Normalcy

Just short of 8 weeks post transplant......
I changed the heading to the blog.........

A little bit of normalcy. What are the reminders of normalcy? Is it the coffee brewing with the aroma of fresh grounds waking up the morning? Is it the little things around the the house that make you smile and remember where they came from? Funny how seeing a little thing on a shelf can flood the mind with a story. Did it come from the garage sale two years ago when you were just out and about or from your favorite store that had a clearance sale? Maybe you got the best deal ever and will never forget that moment.

I see the little pig on my stove in Murphys. Happy times fill me. It was at a garage sale not far from here. A pig collection was on display spilling out of the open garage. Ladies who knew each other greeted each other with, "haven't seen you for a while." That is when I saw the smiling pig. He said, "take me home". A woman a little older than me told me that everyone gave her pigs because her husband was a cop! Funny, her friends kept giving her these gifts with a chuckle in their hearts. I thought that was so cute. I just had to have the little pig that made me want to do a little jig. Now I see him sitting there always to greet me when ever I am so lucky to get to Murphys. That is a type of normalcy for me.

Being here with my hubby is normalcy. Anna is home with her honey caring for her. That is normalcy or the way it "should" be. We have a weekend away. Anna is now well enough with no more home IVs or aerosols or any other appointments until Tuesday morning. It is as though the sun came out and offered a reprieve to the darker days. We know we are not out of the woods yet but things they are a changing. They are changing for the good with movement toward normalcy.

Things will always change. This is the one thing we can all be sure of. When we are in our darkest moments, that is one thing we can think about to give us comfort, "this too will pass". This is one of the foundations of Buddhist thought. All things change, all things are impermanent. This idea and this truth of nature and the way things are helps one to go the full circle. Some times the change is not what we want it to be but it is change. Alongside one undesired change will be another that is desirable. We just have to look for it, recognize it and it helps to accept it all. It is like the winter we have outside our windows. The beautiful leaves are gone making all things look barren yet the silhouette of the the tree's limbs reach out to the sky in such an intriguing sight. It is beautiful in its own way.

I love the winter and being in nature where I can see it, feel it and hear it. When I stand outside I can hear the silence filled with a swollen creek. The flow of water over rocks that have been there for many, many years, perhaps even hundreds of years. I listen to the swoosh and constant movements of each drop and think of the Miwoks who lived here and ground their acorns in the holes beside the creek. I can imagine the little children up to mischief splashing near their mothers.

I can imagine the hundreds of deer that once roamed on the hills. I sense the peace of the ancient ground of this place. That was normalcy for the peoples that used to live here. So much time, so much destruction, so much pain and sorrow, so much rebuilding, so much change has come and gone and yet I get to stand here and revel in the beauty and love this moment. I am grateful, grateful for it all because it just is the way it is. I will try to be kinder and gentler than my peoples' history that contributed to the pain and destruction. That is all I can do about that. I can not change what happened then. I can now honor the story and seek a better way, a better way to preserve some of this for others to come. For sure I am part of the change and impermanence this place represents. I am here now but will not be one day. Once again, I love this moment.

Normalcy is a personal and very relative term.