one last entry

it's been a long time since i've written.

and it's not that i'm trying to restart this blog - this space that meant much to me for the year or two i needed it.

but this morning i'm overwhelmed with gratitude, and i thought maybe one more entry - one last entry.

this morning i stood in line for a favorite coffee at a favorite cafe in a favorite city, and i felt at home. my body is wrecked after a week of moving things all over the city in my aunt's minivan, and twelve hours of harvest festival mayhem yesterday. my throat hurts and i still feel the adrenaline hang-over that had me shaking last night on a friend's kitchen floor.

but last night i had moments of sitting back and observing. i noticed friends who have welcomed me 'home', smiling and laughing and showing up to help. i met new people who invited me into compelling conversations with warmth and good will. i made plans for coffee and lunch with comfortable old faces. i moved hay bales and dropped pumpkins down stairs and spilled things and bumped into walls and lived into this awkward, clumsy body of mine while singing president clinton's old campaign tune, poorly but with a smile. today i woke up in the borrowed bedroom of a new friend, with quiet and needed solitude already filling out the day ahead.

life has unfolded over the past few years. twenty-nine fits me well. tonight i'll listen to a brilliant female author speak in the company of a brilliant female kindred. i've been reading about bread and dreaming about writing and photography and pressing in, albeit with an awkward stumble, to desire and creativity. i've felt both feet flat on a surf board in the cold norcal pacific water, tasted the salt in my mouth and felt the ocean in my hair.

i've said goodbye, or rather i'm still learning to say goodbye, to my sweet aunt barb - an important loss that will color the events of all life to come, just as her constant and encouraging presence is painted beautifully and gratefully over the canvas of my life. i've said goodbye to dear friends in chicago, the loss of their daily presence felt deeply. and yet the length and strength of our friendship, celebrated this fall by launching ourselves into free fall over a midwest landscape patchworked green and yellow, leaves no doubt for future love and life ahead. and we'll always have brian williams (wink).

i'm happy to be here. i am full and my cup overflows. not just because i'm here, though. because i'm here and because i was there, and there, and there. because my heart has been broken by loss many times over, and yet - beautifully and miraculously - healed again and again by love and grace and presence, laughter and tears and friendship. because i get to live into this story. in san francisco and boston and chicago and champaign and south sudan and who knows where else and with whom else. with the joy of knowing my parents in their beauty and their messy humanity, and my siblings as we walk through these storms together. old friends and new friends who teach me about compassion and love, lightness and fun, self-acceptance and grace. the pleasure of momentary interactions with strangers who come in and out of daily life. and the transcendent grace in sunsets, hummingbirds, mountaintops, fields outstretched green, wind blown hair and crisp pink cheeks.

and, one last time in this space, my cup overflows. i am grateful to drink it all up.