hashtag mom4lyfe

Now that I’m more than a month past “extension granted,” and five days beyond the formal end of that extension*, I’m noticing a handful of things.

  • That illness took over two weeks, right? From before Thanksgiving into the second week of December? Recuperation took about the same amount of time. Which became this struggle of: I’m better! I’m going to do Things! I’m moving slowly? I’m… going to do… this one thing-? Day. After day. After day. What the-?
  • I have formed relatively few memories of things I’ve said (or written) over this time. Heck, I almost reprised my Dec 12th post except that I  wrote a sentence that gave me dejá vu. Example 2: I’ve evidently fussed over losing my library carrel (sacrificed to the rebuilding of the entire library) EVERY TIME I’ve seen my mom lo these past six weeks. Or more.
  • In the (very gentle) wake of my recovery, I’ve counted back and realized that I’ve been cranking along ever since August 2018. I thought I was taking downtime, and refreshing, and all that,
    but it’s not until now, the middle of Unstructured January, that I can fully see what’s been happening.

That’s all prelude for the seed (and title) of this post. And so —

I’d alluded to my fall term pace/activities without explicitly mentioning the parts that delighted me —

the 3-session poetry & theology class I got to co-teach (and co-develop) with my friend and professor P,

the evening where I was one of the featured poets for a poetry reading,

the school’s Community Storytelling event where I was an invited storyteller, spinning my experience “in the middle.”

These occurred from the end of October to the third week of November.

Know what else happened during that time?
Over the last weekend of October, to be exact?
My B moved from Austin to Dallas, having landed a job with a video game design firm.

Truly, I didn’t pay that much ‘never-mind.’ I had many other activities claiming my attention — oh, and one of my longtime buddies stayed here while he was interviewing — oh, and my sons and brothers-in-law visited (well, went to Formula One) over a weekend — plus B is generally a self-sufficient, matter-of-fact soul.

It was my mom who pointed out the confluence.

That Monday before Thanksgiving, all the spinning plates stopped.
And I got sicker than I’ve been in years.

Once a mom, always a mom, noticing what your kiddo can’t quite seem to see for themself. #mom4lyfe


* Remember how I said three weeks was a crazy-long amount of extension time? Sooo…
while I finished up that one paper by the original last day of term, I handed in the next one by the following Friday,
and turned in the last one 26 hours before the end of my extension. Evidently other people Know Things too. <g>

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