Poetic License

I can tell you I am almost back to normal; I can tell you I’m as good as I can get. What I really want to say is that once more, life is changing.

After my recent stroke, it took me a few weeks to get back to work and another six weeks of physical therapy, massage, and gentle exercise to start to feel more balanced. It took new medication, tracking new numbers, and new awareness of my body. Back to normal, as they say. But in some ways, I feel better than normal.

A couple of the things I’ve embraced is to reconnect with old friends and to disengage from distractions, which might be why you haven’t heard from me in awhile. I’m writing more of my memoir about Stephanie. I’m able to do housework and gardening again, but I hired someone to do some planting for me, and I’m thinking of hiring a maid for a deep clean once a month. I want to spend my time and energy on other things.

I’m not a person who requires a bevy of friends surrounding me and being in my business all the time, but I do like to have a few close friends. One of my closest friends lives in southern New Hampshire, and it has been a long time since I have seen her. She and I are close to the same age, but she has grown by leaps and bounds in the last few years. It would do me good to see her. We have worked together at several companies, but she has been unemployed for a while. She is making do. I envy her the ability to take her time and work on her own things while she waits for a good job to come along, or retirement.

Another of my friends – from high school, if you can believe it – lives in New Hampshire, as well, near Lake Winnipesaukee. We recently reconnected online and have discovered that we both adore poetry and fine literature. We’ve shared some long talks about the English Romantics (Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge) and our favorite poets and authors (Baldwin, Hughes, Steinbeck). He’s a middle school teacher, and he also ran a small hobby shop for awhile where he lives. During the summer, he teaches archery at a local girls camp.

I have a wide variety of acquaintances from across Boomers (of which I am one), Gen X, and Millennials. With anyone younger than that, I feel the age gap. We have little to talk about, though I work with a lot of Gen Y.

Them: “So what games do you play?”
Me: “I like some of the newer games, especially the Azul series.”
Them: “No, I mean video games.”
Me: “Oh, well, Jeopardy, Words with Friends, a little Candy Crush…maybe Sims.”
Them: *heavy sigh* (walks away)

It would give me a complex if I really cared, but I don’t. It is as though they need a common game with someone in order to communicate. I have bigger things on my mind, like retirement and getting out of the rat race.

I want to travel. I’m planning to take a trip locally to see some friends in the mountains. I’ve been meaning to see my friends Jeanne and Nadine, who are in far western NC, and to see one of my former professors, who lives just east of Asheville. And I want to go up to see a co-worker who lives in Boone. I’ve lived here three years this month and haven’t made it to see any of them. That’s what PTO is for. It isn’t for sitting home all the time or for leaving it to sit in the leave bank, wasting away while I burn myself out.

And then I want to go to New Hampshire. And one of my friends there wants to take a trip to England to visit the places where the romanticists walked, ate, drank, and created. That sounds really good to me.

And someday I’ll see France.

But what I don’t want to do is stay here, stay stressed out, and have another stroke at my desk. It was a wake-up call, and I don’t care to wait around for another ring.

Namaste,

Take care of yourself,
Jude