2012, Diagnosed

It was a good year.

All years are good years.

I am trying to get less attached to ideas of emotional happiness and instead learn to see the fluid beauty in all things...even the rough things, even the stuff we are tempted to label and discard.

It is so alluring to kick 2012 out with a big heave ho and stamp it on the hiney as it goes with a giant red "FOR DISCARD" like a snubbed library book.

This was the year..... A had an accident with a bike and spent months in ridiculous physical therapy trying to learn to walk again after the official diagnosis of "bruising and small bone chip," it was the year we had such a plague of mosquitoes in our yard that we basically spent the second half of the summer indoors hiding, it was the year our shower started leaking through the dining room ceiling and we shifted to using the kid shower (still are!) while we saving up funds to afford a ceiling demolition, it was the year that I spent a week, heavily pregnant with my fourth baby teetering on the edge of a hospital bed holding my third son while he cried and pinning his arms down while nurses gave him i.v. meds, it was the year my cherished midwife was no longer practicing and I had to walk through this last pregnancy and birth without her care, and it was the year of illness after illness, the boys never all well at the same time.

But you know...there are so many sides to life. So many pieces to stories and so often, its all about your spin.

This was also the year.....I discovered eating grain-free/sugar free and thus shed a shackling depression, the year we met our gentle, fourth son in an amazingly quick and smooth birth, the year we hauled basket after basket in from our garden laden with peas and lettuce and tomatoes and our first ever watermelons, it was the year I finally took an interior design class, the year A picked up Spanish in his spare time, the year we celebrated surviving an entire decade of marriage together, the year we visited Hawaii and swam under a waterfall with our children, the year we picked the first fruit from our mini-orchard, and the year we made it back to Michigan for a family reunion on my great-grandparents farm, the year we brought home two furry little guinea pig sisters to live with us, the year I had a painting up in a real gallery and then sold a piece to a genuine member of the anonymous public, the year a Raleigh  policeman went out of his way to help find my stolen phone and restore my faith in cops, it was the year we were graciously mega-loved by friends in our homeschool group, neighbors and church when hard times did hit, it was the year we had a huge flock of daffodils bloom by our front door.  This and so much more...

I want to always look for the ripe, warm, flavorful bits in my experiences...even the things that feel bitter at first bite. So here I am with the winter light slanting across the floor and a round cheeked baby on my lap, on the brink of a whole new story. This year, whatever it brings I hope for more awareness, more open-eyed seeing, more love, more unity with side portions of vision, and dreams, and spine tingling to boot. Here's to 2013, doubtless, a good year!