Day 100: I'm Back!

. . . And I understand, more than ever, that the ability to write that title is an enormous privilege.  It is ironic that this blog began as a meditation on the domestic drudgery that overwhelms my days, because the drudgery was what I missed most when I was so ill with swine flu.  I missed all of it, but it was making breakfast that I longing for. There is just something about seeing those sleepy little faces, topped with tangled hair, gathered around the butcher block, slowly eating their warm breakfast that makes me feel like a good mom.  In a feverish haze, I even ordered a blender and a waffle maker, hoping the whole time that I would live to make the kids smoothes and waffles for breakfast one morning. I did survive. I was fortune enough to be able to make many smoothes and to discover that I don't like making waffles but that Andrew does. 

Since recovering from the flu, three acquaintances of mine have died.  They were all too young to die. They all left behind beautiful lives.  They could have been any one of us.  I feel shaken by all these deaths.  I'm not sure what to do with the knowledge that keeps getting reinforced over and over and over again - the fact that I am going to die.  No matter how scared I am, how unprepared I feel, how much I want to stay,  - I will die. 

But it really isn't the death part that matters.  Death just is - it's a fact.  I need to worry about life, because life is what matters, life is what needs tending to. Unfortunately in recent years I have spent too much time looking for death and not enough seeing and creating a life.  

Today I spent much of the day reading posts about a former colleague of mine at Indiana University who died on Tuesday in a rock climbing accident. These beautiful tributes made one thing absolutely clear to me -- you must live a life that you will  be proud to leave behind.  That is the most we can ask for.

This  blog is part of that. I can't say I am terribly proud of it yet but I plan on making it something that I can proud of.

I am proud that I have finally caught up on my granny making just in time for the 100th day of the year. And here they are - 100 grannies for 100 days. It's good to be back.