Stormy Weather

I’m awake. Since 3 a.m. I’m blaming the wind outside, but that’s not really the problem.

I realize that I grew up in a place that had two seasons — a short rainy season and a long dry season. Then I moved to a place with a long winter, long-ish and beautiful spring, brief and lovely summer, and a far-too-brief autumn. Winter has abruptly arrived. SuperHeroPrincess has begun longing for the summer weekend days she squandered inside watching Sleeping Beauty on DVD. While growing up in Los Angeles, the idea that you had to be outside on a “nice, sunny day” seemed ridiculous (when wasn’t it a sunny day?), here in Western Washington, any day that you aren’t facing the kind of rain that seems to penetrate any item of clothing other than a full-body rainsuit is “nice day” and even on those days when the heavens seem intent on spitting directly on every available surface of your body and clothing, there often is a “nice moment” when you want to drop everything and run outside to soak in the one, slanted, golden ray of sunshine that seems to be just out of reach, but maybe, if you cross the street and stand on your tippy toes, you will feel it on your face.

Life sometimes feels like that, relentless rain that just makes it feel even more cold. And then, the spiritual equivalent of a “sunbreak” comes by. Yesterday, a friend I don’t see too often, who has a daughter just a bit older than SuperHeroPrincess, invited us over (after a few false starts over the past weekends) and SHP played with my friend’s daughter and another adorable child so beautifully they barely interrupted our deep discussion about applying Buddhist principles to parenting. We both had this sense of understanding and opening.

I noticed something as we were conversing. This was a friend who I at first felt distance from because I felt she was so attractive — slim, tall, beautiful. And that distance I felt had dropped away. It was no longer me feeling envious, but us just relating and talking. So, growth on my part, yes, but also just the impact of time spent together and demystifying someone else’s life. She talked about how we get distracted from our life’s purpose by the ways in which we are reacting to everything around us, and how meditation and centering and other practices are designed to allow us to re-acquire that sense of purpose and to allow those other things to swirl around us without engaging with them (at least, that’s what I took away from what she was saying) and I had a glimpse of that “life purpose” — and how in those moments when I feel connected to it are happening, I feel a surge of energy rather than an expenditure of energy.

My life has felt overwhelming lately. I’m without Mr. Rounded — a story I can’t tell yet, and more a development in just one plotline than the tragic final chapter of my life’s book — and parenting with the help of one particualr sister, the more distant support of another sister, friends, teachers, parents and others. I’m doing okay, and so is SHP, but one thing I’ve been neglecting is my diabetes management. This isn’t to say my health is poor, it’s actually okay. It’s just that I haven’t been doing all the things I usually do to “keep an eye on” diabetes. I have been exercising, I have been attending to my mental health, I have been taking my medications more or less on the regular schedule. What I haven’t been doing is testing my blood sugar regularly, or eating in a pattern that is optimal for managing my blood sugar. My weight has been surprisingly stable. But I have found it hard to eat on a regular schedule. I’m not neglecting breakfast most days, as this seems to help me insure I have energy left at the end of the day to get to at least some of the tasks I face (making SHP’s lunch for the next day and remembering the myriad assignments parents have to remember for her school, for example). But lunch sometimes is forgotten for me, and I end up eating way more sugar, mostly in the form of chocolate, than I intend to, at the end of the day. This isn’t good for blood sugar. I’m not attaching any moral judgement, nor does it feel like a binge. It feels like I am not able to accommodate one more thing to manage.

So, I’m going to get back on track. I’m going to make the doctor’s appointment I’ve been putting off, get my blood tests done, and see the doctor.

Mostly, I’m weathering this stormy season, with the wind spitting rain in my face and exposing it to the cold. If I cover up completely, though, I’ll miss the sunbreaks.