... since the day after Christmas life has been moving with less speed and minimal clarity due to this year's version of "the Crud." Decided that I failed to allow enough rest between the landing of my return flight on Wednesday evening, and appearance at the Visitors Center at ten o'clock the very next day! Foolish, I suppose, but with adenaline still flowing, and the eagerness to share the trip with ranger colleagues, docents, made it impossible to turn off -- at least not yet. Tomorrow I may not remember ... the details ... the new information ... the new memories that needed sorting out, a process that required other ears and voices with whom to debrief. There was the added complication of not being able to access the photos in my camera, or, having enough energy to sit before my computer at night to "write it out" here. Now it becomes clear that much of the inability to organize my thoughts was due to the fact that I was incubating an illness that would bring everything to a halt within a few days, demanding detachment from everything until "the bod" could catch up with the brain!
After a week of idling, yesterday came my official return to work, and I'm back in the swing of things -- feeling properly recovered -- and vitally interested again in whatever needs doing. That includes writing year-end reports for our division chief, and returning to a schedule of activities in preparation for the first 3 busy months of the new year; Dr. King's January birthday celebrations, Black History Month observances; and in March, Women's History Month -- all with commitments to fulfill.
Looking back over last year's datebook for material for my part of the year-end report, I was dumbfounded by all that was accomplished. It was a busy and productive year, filled with fascinating people, assignments, panels, awards, recognitions; far more than I'd remembered.
Let's hope that 2013 will prove as interesting and fulfilling as the past year has been. When one reaches these final years, the preciousness of time; the continuing sense of urgency imposed by a growing acceptance of just how finite life must be. Time becomes something almost palpable, certainly priceless and not to be captured by containment in relentlessly insistent clocks, forward marching calendars, and the perennial hourglass, but -- by definition -- being another dimension; a plane of existence, it becomes an enticing -- more than theoretical element -- and subject to a growing need to understand and accept the inevitability of its passing in irreversible pulsations into the forever after. Fears of endings are gradually being replaced by a new appreciation and respect for "order," and "succession."
Fascinating how life begins to narrow the lens of the living as age closes in on itself.
Ninety-one holds the promise of new worlds of experience; and the newness continues with each waking day. Surely there's room for a year ninety-two, right? What is there left undiscovered out there beyond tomorrow?
... I'm ready for whatever that might be ... .