Abundance

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 This morning I woke up when the dog started moaning--daybreak, somewhere between 5.30 and 6.30, sunlight filtering through the curtains. Weekends, R. and I have a deal: I let the dog out to pee when he first moans, and then an hour or so later, he gets up to feed the animals. Weekdays, I get up earliest and take care of everyone.

This morning, the AC was churning and Snake, our big orange tabby, did what he always does when he hears my eyelids twitch: crawl up on my bladder and meow loudly so I will wake up and feed him.  I got up, peed, let the olden dog out, checked my phone. There, in my Facebook Memories, was a message from R. from 9 years ago, soon after we'd met at a MFA alumni conference and a) he was enamored with another woman, b) I told him I would kissed him if he asked, c)he told me I was too young for him and d)he butt-dialed (so he says) me at 3 AM the night before we all had to fly home.

Anyway. I woke up this morning, groggy from our martinis the night before, and thought abundance. It's a concept I don't regularly understand (don't get your hopes up is essentially our family motto), but watching the chandelier in our bedroom waver slightly in the breeze from the window unit, the cat meowling, R. snoring quietly beside me, a dream about my old church choir dissipating like fog, and my 9-years-ago-self flickering on my phone I thought:

could I ever have imagined such abundance?

I have been struggling, mightily, to stay in my body lately. No, to not hate my body. My body dysmorphia has been fierce and awful; though I run and though I lift and thought I spend my days in the garden, the boundaries of my flesh are liquid, large, terrifying. Next week, I fly to the Midwest to attend a memorial, then drive to Michigan to quarantine by the Lake, then pick up my boy, then fly home. The Delta variant flourishes. We have shut down the opera, my workplace is scattershot and heading toward an unvaccinated disaster. I have spent my days in meaningless meeting after meeting. I try to write poems and essays, or something unpoemlike, comes out. Rejections flood my inbox. I avoid mirrors, pinch my belly between my  fingers, plot diets and exercise plans and then discard them just as quickly. My achilles twinges again. My shoulder burns from lifting too much weight.

I spend my day gardening: compost in the raised beds, late sunflowers, invasive vines and trees of heaven yanked from the slopes. I clean the chicken coop, gather eggs, transplant strawberries, ecinacea, pull the wasted zucchini (why do I struggle to grow zucchini?). I wash our laundry in the bathtub since the washing machine is leaking. R. and I wring it all out, knees on the marble tile.

When I wake, I put my hand on the small of his back.  I think who could have imagined this?

But this--this life, this 100 year old house, our boys almost grown--college brochures accumulating on our dining room table--, the olden dog of my divorce sleeping with his head on our feet. Who could have imagined such abundance?  And I think: I did. 

I have to remind myself of that. When I am feeling out of my body. When I feel more connected to what could go wrong. I imagined this and made it. 


This is real.

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