This week I noticed that my upper arms are getting saggy – not flabby because they have always been small, but now they are small and jiggly. That’s okay, because I can raise my arms to hug someone, to hold a little one or just to give praise. Lifting weights will take care of the jiggle.
One day I stubbed my toes and made my already swollen feet ache just that much more. But the pain was in feet that move and fit into shoes that protect them, so it was not such a big deal.
Chipped fingernails reminded me of the missed mani-pedi, but I remembered the people of Congo and Sudan who endure mutilation of their hands and arms, and a missed manicure was not so important.
My thighs and waist don’t seem to remember that they should weigh less, but my legs are strong enough to hold me up and to take me anywhere that I decide to go so that can include going to work off the pounds, which seems like a fair trade.
My hair has decided to turn gray in a disorganized manner, but I thought of my grandmother and my great-aunts and how their gray hair framed their faces filled with love every day that I saw them, and it isn’t an issue anymore.
The doctor told me that my heart and my rash were aggravated by stress and anxiety, so after he fixed my heart in 2009 I decided that stress had to go live somewhere else and I took control of the things that had me twisted around. They are not problems – they are opportunities to do different and do better. All gone? No - but I refuse to be overwhelmed and under-responsive.
There was a woman staring at me in the mirror and I wondered where she came from. She looked back and told me that she was the traveler on my journey of life, and she recalled seeing me along the paths that she had taken. She does looks somewhat familiar; perhaps we’ll compare itineraries.
So my jiggles and stumbles and cracks and excess and grey patches and trauma are not causing me to feel uncertain about what lies ahead. Instead, they make me thankful that I have come this far by the grace of God. Thankful that I have another day to be and do what I was not and did not do the day before. Thankful that I have a loving mother who makes me smile and laugh daily, and family by blood and by the bonds of friendship that are as strong as any DNA. Thankful that I live in a time and in a country where what was declared impossible can now be declared achievable, in a time where the goodness of humankind still triumphs in moments of great need and adversity. Thankful to have another year of life behind me, and to look forward to the years ahead.
Even with a Nor’easter bearing down on the East Coast today, reminding of the stormy night before my mother delivered me, there is so much to be thankful for.
And I wish that each of you have occasions and reasons to be thankful for yourselves.
The Window Seat by Karen Caffee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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