The Wailin’ Jenny’s version of Take It Down by John Hiatt has been stuck in my brain all week. I don’t know why, other than it’s lovely (though sad, obviously).

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Covid, then a few weeks later pneumonia – but then the flu. My lungs are just trashed at this point. I’m barely functioning, what I am able to do is solely due to prednisone and nebulizer treatments. I am not sleeping well, partly because of the coughing and partly because of the prednisone. The prednisone is making my face puffy, whether it is the actual medicine or the fact that steroids just make me want to eat all the things, I’m not sure. I also managed to pull a hamstring this weekend, just by getting off the couch, and my sides hurt so badly from coughing that I have a pillow handy to hold over my stomach, just like I did when I had a c-section. I cannot underscore how much I want this winter to be over, to sit on my porch with the lilacs and be able to actually breathe.

Speaking of c-sections, my oldest child – the one I actually birthed! – turned nine. Nine! Eight was unexpectedly and irrationally hard, but over the past month we’ve seen some great progress so I am hopeful we are turning the corner. Third grade was hard for me too; I went to a regional school where I was the only girl from my town in my class, plus that was the year I started walking into walls and they figured out I couldn’t see so I had to get glasses, and Kevin Powell got detention for calling me 4 eyes. Our teacher was a former Army nurse who was insanely strict, but she had a soft spot for me (because I was well-behaved) and wound up guilting my parents into letting me get a cat. It was a black and white cat I named Sam, who came to a tragic ending when my aunt’s twin brother ran over it. I cried so much my mother swore we would never get another cat. (Spoiler: there were several cats after Sam.)

Also? my aforementioned aunt died a couple of weeks ago, and I’m still sad about it. She was the best, she would (and did) do anything for anyone, and gosh, we chase so much in this life that is not meaningful. My aunt did not chase these things, instead she showed up for people in a myriad of ways that might have seemed small but were absolutely not. Also, I think my aunt was 22 years older than me, which seemed a lot when I was a kid but, oof, the idea of possibly only having 20 years left is terrifying, especially when you have small kids. Time is speeding by, and while I will never regret my kids it is hitting me hard that they will most likely spend more of their lives without me than with me. I hate the idea of ever having to leave them, and yet that’s the natural order of things. And yet, I got 44 years with my own father and he still missed my entire “second act”: I was married all of ten days when he died, and he never got to see me be a mother, never got to meet my kids. There are no guarantees, is what I’m saying, and we have to make the most of whatever time we have left. Get busy living, indeed.