I lay in bed thinking about yesterday for a half an hour, as the rain drummed on the roof and the sun crept over the eastern horizon. I pictured myself as a sailor on a battered boat, dragged to shored by strong hands which wrapped me in a warm cocoon of wool and pressed a mug of steaming tea upon me. I made some mistakes this week, and endured some blows, and my self-pity caught me short.
Then I read about a friend’s mother dying, and all kinds of havoc in Washington; and saw a few pictures of injured children in the aftermath of storms abroad. I browsed the Times and contemplated my relative lot in life. True, I cost myself a few dollars by stupidity; and true, our dog finally had to be eased of pain and left us; and true, I’m still unemployed.
And yes, I know, it’s not a competition to judge whose suffering pummels them more soundly.
But still. Maybe it is, in a way: because I know that I’m on the lucky end of life. Maybe not the very luckiest. I’ve certainly had my share of setbacks, some more recently than others. I cannot claim to have been “lucky in love”, nor with money, but I’ve got a great son and some kick-ass friends and I’m still breathing, still crazy, still feisty and without a doubt, still relentless. (With a tip of the mortar-board and a fling of the white tassel to Judge Peggy Stephens McGraw, who once took judicial notice of such.)
It’s the seventh day of the fifty-second month of My Year Without Complaining. Life continues.
Sometimes it’s enough just to be on this side of the grass.