On Thanksgiving

I didn't gorge today. I didn't eat seconds. I didn't want to.

I made a meal of my favorites: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and apple pie. Most everything was out of a box, but that's the delicious Thanksgiving taste I was raised on. Those are the particular flavors I crave, what makes up my favorite meal.

It's because I think of my grandparents and the way my Grandpa Lentz would fill the turkey with stuffing and taste the skin as he carved. The way my Grandma Jackson would tenderly pass the dishes and make sure everyone was happy before she sat herself. The way my Grandma Lentz would take the china out if the cabinet only for these meals and wash them right when we had finished, and how I would help her dry.

This is my third Thanksgiving without family. But I don't feel alone. The food is a connection. The way I approach the day.

I started by running/jogging/walking the Turkey Day 8k this morning in 1:05:11. Not the time I'd wanted, but my left ankle was giving me trouble and so I couldn't move like I'd hoped. But, hey, I can move, and that's the important thing. I legitimately completed an 8k, and that's something new.

Then I took Scooter out to the Pacolet Preserve to run. He celebrated our little hike by chasing some deer and munching on a found cat leg, its foot still hairy with claws. Snickers seemed to know because when we got home she smelled him all over.

I do miss my loves back home, but I'll see them for nearly two weeks around Christmas. My first holidays with Phillip. My first holidays in Kansas since 2009. My first holiday road trip with Scooter.

Yeah, I'm pretty grateful.

Diagnosis

I have returned to woods and words.

Scooter and I have started taking evening walks (when there's time before dark) on the trails that start just a block from my house in Duncan Park. It's surprisingly dense and mountain-like once you set in, and the paths are already littered with leaves, the best kind of fall. And I let Scooter off leash to run ahead and veer off into the growth leading down to a small creek. He collects stickers and mud, and returns to me with his tongue hanging, happy with his speed and freedom.

I walk slower, breathing deeply the fresh air, and listen for rustles. I wish for more silence like this, so tomorrow I am going where there's more silence, where there are more trees, where the colors are brighter, where I can climb higher. I need it. I need it before life gets even busier and the world gets colder.

The last two months have been blurs of long days and big projects, short nights and deadlines. Even my journaling has suffered from a lack of energy for words, but I'm back at it, opening files and adding syllables, images, scenes. It's such a relief.

Times like these I recall something my grad school professor Michael L. Johnson said in a workshop. He said he was struggling with anxiety and went to a therapist. The therapist said, "How's your writing?" Johnson replied, "I'm not." "Well, that's your problem."

I hate to equate writing with therapy, but it is a path to well-being. For me, it is a necessity to a healthy mind. It is a need, a desire, a must. It is an occupation I must attend to, return to, live every day.

Finding your place in the world means finding or making a place where your needs work for you.
--from Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life by Adam Phillips

 Tomorrow I hope to inch closer to my place in the world, both as a writer and a lover of nature.

Start again

Sleepless morning number four. I wake uncomfortable and stiff, sometimes from strange dreams and sometimes just to the whir of the ceiling fan and the still dim streetlight glow of the windows.

I haven't been able to shake it these mornings, that weight of lack behind my eyes, that presence of unsettledness, that want for an easy start. In between attempts to sleep, I wander out into the dark house to feed the animals, a need I know I can satiate. I shut the door behind me again, a second goodnight, and press myself into the mattress. There is no good angle of legs, no satisfying proportion of sheet and exposed skin, no texture of pillow smooth enough to bury into. Once day comes, my eyes tell my body there is no more trying.

I press my palms to my eyes. Where has sleep gone? I search for ways to recover the day and start again. A smoothie, maybe, or a slow walk around the gorge. A favorite song. The next essay in the collection I'm reading. Before I make any real progress, I realize it's noon and I've not only lost some night but my whole morning, and now day is slipping into its other half without me.

Tomorrow is open, wholly mine. Maybe I'll embrace the early hour, if it comes, and sit on the porch to welcome the color behind the trees. In not fighting, perhaps my body will relax and wiggle into whatever comes, grateful for another sun.