I almost wrote a bunch of words about realization.  They flowed from my fingers with uncontrolled passion.  As they jammed against each other on the cold white page of this blog window, their fury overwhelmed me.  I could not let them stand.  Highlight — delete — then start over again.  I’m left with this truth:

I never acted from the desire to be right or wrong; from the need to win or lose.

 Fear drove me. 

Fear of being left.

Fear of being unloved.

Fear of waking alone and hearing only the echo of retreating footsteps.

Fear of the raised hand, the elevated voice, the beet-red face, the spew of expletives.  Fear of the stony silence.  Fear of the disapproving glare.  Fear of the face in the mirror.  Fear of the quivering inside me.

This “year without complaining” has never been about self-improvement.

Always:  It has been a journey to a place without fear, without the moments of lying in a darkened room wondering what the slamming door portends.

A journey to acceptance.  A journey to joy.

Twice a year, I succumb to an urge for greenness around me.  May and September.  In the spring I haul home flats of begonias, petunias, and impatiens. I clean my porch-pots and trowel good earth into newly washed clay.  I fill the glazed pottery that I kept when my dear Joanna died, and the painted clay from my son’s grade-school years.  Three or four hours later I drop my body into a rocker, cold water beside me, and gaze with satisfaction on spring at the Holmes house.

In the fall, I pile tiny mums into the baby seat on a cart at Trader Joe’s.  Back at home, I ease their roots free of the plastic containers and settle them into dirt over the shiny stones that Katrina gives me every year in an amaryllis.  I sort through the shards of broken clay to find good chunks, burying them under soil.

A few days later, the grocery store mums have shaken loose their petals and stretched towards the southern sun.  I stand in the cool night air and admire their tenacity.  I can’t imagine how long ago they took root in some warehouse; what truck ride brought them to Kansas City; how root-bound they’ve been all summer.  But now here they thrive, glistening green leaves, vibrant blossoms.  On the far end of the deck, the last blooms of the spring plants raise themselves, straightening their stems, digging deep in the rich wet soil to try to match their autumn cousins.

I close the door to the house and turn on the porch light. The wind ripples the flag and gently stirs the chimes hanging from the porch that Chester built.  My day draws to an end.  When I rise in the morning, first thing, I’ll come back outside and sit among the flowers.

These old blue eyes strain to see that which seemed so clear just a decade ago.  The right eye with its “neuro thingy” gets weaker, requiring frequent adjustments in the diaspors of prism.  Cataracts deepen and thicken, more so over that cranky right eye.  The left eye has a hole in the retina.  Honestly, people, if I offer to drive after dark, take the wheel.

But as I maneuvered the Prius down Wornall a few days ago with Jessica in the passenger seat, I had no trouble seeing this:  Striding down the Trolley Track trail, in a three-piece suit, a man with a guide dog’s harness in one hand and an attache case in the other.

A dozen times each week someone says to me that their aches and pains “are nowhere near what you have to endure every day”.  Each time this happens, I respond:  “It’s not a competition.”  As my car glided past the impeccably dressed blind man making his way home after work on a glorious fall day, I realize that I am blessed.  I have eyes to see.  Lucky me that it’s not a competition — because if it were, that guy would have me beat by light years.

Note to self:  Don’t forget eye appointment on October 12th.  Take care of what you’ve got.  You never know.