Five years ago today, i lost someone.

I thought this would be an easy post to write. Cosmic connections. Celestial elevators. Babies one week from due dates that go in their sleep.

Tya Marie would be five today, if she had survived her treacherous passage into this world. That means that when she went, I was a young twenty-eight, and L. was a energetic toddler.

I was swallowed by the darkness. I could go on about the things that brought me out of the haze of loss: taking off to Thailand with a kicking two-year old, worshiping a quartz crystal that i strung around my neck and talked to, or writing a crazy book .

But the things that really helped me through the grief weren’t things.  They were people.

An amazing man, who listened and loved me. A caring family who were willing to walk into the silence of our loss. Friends who not only stood by us at the time, but who continue to share with us in our journey today.

I am grateful to so many who have helped me through these last five years, and barring an emotional outburst, the waterfall of wonderful women pictured above is just a beginning.

Baby loss brings with it a complicated grief. And through this, I hope that I’ve been able to help others through the struggle of miscarriage and late pregnancy loss. These are people who continue to inspire and move me with their courage, their hope. I hope that — as when we lost Tya — my presence can speak for itself, where no words can go.

I am here for you.

T- wherever you are. We love you and we’re okay. You shine alongside your big sister, who misses you furiously, and your new little brother, who will plant the seeds of youth in your honor.

But we are forever changed. And now to the road ahead.

King Richard III, the honored, cherished and now celebrated English figurehead died on the Bosworth battlefield on 22 August 1485, but his remains were never found.  For five hundred years, his unclaimed bones have stayed shrouded in mystery: some say his body was thrown in the river, others say he was left in a shallow grave by the Tudors.

This got me thinking about the strange juxapositions that we find ourselves in throughout the course of our lives, and perhaps even beyond them.  How does this happen: in one moment, I’m a king, and in the next, I’m a parking lot.

Maybe it’s telling that I’m diapering and feeding a baby again after the growth and relative re- stability after my first, who’s now a very grown up seven.   Mundane tasks are all around me ( i call this ‘meditative mothering‘). Matching mittens, nighttime feedings, filing mail.  I walk the dog over and over, through the same trails under four seasons of trees. My husband and I just caved and traded in our beat up old Suburu for something that could fit tents, strollers, and the dog all in the back. Or we can put up the third seat for carpooling (the thrill of the expanding family!)

I have become the proverbial parking lot.

But somewhere in the vagueness of consciousness are memories of my years on the throne. Some of them I relive from time to time, like the other day, when Leila looked up from the book she was reading and asked, “Mom, did you and Dad meet at a rock concert?” (also see, “Mom, are you a teenager?”)

“Of course,” I replied, trying to impress her.  “It was love at first sight.” I swooned a-la “the Triplets” from Beauty and The Beast. A rock concert – yes, let’s keep it there. I thought we met on the beach, but Mitch says it was a local establishment, and through a good friend. ‘A rock concert’ will do. I distracted her with a muffin when she asked, “Which band?”

But there is a sense of predictability to my parking lot: lines, spaces, lanes. Order. The things I thought that I would never seek. With my twenties mantras constructed under Phish’s “the truth was to surrender to the flow” and Jerry Garcia’s “formlessness and chaos lead to new forms”, I rarely forecasted that I would so enjoy the quiet stillness of folding baby laundry, or sitting daily in the silent moments of a sunny window that lead up to the arrival of the yellow school bus. Leila usually arrives running, usually yelling something to the tune of, “Mom! My teacher says I can’t bring my tap shoes to school anymore!”

My thirties have brought with them the placid calm of regular hours. Stability. Calm. Peace.

Richard the third’s unearthed remains have inspired royal lovers from all over the world as scientists match DNA, recreate features, recapture his spirit and recount his life. Maybe as we grow and change we will recreate our own features – carve our names in the sand and watch them disappear. My time as a roaring twenty-something may be done, but someone else’s is just beginning. And who knows, I may be a king again someday.

Discovered.

Me and @DoBakeSewThink in all our royal hippie glory.

The king and the car park. Please share some stories about where you are in your lives ~ life in the kingdom or life in the car park? What’s better? Why?

But as I opened my WordPress dashboard, I couldn’t help but reflecting on all the posts that (their moments fleeting) were never to see the light of day. 2012, the year I got pregnant (February), started an MFA in Creative Nonfiction (June) adopted a German Shepard (August), and gave birth to a tiny baby boy (October) was a year inspired by the passionate embrace of creativity and written retrospection. And although it wasn’t great for blogging, it was great for drafting.

And just in case you were wondering about those interrupted beginnings and castaway drafts, here were some of 2012′s unpublished ideas.

Pregnant and Adopting: life as i knew it

There you are, on a car trip, at the restaurant, or in the doctors office, and the little one goes for your purse. At first you hesitate – not here, not now – but then your inner teenager takes over and you surrender: fine, take my phone. And those little hands dig through your stuff, your private lady purse stuff that you thought you might never share with any one.

the north shore of home

In July,  I studied language as a concept, Pinker’s “The Language Instinct”, and other educational theorists presenting theories of second language acquisition, and wrote my heart out about teaching and learning language.  But in August, I turned to contemplative essays.  At least I thought I was turning to contemplative essays, until I started pouring out more Memoir, thus transforming the shape of the narrative into personal essay. In the meantime, I tried to get the whole style-form thing straight. And in creative nonfiction, does it matter?

The point is, I’ve been going to The Bookman a lot, one of the few second hand bookstores left in Charlottetown. It doesn’t have a fancy website, where you can fill an online shopping cart, find weekly reviews, follow your friends or leave comments for the owners. It’s all in 3D. It has a door, about twelve highly piled shelves (to the ceiling!), and a customer service agent (aka the BookMan) who may or may not be able to help you find Micheal Montaigne, or the other thousand or so authors the BookMan may carry. You can find him reading quietly behind the cash register.

I went in there for some obscure Thomas Merton books from the 1950s, which the gentleman gladly helped me find by waving me down an aisle, and upon noticing my giant pregnant belly, pulled me up a ladder. My daughter disappeared down the next island towards the kids corner, where a tiny stool sits quietly in the sun, and where lives what is surely the most impressive collection of Berenstein Bears books east of Montreal.

As I walk through the Bookman’s dusty aisles, I muse over all the times I came in looking for old, obscure maps or used Lonely Planets. I’ve learned a lot here. I move slowly back towards Philosophy and Religion: the study of Contemplation.

I gather books until my arms are full, and make my way down to the cash. Leila is hard to round up, now into a Ramona and Beezus collection on a shelf almost too tall for her. She hates to leave this magical place, where worlds open and close each time she twirls around.

The man behind the counter reaches out for my pile of texts. There is a book at the cash, The History of Stilletos that I hope Leila doesn’t notice or that she’ll want. The kind man rings me in and lets Leila pick three free books from a small stack of Little Goldens. He makes conversation, tipping his glasses back up his nose every once in a while. Suddenly, I feel sad for him, disheartened for book sellers everywhere.

“How are book sales?” I ask him, hopeful. “Can you compete with Kindle? e-readers? Amazon?” I think i know the answer: technology kills books.  I look around at the small store, which there are still a few people in, and engage in the usual PEI small talk, the impact of tourists, etc. Then I get to what I really want to know.

“Are things changing for you?” I may be treading on thin ice, here.

The BookMan looks up, pleased. “Kids are still reading, just like you did.  My biggest demographic is actually teens, I’d say 15-30.”

“Wonderful news!” I say, momentarily stunned and impressed by the miracle of teenagers. I glance down to my daughter. In a month, she will turn seven.

The BookMan continued. “On the Road, and all that. Kids are still reading that stuff. They want real books.” We both check out Leila, who is grinning behind her free copy of Cinderella.

I breathe deeply, yes. I remember Jack Kerouac and for a moment, those days of my life. Beat poets and the Greek philosophers were a rite of passage – but would they still be for Leila?

“Maybe by the time she’s old enough, she’ll open a book and Aristotle will appear in 3D!”I picture Aristotle jumping out of the text – a broken image but nonetheless there, at the podium, like in an old Star Trek episode. I try to explain it, but get lost talking too fast.

I think about the interactive iPad books with their sparkles and their music and I consider the possibilities of books bringing with them projections and interactions- my mind races: an old Dylan show, a Ginsberg reading, even a Steve Jobs commencement address!

“I have no idea what you just said there,” the man behind the counter says once I’ve drifted away, “I just sell books.” I’m immediately apologetic, as I realize that I could be twenty years younger than him.

“I love books, too.” I said. “Thanks for the freebies.” You don’t get those online, I think.

When i got over the shock of moving into a college dorm, meeting my roommate, and being herded with 127 other writers through the cafeteria line, i began academic introductions and program expectations. Here, writers practiced not only the soulful act of putting our thoughts down on the page, but the bold and foreboding act of springing those same thoughts forward in publication, determined to become noticed in a sea of shiny stars. Here, writers were made.

Daily lectures, presentations and informal talks with many published authors gave us newbies hope for the future, under the wing of accomplished faculty like Sue Silverman, famous memoirist, essayist Patrick Madden, poet Rigoberto Gonzalez and none other than Canada’s own fiction guru, Douglas Glover.

There were readings each night and even a talent show, where I’m picture here, thanks to the Artist’s Road’s very own, Patrick Ross. There’s nothing that writers do better than take risks; and  the poets grew louder and bolder each night.

But now I’m home and the real work begins. As my first deadline encroaches, I’ve been faithful to the writing schedule, although heavily distracted by the events of a gorgeous summer: beaches, bike rides, barbecues, lobsters, and of course, long parks walks and south shore rock jumping. The strawberries are long gone and the raspberries are here. Soon it will be the blueberries, and then, back to school.

So if you’re looking for me, I’ll be stuck under a pile of craft books, reading hundred year old essays as the sun creeps slowly up in the sky. This month my focus is LANGUAGE, and in that a study of the merits of blogging and an examination of second language acquisition, a theory of applied linguistics. I’ll get back to you on that.

Tagged: exploration, inspiration, MFA, travel, writing process ]]> http://furthermo.com/2012/08/02/a-chance-to-refine-the-craft-chapter-one/feed/ 2 furthermo IMG_7255 http://furthermo.com/2012/05/26/uncluttering-life/ http://furthermo.com/2012/05/26/uncluttering-life/#comments Sat, 26 May 2012 23:08:32 +0000 FurtherMo http://furthermo.com/?p=978 Continue reading →]]> At my book club the other night (the one where we drink wine while holding the book, sometimes making vague comments on the artistic renditions of the cover), a friend told her a story. She mentioned that while she’d been home in Newfoundland, she was cleaning her 70 year old mother’s closets and discovered an old, papier-mâché box full of calendars from the seventies and eighties. Calendars. Decades old. I laughed, thinking, seriously.

My mother has a cold room. It’s full of large, out-of-use Tupperwares from when we were kids that sit under inches of dust and haven’t seen the sun in years, keeping in company dozens of glass jars and bottles, long emptied of their relishes and jams. Broken down coffee makers that worked their very hardest for dozens of Duffys sit at the back of the shelf, only to circuit a short and one hard-working day, to have made their last lonely cup. Then, they retire to the cold room.

I don’t know it is about the spring that sparks a fury of needing to get your year’s collection of items – important and non-important – categorized, thrown out, put in a box, or given away. But the movement is there, and we are definitely a generation of unclutter, or at least the best of us thinks we are. Recycling bins get usually filled once a year with old toys and the clothes make their ways to swaps with the girls over hummus and tea.

I want to think i’m not a clutter bugs, but the truth is, i probably am. Piles upon piles of newsletters climb over the kitchen counters, gathering with them water bills and file folders and ribbons and scotch tape, and migrating somehow to the stairs, where they wait patiently to go to Mom’s office to be sorted and told where to go.

I guess the problem is it’s just so easy to accumulate JUNK: first you’re single, free and easy, living in the wind, then you’re married, which comes with it’s own wonderful set of parameters. RESULT: You rapidly double your possessions. I get his left-handed guitar, and he gets my old typewriters. It’s a trade off.

Then, you add a child. And POUF! Your free and easy lifestyle is the only thing that’s in the wind. You’re left with the treasured art of kindergarten, birthday cards where your child’s 4 year old friends write, “i love you,” their first blankie, then trikes, bikes and wheelbarrows. Their first medal for soccer or skiing adorns their bedpost.

And then come the animals. I actually have a laundry basket upstairs – that was full of clean laundry – which my cat Switch started sleeping in, and for a week i couldn’t bear to put the laundry away, because at at first i thought it was cute. But little by little, i needed the sheets and dish clothes under the large, orange beach towel on top, which Switchy had somehow claimed. Now it’s been a month, and she refuses to sleep anyway else.

Last Christmas eve, my father dropped off an old two keyboard organ, with all the bells and whistle, that he bought for us in the early eighties. The thing was practically the first synthesizer ever invented. He claimed it was for Leila, for Christmas. Thanks, Dad.

I give up. I should just sign myself up for one of those hoarder shows and get it over with. Unless I decide, right here and now, that I WILL NOT BE A COLLECTOR OF JUNK ANYMORE.

NO, NO, NO. NO MORE JUNK.

A valiant attempt to see junk to the door, i will make. A closet of family reunion cookbooks and games, i will give away. A closet or two with unnaturally high piles of laundry, i will vacate.

Next thing you know, I’ll have a broken coffee maker or some old Tupperwares stashed away. I’m sure I’ve got an old calendar or two around here – and i know i’ve got papier-mâché. And maybe that won’t be so bad after all.

Do all girls turn into their mothers?

My Dad, sitting with my brother's PhD Dissertation in Archeology. Possibly the proudest day of his life.

I know that as a writer, I’m not supposed to obsess about publishing. I’m supposed to put my head down and keep writing, and never to get discouraged when the rejection letters come.

But over the last year, I’ve had so much positive feedback on my work, that it’s hard not to feel like the world has forgotten one lonely young memoirist… blogging her way through the world.

Last year, after going to City Book Club, a book club where we’d invited an author to come, I  got home late and I called my husband on skype.  He was in China at the time, it was his noon, and he seemed especially entertained by me – here it was practically the middle of the night for me, i was slightly intoxicated, and bursting to tell my news: “Babe, I’m going to be a real writer!”

Although i had always considered graduate work, it’s not until i completed my first manuscript and attended a writing workshop or two that i started to get my feet wet in the world of writing. But something in that Book Club meeting had gone right that night, and i knew i was destined to get better at the craft. If i like it, and if my readers liked it, well then, i would evolve, grow, and challenge myself in new and interesting ways.  I dropped the idea of doing my Masters in Education, and i started following a new path: a Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing!

The idea lingered over the summer, but it wasn’t until I started polishing my portfolio at length that i started thinking about which schools i would apply to, organizing references and engaging with Admissions Offices all across the country.

And I’m happy to report that I will be attending my longest residency ever – the first of five – at 2 weeks each! No six year olds, no phone calls, no meetings that can’t wait, no students rescheduling midterms or missing deadlines …  JUST ME, AND WRITING, and a PROMISE. A promise to myself that i will learn more, practice dedication and continue to live the life of an aspiring author, setting aside time each day to work to refine my skills.  Vermont College of Fine Arts, here i come.

Thanks to all the people who have helped me get to where i am today; in the midst of the endless query, but sometimes breaking out the “Well, I’m a writer…” at parties when people ask me what i do. I couldn’t have done it without my constant supports~ you, my readers.

Don’t worry, I’ll report back.

moduffycobb

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“Bamboo rafter”

moduffycobb is using Instagram – a fun & quirky way to share your life with friends through a series of pictures. Snap a photo, then choose a filter to transform the look and feel of the shot into a memory to keep around forever.

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  fromaggi

  Can’t wait to hear about these adventures!!! · 8 months ago

Taken at Yangshou, Guangxi Province

Instagram: Instagood.

I’ve been thinking a lot about perception, and how much I’ve learned about the people in my life using Instagram. As you can see from its description above, Instagram describes itself  “as a fun and quirky way to share your life with friends”: basically, a twitter feed for photographs. Here are a few reasons why i like the idea of ‘sharing your life’ on Instagram.

It really is a great way to visit your friends.

Take my friend, Mancuso (pictured above as the hippie at the campfire). He lives in a super small town on British Columbia’s west coast, and we’re rarely in contact.  I talked to him twice in the last two years, once when he was randomly home on P.E.I. and wanted to get together, and once when he pocket dialed me and sounded just as surprised as I did that he’d called. I mean, let’s just say, long distance communiques are just not this man’s strong suit (nor mine, to be completely honest). Since he’s joined Instagram, i can now see the houses he’s building, the arizona grapefruits he captured on his vacation, and his sweet pooch. It makes me feel closer to him – somehow. Instagram is a bit voyeuristic like that. You’re where? You’re doing what?

Photography as Art

And many thanks to those people who are out there taking pictures constantly of beautiful things, like the grass after it rains, Paris in the springtime, or long, luscious spiral staircases, where the edges have been blurred and you feel like you’re melting into the photo. How wonderful is it to check out the gorgeous gardens someone has built over summer, the magical half eaten milk and Santa cookies of Christmas morning, or the interesting perspectives one can create simply by holding their iPhone under a bridge. This is your beautiful life going by.  Welcome to it.

Glorify the Daily. 

There’s no question. Our lives turn into drawn out cycles of days and nights, blurring together at the seams, and we rarely stop long enough to realize how blessed we to be alive, to see the true charm of a bowl of espresso, or to feel the heaviness of a cloudy day in our tummies. Instagram celebrates the little things in life: your best friend’s super cute baby eating squash for the first time, a bright blue door in a run down neighborhood, or a daffodil bursting forth from the cold, damp ground. (Oh! Oh! Imagine if there was an Instagram for smells?! …mmmmm….the first 30 seconds of chewing a piece of spearmint gum, a fresh pumpkin from the garden, the floral essence ylang ylang…Amazing!)

The only #FAIL of Instagram

Since our lives are becoming increasingly visual, we’ve seen the rise of the “inspirational post-it” note. I’m not sure how i feel about this. Now, don’t get me wrong, i’m definitely up for free enlightenment wherever i can get it, but there’s something about the “free advice” of my internet friends, some of whom i don’t know personally, that doesn’t ring true with me. I’ve always been a fan of paper, of markers, and of inspiration. Who isn’t? I’ve adorned whole walls in former apartments to collections of wise words. In years past, you have to find those ‘best quotes ever’. You had to look for them, wait for them. I acquired my favorites from years of pawning through old books and poetry and recopying them onto the backs of envelopes. They meant something to me. I guess to be fair, the overused inspirational quotes are not themselves a fault of Instagram, but possibly of the 27 million users that the social media icon has acquired.

Overall, Instagram, i think you are wonderful. Thank you for sharing the beauty in the world.

Readers – please share your thoughts on Instagram – have you used it? Do you like it? What are your highlights? Or is “the online sharing’ thing getting a little out of control?

I guess the cushion was Mitchy’s way of saying, “Now you can meditate from the comfort of your own home, babe.”

Mitchy’s great at knowing exactly what i need. Less wine, more quinoa. Less writing, more revision. Less frazzle, more meditation.

I’ve been “practicing” the – um – meditative arts for about a decade now, although i have yet to levitate off the ground in a cloud of transmigrational smoke.  Not that I haven’t huffed, or puffed, or prayed, or cried, but I honestly haven’t been able to hit the top shelf of the enlightenment hierarchy, even though i own not one but two copies of Chögyam Trungpa’s 1973 classic, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism.

How can something that’s so easy and so mundane  – to follow your breath – be so complex at the same time? Much like a lot of other things, I blame TV. Child of the eighties, Micheal Jackson, Whitney Houston, growing up in noisy arcades with a lot of blings and beeps, no worry we have a hard time sitting and thinking. Then add a kid to the mix, the ever churning swirl of the mommy brain? Practically impossible.

I always seemed to start out on the right foot: positive intentions, good posture, and a clear mind.

Deep breath. There you go, Maureen. You’re doing just great. Can I make it to ten? In, out. In…out…. but then it would start. The voice.

I’m breathing too fast. I should slow down.
Ignore the voice, Maureen. Hold it, and exhale.
You call that meditating? I should be working. I’m procrastinating.
I am NOT! I’m helping myself calm down and develop self-awareness. It’s a life altering practice.
I’m hungry. I should have called that women back.
Deeeeeeeep breath. Focus.
Did I cancel that dentist’s appointment yet? Lei doesn’t even have any cavities.
I’m trying to breathe, here!
And you’re doing a marvelous job. Congratulations. You’re ALIVE.

And so it goes, year after year. For a while I tried to focus on the exact conditions that i would need to meditate – hence the cushion. Then I tried to focus on the schedule: six to ten minutes daily, with a weekly working up to half hour and hour long increments. This is when i bought a second yoga mat (in case I wore the first one out right away!) and got the kundalini yoga chants prepped on the CD player, thinking, it may be soon time for a guru!

Deep breath, there, Little Mo.

I guess now since i’m getting a little older, i may be finally realizing that I may never make it to that Tibetan Buddhist mountain retreat that I always meant to get to, and that frankly, I may be okay with that. I’ll stick with my thirty-somethings uses for my meditation cushion: laundry folding, bedtime out loud story reading, and exam correcting at my low lying, teak coffee table.

Folding tiny kid clothes? Meditation. Emptying the dishwasher for the fiftieth time this month, putting the groceries away or humming a song on a radio that you don’t even remember turning on? Meditation. Petting a purring cat and having a glorious, momentary lapse? Meditation. I bet Trungpa had big cats.

Maybe I shouldn’t give up on my mountain retreat …..just yet.

Please, share your meditation successes and failures with me, favorite tricks, sites or recites. I’ll meditate on them.

ever drink yogi tea? it sends us little reminders sometimes.

Last Friday night, for a minute, i died.

When my husband cautioned me against driving in “the weather” (in P.E.I., that means snow, and in this case, 2-4 cm), i scoffed. i told him he worried too much, and that he should live a little. I rolled my eyes.

“I’ve been driving for six years, babe,” i added (i didn’t get my license until i was 28). Like in an instant on an icy road, that would have mattered. It’s you versus the elements. And the elements don’t  exactly care about your driving record.

Grammie’s house was only an hour away and Lei was pumped for her sleepover. After a cup of tea with Mum, she cautioned me to go super slowly on my way back to town. The blustering snow was coming down a little harder now and the roads were covered. It was starting to drift. No problem, i said. I laced up my boots and kissed my six year old goodbye. I didn’t even think twice.

Little did i know that only moments later and probably not four kilometres away, i would catch my tire, and spinning out of control, nosedive into the ditch, and flip my truck; seconds later i would crawl out the driver’s side window upside down and to the icy ground beneath.

I passed a school bus once, because it was foggy and I didn’t see its lights were on. That was traumatic.

This was something else. This was divine intervention.

I assessed my condition as soon as i left the x-trail, upside down,  tires spinning and the headlights still on. I didn’t have a scratch. I wasn’t broken, i wasn’t in pain, i could see; i was intact, though i looked down at my body to be sure. I was ALIVE.

When I was calling the tow truck, i saw another car go into the ditch on the opposite side of the road. I cursed.  I was ALIVE.

When the policeman invited me into his car to get my statement, he ran my plates and was kind enough to remind that that my truck was no longer registered. You’re two months overdue, he said. Yes i was; and I was ALIVE.

When Mitch’s sister and husband came to my rescue, i was in a state of shock. I just kept repeating, “I’m ALIVE! I’m ALIVE!” I kept thinking that there must have been a reason that i crashed, like to prevent an even greater catastrophe down the road, maybe one where i wouldn’t have been so lucky.

But unfortunately for my glorious x-trail (“exy” to those who knew and loved her),  she left this world a brave soldier: windshield shattered, windows blown, airbags deployed. We collected the scattered items that Exy had carried, and before i left, my brother in law handed me a crumpled up parking ticket, half frozen and covered in snow.

so long, old girl

Needless to say, the experience has left me thankful not only for my life,
but for every precious moment in it.

When Mitch and I were traveling through Vietnam, we met an elderly French-speaking gentleman who drew calligraphy on scrolls. We sat in his small shop and had tea and oranges with him for a whole afternoon, listening to his stories about the French occupation of Ho Chi Minh. Before he left, he gave us a gift: a beautiful scroll which read, “Live for this moment. This moment is your life.”

And I thought about him on the road that night, as i watched them tow my crushed truck out of the ditch.

And I thought about Mitchell waking up on a Saturday morning and not having a wife anymore, and I thought about Leila not having a mother. And I cried my eyes out. And I thought that I must not be finished here – that I must have been saved because i have work to do yet in this life. How crazy does that sound, now, only one week later.

The next day I had tea with my dear friend, and when she handed me a cup of licorice tea that said, “you are unlimited,” i burst into tears again. It reminded me of the time just after we lost our babe little t, gone to the ether. A friend asked me to select a card from her oracle deck, claiming that they were always poignant. The card I chose read, “Acceptance”. And that was the day i started to let go.

By Monday the physical manifestations of stress had set in: the pounding headache, unphased by the ibuprofen, the walloping head cold, which came out of nowhere, and not one, not two, but three cold sores, which violently attacked my upper lip and put me in the grouchiest of moods. By Tuesday, I was bed-stricken and couldn’t work. yikes.

So it’s been a week of crying thorough car promo videos (who does that?) and regrouping, in a desperate attempt to move along to the next chapter. Yesterday Mitch and I went to see the Exy one last time to “collect our personal belongings”, as instructed by the insurance company, and i admit, the experience was therapeutic. (If you can call bawling  – into a six foot tall man’s open arms beside a crashed car  – therapeutic. Thanks honey, you were great about that.)

And life goes on. The moral?

Live for this moment. This moment is your life.