Sunday, May 17, 2015

Back in the Saddle: Tif Blogs Again!

It has been nearly a year since I, Caged Bird, have posted ANYTHING. I need to get back in the habit. I've thought about it on and off, but the longer I waited the more I had to say, and the more I had to say the less I wanted to say it. It fed itself: the endless loop of Not-Wanting.

Blogging is nice, though. Therapeutic. I know at least one person reads what I post, so it's my way of pinging out signals more... wordy than what would normally be put in a Facebook status (Though I tend to be wordy there, too.) It's weird to say that this is a more personal method, given that it's on the Internet and despite my privacy settings, any hacker with 2 brain cells to put together could read everything I type, but it feels more personal. Hello. I am conversing with you from across the table.

It would be impossible -- even if I wanted to tackle it, which I don't -- to apprise you of everything that has happened in the past almost-year, but it has flown. My brother, alias Pip, will be a year old in a few months. He's 99th percentile on everything having anything to do with the growth chart: height, weight, head circumference. It's like having a 2 year old with one tooth in his head. My job now is to nanny him each day while my Mom and Dad work, which is an arrangement that makes me ridiculously happy. It's hard work, but for once in my life I am perfectly content with something. This child lights my life. I was feeling more than a little aimless before he came along: disabled and apparently unemployable, very little structure to my days, groping around for reasons to get out of bed. I majored in Social Work because I wanted to do something with my life that matters, but 70-some job applications and only a handful of interviews -- and 0 offers for employment -- later, I felt like wasn't mattering to anyone. Barely to myself, even. I was more depressed than I was letting on.

And then, Pip. BANG! Everything opened up. It has been such a privilege to watch him grow and develop almost daily for the past 10 months. He makes me so happy, with his frizzy little 'fro and his big brown eyes and that mega-watt smile.  He's old enough now to instigate games of peek-a-boo, to indicate that he wants to be tickled, to open his arms and come at me full tilt like a barreling train. It's been 10 months, and sometimes I still hold him and cry at the sheer miracle of him. He's my favorite person.

Everything else in life is pretty much the same, although it's also completely different because he's here. It was a natural absorption, a perfect fit, our Pip into the pattern of our lives. He belongs with us. We belong with him. It's that simple, and that amazing.

I turned 30 in December. Jude-cat will be 9 toward the end of July. I bought my first piece of brand-new furniture at the end of last year. It barely fits in my tiny apartment, but it's my couch with 2 reclining ends, and I'm proud of it. People on poverty-level incomes buying their own couches is equal to the upper middle class acquiring McMansions. I have acquired a reclining McMansion. Go me.

I'm currently waiting on and going through a battery of tests to figure out why my ankles won't stop swelling, which just screams "Heart trouble!" and has me feeling even more neurotic than usual, but other than that, life has a pleasant routine: I spend the days with Pip, and in the evenings I either go for a latte, with book, or stow away outside under a tree, also with book. I want to read 120 this year. I'm trying to fit more mindful appreciation of the present moment into my everyday life, and it really has opened up my whole world. Before mindfulness, I was just this anxious creature all boxed up inside myself in a little cell of not-noticing. It occurred to me, earlier this Spring when I stopped to listen to the birds sing, that I'd never purposely stopped to listen to the birds sing. This seems sad to me now. The world takes on a magical new depth when you set out to appreciate life on purpose, and not just get through it. The mundane can become fascinating -- I spent a long time, just the other day, marveling at the way a robin hops. Maybe it sounds silly, but you really should try it: just a few minutes here and there to stop and tune in to your life, your experience, your surroundings, can make so much difference in the way you see things -- or, like in my case, can even determine whether you ever see them or not. Or hear them.

Now that I sound like a New Age guru (I do yoga now too; cover your face and lament), I'll sign off for the time being. But expect to keep hearing (seeing?) from me. I have remembered why I keep a blog: because I like it.