I’m down to one complaint:  Not complaining.  A hell of a year I picked, I’ve told everyone, walking down corridors, sitting at tables in coffee shops, lying on examining room beds, whispering into the phone at night to an empathetic friend.  I haven’t had any Isaac Beshevits Singer catastrophes (no little children have died), but I’ve had a lot of head-reeling crises.

But still, here I am.  Crazier, calmer at times, more hopeful.  I’ve got an abcess on one hand that has yet to be explained; a failed root canal; a virus eating my cerebellum.  These are just a few of things about which (she says, with a nod to JLW), I’m not going to complain. And not even the biggest ones (insert rueful smile).

I sat in a friend’s home yesterday, talking with her and her husband.  I rocked in their chair and listened to her husband talk about his new job, as one of a small number of retired Episcopal priests ordained as a Catholic priest, serving now in a parish in a poorer section of Eastern Jackson County.  He talked about the 250 families he serves, and his voice grew quiet, round and warm.  My friend talked about the death penalty post-conviction hearing she will start in a couple of weeks, of the terrible, abusive childhood of her client  which formed the half-crazed young man who stabbed and killed in a fit of uncontrollable rage.  Her voice, too, grew quiet, serious.

I rocked; they talked.  Then I spoke of my son and his adventures and I felt the stillness grow within me.  I rocked, I sipped cold water, and I let the peacefulness overtake me. Then I took the home-grown tomatoes with which they gifted me home and made  lovely meal of one of them.  I’m 7/12 of the way through this year without complaining.  I’m still here.