I missed it.

The thing is, I didn’t know I missed it.

That is what I’ve realized during this past month.  So much is missed when your’e in auto-pilot.

Wake up at 6am.

Pour coffee into the travel mug by 6:50am.

On the road by 7am.

Drown out the morning commute with good music until 8am.

Meet with people, sit in meetings, meet meet meet meet until 5pm.

Fast-forward to 6am the next day and do it all over again.

Within that, I missed the hostas opening up.  The change in the hyacinth bush.  The flowering of the honeysuckle.  I’ll remember not missing it during this time but the funny thing is, I don’t remember what I was doing last year when this happened.

Significance is fickle that way.

I’m having trouble realizing that it’s been over a month since we went home.  It’s flown by but has also been a huge expanse of time… how is that possible?  We’re almost at a month since I received the blow of a phone call with the news of my layoff.  Almost a month since I crippled over and sobbed at the loss… letting a breath of freedom in at the same time.  That was just yesterday, it seems, how was it a month ago?

I’ve worked to let go of a lot in that time.  Mostly I’ve worked to let go of things that angered me.  How the layoffs happened, how the last couple of years went down, how I felt at the end of each day.  I’ve gone back and forth about writing about this.  Do I only write about the candy coated times in case a future employer stumbles across this not-so-private blog?  Or do I speak honestly about my feelings, allowing this to do what it needs to do?  I’ll go with the latter.  I have nothing to hide and no grievances to air, just thoughts to process.

And so yes, I’ve been working very hard to let go of anger.

This action isn’t obvious – Rocky doesn’t watch me do it – I don’t have a punching bag in the garage to rage on – and I don’t walk for hours on end outside only to come home a new person.  It’s personal, working through files of situations in my head, putting them away… hopefully forever.  Even if not physically noticeable, it takes a toll.  I’m exhausted each day.  That is what Rocky notices.  Some days I’m on top of the world, keeping busy, and sometimes I bottom out with only the energy to grab my favorite quilt and crawl under it for a 2 hour nap.

A 2 hour nap is okay right now, I suppose.

We’ve got no where else to be.