There are no words

How quickly life can change.  From one minute to the next our world is fundamentally, forever different.  This happens all the time.  Anything can happen any time.  Your child can one minute be dancing in a sunny studio on a warm March day on a bucolic New England college campus...and the next minute be lying on the bricks 20 feet below, fighting for her life next to the lifeless, twisted body of her friend.  Your child can one minute be singing the alphabet song in first grade and the next minute....oh my god, it's too horrifying to imagine.

Maybe it's because I can't sleep and I'm worried about my sister who's having major surgery today, or maybe it's because I'm thinking about all of our kids being dropped off to school today by their parents, just like every other kid on every other day in every other town in America.  Things are more dramatic in the middle of the night maybe.  no, that's not it...this is real, this is not at all dramatic.

How are we supposed to make sense of this?  I want to get everyone I love together and hide, I want to go somewhere safe where people don't have guns, where people aren't mentally ill and want to fuck everything up so they feel better.  I know it's a juvenile way to think, but at 4 in the morning it's my impulse.  I don't feel very brave today.

I know that in a couple of hours I will be brave, I know I'll be able to be in the parking lot as parents drop their kids off, I know I'll give a lot of hugs this morning and I'll look parents in the eyes and tell them that their kids will be safe today.

I miss Mark so much right now.  I think that if we had to be apart for one more week during all this I'm not sure I could do it.  I'm really overwhelmed by everything; there's even more going on that I just can't put in this blog.  I'll be ok, I'll do what I need to do.  Most importantly, today I need to hug, reassure, just be there.  When Mark comes back to Connecticut on Friday I'll get my comfort from him.  And Lea Ann too, she's my rock these days, my voice of reason and my confidant.  What would I do without my lafm?

I was cleaning the basement yesterday morning and found a journal that I started in the winter of 2007 when I was still an assistant principal at Fermi high school.  I was really not loving that job and was seriously considering taking a year-long sabbatical.  Laura had actually put that idea in my head during a cab ride to JFK one day.  In my journal I made a list of all the things I would do if I had a year off.  Yoga, cooking, being in touch with old friends, hiking, reading, etc etc.  And then I took the job at Odyssey.  That was actually the last page that I wrote in that journal.  It's like I knew that I had one more job that I had to do before I was able to take a year off.  And now, in the blink of an eye, I'm 5 days away from my sabbatical.  Isn't life funny.  Not ha-ha funny, just so very strange and wonderful and terrifying and beautiful.

So now I'm going to make another cup of coffee and write some thank you notes to the families who got me lovely, thoughtful goodbye gifts.

This too shall pass.

My dear friend Lizzie once told me that someone wise in her life used that phrase when things were difficult, and today I'm remembering it and tryng to keep the meaning of it at the front of my mind. 

Yesterday morning a young father of two young Odyssey students passed away after a long, long battle with cancer.  His kids basically grew up knowing dad as a cancer-fighter.  Beautiful, smart kids with great smiles and a loving supportive family around them.  The school community rallied with donations...a few people from school went to their house last week to decorate and give them a tree.  It's so sad, such a hard time of year to lose someone you love. 

Today is Tuesday December 11.  Not counting the days I'll be in Rhode Island with my sister while she has surgery I'll be in school 6 more days.  I'm finishing up all of the teacher observations, going through all my files, both electronic and paper, and just basically soaking up what I can to have as memories of my time at Odyssey. 

December 10

Now it feels like I'm in the home stretch of this transititon.  Today is actually the last Monday that I'll ever work at Odyssey (early next week I'll be in RI to be with my sister).  The parent group is doing a gathering thing for me on Thursday...I did a big thing (for me) and asked Mark to come back east to be with me for that and he said yes.  I'll pick him up at 11pm on Wednesday night and he flies back to Denver on Friday morning.  I have no idea what Thursday night will be like, but I know that I'll be so thankful to have him with me. 

I have a lot to do before we pack the Sube and head west for the final time, so I've started making lists again.  Post office for change of address forms, final purge of the basement, which clothes I'll need between now and when the moving boxes are opened in...May?  June?  It's really impossible to know. 

I bought waterproof mascara.  I cried at work almost every day last week...not huge tears, just enough to wash off the mascara and leave me puffy-eyed.  This is a long goodbye and I have frequent opportunities to tell people what they mean to me and to hear what I mean to them.  Hence the tears.  Hence the waterproof mascara.  I just don't want to pretend that this is easier than it is, because it's not easy.  I know it's right and I know that moving to Boulder with Mark is a great adventure and that this is the right time for me to take my leave of Odyssey...but it's not even close to easy to say goodbye. 

You can't always get what you want

It's still Monday.  I recently heard bits and pieces of some great NPR interviews with members of the Rolling Stones.  I think I'll try to find them in their entirety online.  And what made me think of it is that at 5:30pm I'm at home, not at the 90-minute Bikram class I was planning on attending.  Let's rewind.

I started out at 9:50am counter-clockwise around the Boulder Reservoir, less than impressed with a grungy, rocky shore near the beach area (in the 80's they apparently trucked sand in from somewhere to make a beach).  The lake, which looks iridescent green/blue on a sunny day, was grey and choppy, home to dozens of geese who loudly complained as I walked by.  Such downers and such prolific poop-makers.

So the on-line guide to Boulder recreation told me that there is a gravel trail that circumnavigates the entire reservoir, about 5 miles all told, beckoning runners, bikers and the like.  Well, I walked.  And walked.  Walked past 2 dams, the southern dam and the northern dam.  Damn.  For a little while I had a waterfowl companion swimming along side of me in the water. It sat like a loon, low and straight, and it dove like a loon. I tried talking in loon language to it, but it didn't answer back. The other person on the trail gave me a wide berth.  And when I was directly across from where I started I noticed that there was another sort of area, a wetlands, a protected, more natural area. 
About 90 minutes into my walk, I encountered this:

I've never been warned about the inevitability of certain death before.  Though I suppose it's one of the most honest signs we would ever see.  At any rate, I continued, avoiding (as you can see) certain death.  My reward for throwing caution to the wind was a lovely view of the reservoir framed by the mountains.

But then, the trail stopped.  Literally, in a parking lot, no where else to go.  I started walking on the dirt road, away from the reservoir, nodding confidently to each car (jeeps, really, with gun racks) that passed--yeah, I know that I'm walking on a dirt road miles from anything else, I chose to do this.  I started feeling like the main (anonymous) character in To Build A Fire, one of my favorite short stories.  A couple miles into the dirt road, I felt that I had been somewhat cocky, not really having thought through the consequences of my actions.  Did I make a serious error in not turning around and retracing my steps?  I couldn't see the reservoir any more, I was heading into the mountains, distracted only by the screech of what I was sure was killdeer in the fields.  Turns out, the screech was either a mating call or a warning cry (sometimes it's hard to tell the difference) from the beloved Boulder prairie dogs, overgrown gerbils, really.  They were my only companions on this ominous journey.  If they weren't so fat and silly, I'd have thought they were laughing at me.

Once I realized I'd eventually make it back to the entrance to the reservoir area and my car, I relaxed.  I gathered some milkweed stalks to decorate the house and started thinking about lunch.

My intention was to do a 4:30pm Bikram yoga class, but do you think I could find the place?  I didn't think to bring the address with me because I thought I'd memorized it.  Which I hadn't.  I knew the street name, but it was confusing and I saw the clock tick down and started getting stressed about not making the yoga class.  Ironic, right?  So I decided to cut my losses and go home, but not before going to Home Depot for a lower-watt lightbulb to replace the spotlight that our landlady put in the living room lamp.  And going into Home Depot I almost hit my first biker and I scraped the curb with the front bumper of the newly leased hybrid vehicle, which for some reason has a front bumper that's 2" from the ground.  ach. 

Moving to a new city is exciting, yes, and exhilarating and fun to explore.  But it's also frustrating and maddening when all the streets seem like one-ways and everyone else knows what they're doing and the bikers are aggressive and the curbs are invisible. Needless to say, I never made it to the library today.

So this is all part of this adventure.  The good, the bad and the prairie dogs.  I'm gonna read some tonight and turn in early.  You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need. 

Thanks for indulging the long blog.  I don't think I'm going to make a habit out of writing 2 blogs a day.  People would have to unsubscribe. 

It's Monday...

...and I'm not at work.  At least not at the work I've been doing.  I think that having long spans of time to myself is a different type of work, more of an internal dialog about what my purpose is today.  What shall I do to fill this time?  At this point in my life time is a luxury.  Maybe time is always a luxury for us first world westerners. 

I am so grateful to have the support of my friends back in CT.  To be happy for me even though it's hard to think of so many miles between us is such a gift.  I intend to keep my connections strong and to make sure that the people I love know that I keep them close in my heart. 

So today, I'm going to trek around the Boulder reservoir, a man-made water/recreation spot with a 5-mile trail circumnavigating it.  Then I think I'll check out the Boulder library.  November is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and they have a weekly group that is meeting to engage in this event.  Tomorrow is the meeting, so I might actually go and hear about people who have decided to write a novel during November!  I know that one of Odyssey's teachers is doing this with one of her classes, so it would be fun to check out.  I know absolutely nothing about novel writing, but I know that I like writing and I like novels and I like libraries, so it seems like a win. 

Bikram class at 4:30.  It's near the municipal airport where Mark's work is.  So maybe next week I can go to the class then pick him up at work afterwards.  Forward thinking...

Sunday November 18



This is the trail that leads from our door into the Flatiron foothills.  Mark and I hiked up to the Saddle yesterday, which is about 2/3 of the way up to Bear Peak.  About 7 miles.  And since now he's all the way over the pond in Switzerland, I figured I'd do it again today.  It's a gorgeous sunny day, approaching 55 degrees and quite blustery.  So I loaded up my Camelbak and brought along some extra layers and dried fruit and headed out at 9am.  I reached the Saddle around 10:30, huffing and sucking wind the whole way.  I stopped about every 100 feet to get my heart rate back under 200...crazy altitude!  But the cool thing is, there are so many other hikers out, some breezing up the mountain like it's an easy stroll, some just putting one foot in front of the other, just being out there doing it.  So I did some bird watching while I rested. 

Really windy and cool at the saddle today, but amazing views of the Rockies to the west and the front range to the east.  When the wind blows through the pines it really sounds like a train or a jet coming close.  It starts like a whisper but you can hear it coming closer, then it's on you.  I've always loved the wind, so this makes me really happy!

On the way down I found a flat outcropping that overlooked the range and Denver in the distance.  Just the spot for a rest.

So I'm here in Boulder for 2 weeks.  I'm here to get my bearings, to nest a bit in our borrowed house, and to acclimate to life out west.  And to continue the separation from Odyssey and life in Connecticut.  I was thinking, on the way down from the Saddle, how grateful I am to have had the opportunity to be part of Odyssey.  It's been a challenging journey, but one that I'll never regret having taken.  I've learned so much about myself through this experience and I know that I've been part of an amazing period of growth.  I feel that I've made a positive mark on my little corner of the world through Odyssey, and I'm really happy about that. 

There's a lot of time to think when you're on a 7 mile hike by yourself.  But I also love how meditative hiking can be...I can be fully present and feel part of the wider world; I hear my footsteps, feel the wind and sun on my face, concentrate on the path right in front of me, glancing often at the blue sky, distant plains and other folks (and dogs) coming up the trail.  I felt content and peaceful on the trail today, like I am ok in the world.  Imagine. 




In Brooklyn

Having an epic hang with Laura and Coleman in BK.  it's been a while since I had 2 whole days to be here. Two days is about what you need to get honest and real after a time apart.  This is a precious time and I'm grateful to be here now.  I remember being 26, and I remember that it wasn't always easy.  Somehow you think you're supposed to know more or be more than you actually are.  When I look at my daughter I see a perfect life in progress.

Today...? Coffee first, then we plan lunch.  Epic.