Grateful

I am feeling well taken care of here in Upstate City. Last week there was a lot going on for me: an important meeting at work that included a visit from an out-of-town guest whom I ferried back and forth to the airport, then traveling to a conference in New York where I was arranging my own accommodations (a friend one night, a bare-bones hotel in upper Manhattan the next night), then time with my family over the weekend for the memorial service we held for my brother last Sunday, which was a beautiful and bittersweet tribute to his life, rich with memories contributed by family, lifetime friends, and colleagues who worked with him on another coast before he had a stroke almost nine years ago. And we had his photography displayed everywhere, along with a collage of photos of him throughout his life. It was lovely, but also emotionally exhausting. All of this was punctuated by a flood in the kitchen the night before I was leaving for New York, which I finally got under control with the help of Handyman Neighbor and the landlord (who shot over here like a bullet when the downstairs neighbors called him to let him know that water was dripping through their light fixtures in the ceiling). On Monday, I was getting ready to travel back to Upstate City late in the evening when I got the call that my flight was canceled. The airline put me on a late-morning flight the next day, and I went straight to work from the airport.

Okay, so the being well taken care of part: It was hard to concentrate at work after coming back from all of that, but I went to yoga after work on Wednesday and Friday. I have lived here only eight months, but I have found my yoga community. Both of the teachers fussed over me in their different ways--one saw that I was a bit unsteady during class ("maybe you're dehydrated," she said), and the other noted, before class, that I had not been there in awhile and asked how I was doing. I talked to both of them about my brother, and they were kind and consoling. On Thursday I went to the theater with a co-worker who is becoming a friend: we saw a play about history and slavery and Jewish slave owners. Painful to watch but well-acted and very rich--and I was grateful for the experience of being there.

And then we come to the weekend, which has been most healing. This is the first weekend in a long time where I have just been here, not preparing for something stressful at work and not enveloped in the anxiety of my brother's being ill and the traveling back and forth to New York.  The weather has finally, finally turned here in Upstate City. The air is warm and soft, the flowering trees are blooming, and I can hear all different kinds of birds chirping as I sit in my second-floor kitchen with the windows open. I had let various friends, old and new, know that I was back in town, and yesterday two of them invited me to do things. My longtime friend from graduate school, who moved here eight years ago, invited me over to help her do some gardening in the afternoon and hang out with her and her husband (also my friend from grad school) and their most funny, loving, and adorable six-year-old daughter, and one of my new friends, a connection through the university here, texted me, "Would you like to go for a walk at 4:45 in Beautiful Park and then come over here for dinner?" 

I said yes to both options.  

So that is the being well taken care of part. I am very, very grateful.