ABUNDANCE NC

This desk was the prettiest thing.  Antique.  Hardwood.  Handmade.  Straight out of a Jane Austin novel.  It’s the most decadent thing I’ve ever owned – an altar to everything I aspire to be.

And then I left it out in the rain.

For an entire month.  Under a leaky tarp.  In July.  And like a river after a long rain, it swelled into something unrecognizable. Call it laziness.  Call it apathy.  Perhaps an artifact of being a millennial?  Maybe she didn’t know any better.  Maybe she has a good excuse.  The truth is, I got busy and forgot about it.  And when I remembered that I had left the desk out in the rain, the guilt overrode by sense of responsibility.

This guilt expounded the longer I waited.  It became Schrodinger’s Desk – both ruined and perfectly intact as long as I didn’t peak under the tarp.  And so it sat for a month, waiting for me to muster up the courage to remedy my awful mistake.  Had I the gumption to face the problem right away, chances are the desk would have survived.  But it didn’t.

This lead me to the first principal of Adulting: being an adult means that you choose to tend to everything that you own or have inherited.  Including your teeth – brush them. No more turning up the music so that you can’t hear the grinding of your car brakes.  No more lending your precious items to friends who lose things.  No more leaving your desks out in the rain.  Sometimes this means letting things go – giving away what you cannot care for.

And so I am burning the desk.  Call it a ritual sacrifice to the adult that I’m becoming.  And what a better day than this Friday?

I have a lot to be thankful for. This year marks my fifth year in remission from breast cancer, and I know I would not be here if it weren’t for my now eight year old son.

Yes. You’re doing the math, seeing that he was just two years old when I received my diagnosis. He fought just as hard as I did, learning patience and compromise at that tender age. In some ways, I think he understands me better than some of my adult friends. He carries himself in a way I have only seen in the children of parents with chronic illness, or who have faced death. There is wisdom and great compassion in those young eyes. It is bittersweet.

So, this Friday, we’re going for an extended hike in the woods and along the Eno River. We’ll give gratitude to the land that holds us, the land that weathers storms like Florence and Matthew and returns renewed. We will ask to have this same resiliency within our selves, within our world rife with storms beyond the meteorological. Walking in nature eases stress, burns those additional calories from that second helping of pie, and brings my little family once more into harmony. It reminds us what matters most–love, simplicity, and togetherness. These are the building blocks of memories, having nothing to do with material things. Maybe you’ll see me out on the trail, guided by the huge heart of my son running along ahead.”