habits

i've got a lot of habits, mainly bad ones. to name a few:

1. i eat WAY too much chocolate when i get emotional
2. i scavenge thrift stores like crows on roadkill
3. i never call in sick to work

today i made an exception. i went to work...and came home. my stomach is just kinda wonky and it felt a little outside my realm of existence to be there. luckily i didn't have anything pressing to finish, so i told my coworkers and boss and here i am.

home.

***

there's a lot that went on in february. i feel like i'm unraveling as i mull over what all was stewing in the brainpan during that 28 day month--a real goulash of leftover bits, nonsense, and ignored emotion.

three things made up the bulk of my mental broth.

first was in early february. dad's two year anniversary of open heart surgery. it still makes me cringe a little to consider the scar on his chest, and how it came to be there. i think back to that day in the hospital, sitting there petrified and laughing.

the second was later in the month, on february 21st. three years ago, my dear cari lost her mother in a car accident.

and third was my own rollover into decade number three.

everything kind of piled up. as i peek back into the mess, i see it like three cars heaped and crushed on the highway, more slowing and crunching behind those three.

dad's surgery is something that my mind still clings to, in difficult moments. this morning as i drove to work i considered the death of a minnesota baseball legend, kirby puckett. he had a stroke yesterday and died last night. two saturdays ago i walked with my dad, upright and mobile, to support the american heart association--whose sole purpose is to educate and prevent heart attacks and strokes. i thought about my uncle, whose life has been shaped in so many different ways by his stroke, and who has had to re-imagine where his path travels. it all slammed together in a neat package, and i got a bit misty.

cari's mom came to me in a dream at the end of january. i woke up thinking that i had to get the spare room ready, because vicki was going to be staying overnight. now, vicki never came to my house. but i had this feeling as though she were arriving soon, despite the fact that she's been gone so long.

the girlie weekend up north coincided with the time that she died. it seemed fated that we celebrate our friendships, because vicki lived her life like a celebration. i miss her more for cari's sake than my own; but i do miss her.

and then my own wheel, turning: age.

birthdays are just like habits--only this habit is enforced by a much more rigid structure than my random purchase of chairs that need reupholstering. the calendar keeps marching along. i can file a complaint, but it's just that: a complaint.

it's been a long year since my last birthday. a good year, a bad year. i could file a complaint with the universe that it wasn't as good a year as perhaps it could have been--but it would be disregarded and ignored, along with any praise i might heap upon that same time frame.

the events that happened, happened. truths unfolded, stories revealed, history made.

***

i write when i need to write, when i feel the words pressing up in my chest and blurring my vision. i write because i have to write. i write out of habit, just like i eat chocolate. pavlov's dogs may have been more consistent than my own sporadic tapping, but if chaos is the constant, it can then be consistent, can it not?

this month reminds me that spring is shooting up through winter, grass through snow. the ice drips on the patio. the seasons turn, a habit larger than i can imagine.