I'm on vacation for a few days. My oldest is on spring break this week so I decided to head over the mountains and spend a few days with my folks on the wet side. I have been looking forward to this trip very much as I haven't seen my parents since October - they are snowbirds and only just got back from Yuma a couple of weeks ago.
This is my first real vacation since I started my job a year ago. I had a week off in October to have carpal surgery, but I wouldn't really classify that as 'vacation,' considering most of my time was spent trying to figure out how to button my pants one-handed.
Other than the act of being present on the island for five days I haven't made any plans for things to do while I'm here. I've brought some books to read, some movies to watch, thought about old friends I might call while I'm in town, but otherwise the vacation is still a jar full of possibilities for me. There's so many 'might be's' that it feels intoxicating.
Talk about possibilities: At the same time as I write this, a very dear, close friend of mine is on her way to starting a new life. This friend had a tumultuous few years. About three years ago we became close as she went through a divorce after over twenty years of marriage. Having had a sheltered, controlled childhood with very strict parents and having married early, this lovely woman had never really experienced the gleeful independence many of us do in our twenties. I got to enjoy seeing her go through this as a forty-something mother of two. The transformation was complete and as fascinating as watching an exotic flower come into bloom. She lost weight, got new, sexy clothes, smiled more, flirted more, dated for the first time in decades, talked about grand dreams and plans. There were some downsides: the house that just wouldn't sell, necessitating that she still live there with a man she was no longer married to; the job we both worked at where the mind-games and the drama far outweighed the work to be done; and a persistent gastrointestinal issue. A year ago, just after I moved away to start my own new life here, the bottom fell out of her transformation. She was diagnosed with third-stage cancer.
My friend very nearly didn't live through her treatment. She had radiation and chemotherapy, an intolerance to which landed her in the hospital unable to eat anything. Her digestive system simply shut down, painfully, and there was a point at which her doctors did not think she would live through it. Divine intervention, power of prayer, love of friends and family - whatever it was, she managed to pull through. She got strong enough to have surgery to remove the cancer. Since that time she has been in recovery mode, working on regaining lost strength, living with some ongoing pain and making lifestyle and emotional adjustments to some of the changes in her body that have been difficult to accept.
Finally, a couple of months ago, the best news in a long time: an offer on the house! Upon closing day after tomorrow she will have the seed money to start a whole new life. Its not the life she was planning before the cancer; but its a new start. When I think about my friend, I picture the woman I knew who was in a miserable marriage, contrast that with the newly divorced butterfly coming out of her cocoon, then consider the cancer survivor fighting to regain her health and hoping that she will be fortunate enough to remain cancer free. Finally, I see the woman who is right now in her car driving from New Jersey to Texas to start a new life with her children, her parents and her brother nearby, and I begin to understand the nature of possibilities.
Human beings are mysterious, wonderful creatures. We are not simply the person one sees in the current moment; we are the sum of all of our experience, our past, current and future hopes and dreams and the possibility of all that we ever were and all we will ever be. I see this most distinctly in the women I know. Women are the epitome of possibility. Every women, even when clad in sweats and performing the most mundane task, contains endless possibility and probability. We are the princess and the mother and the executive; the nurturer, the dreamer and the organizer. We are perfectly imperfect, we can transform at a moment's notice from tired mother to sweet-smelling wanton woman. The path not taken is as fully present in us as the road we traveled and as the future ahead.
I am joyful for my friend as she experiences yet another transformation and I am excited to see what possibilities will develop into reality in her life. All that she has been through has served only to enhance and refine her beauty and mystery. I am in awe of not just her past and present but her potential as well. Shine on, my friend. I can't wait to see the next chapter unfold!
