Thanks Be

I feel sad and grateful tonight. Sad for the loss, for all the years of slowly closing in on myself, and grateful for the light-speed opening that is happening inside me now, all the insights, all the awareness I've had lately that I am not alone at all but truly blessed in the world.

I am grateful for:

My dear friends, most immediately M~, who has been in my life since second grade and has never been more appreciated; L~ and L~, among others; and S~, who has been my bestest for a very very long time. I am listening to her sing as I write this. (Her name is no secret, really, because she uses it herself at myspace, where you, too, can hear her beautiful voice, and simulate the experience I had writing this post). The song is perfect for my mood: sad sad sad and lovely.

My incredible family, today especially my nearly eighty-year-old father, who drove 7 hours to spend the afternoon and evening with me, to buy me meals and early birthday presents and to simply be Dadness. "It's difficult for me to go to you with the pain of this," I told him the other day on the phone, "because it feels like it has its roots in my relationship with you." But then again, there is no better salve than his love.

J~, whose wife left him a week before A~ left me, under quite similar circumstances. We haven't officially met, though we will soon. Through the luck of the grapevine (namely, my brother, his co-worker), we've become a support group to each other by phone and email, sharing the internal reckoning, fighting our way out from isolation, exploring the great steaming gumbo of difficult emotions. And laughing. There is actually some laughing.

My coworkers at the clinic, who are so sincerely committed to caring for women in their hour of need, they move me to tears on a regular basis. I'm honored to be part of their team.

My guitar, which was collecting dust, but no more.

My readers, who keep me writing.

And finally, A~, (yes, A~ makes the list). He called me yesterday because he was feeling bad about how bad I must be feeling, wanting to know how I was doing. In a year of miscarriages and grief, I never got such basic, unsolicited care. Strange as it may seem in light of recent events and our continuing sure-footed movement toward divorce, our friendship might actually be improving.