Dawn this morning was met with a clear sky and 40F degrees, balmy weather for our zone and for this time of year. When I went to bed last night, the cloudless sky, brightened by the waning moon, suggested there might be ice in the birdbath in the morning, but not so. A friend out west wrote that it was going to be nippy in his area this week - around zero degrees. Nippy, for me, is what it is outside this morning, but he comes from hardier stock than I, or else has adjusted to the deep freeze that is more usual there.
When I opened the back door to sniff the air, it reminded me of when I was in boot camp, at Bainbridge, MD, almost 44 years ago. We were awakened around 5 each morning, hurried through morning showers, bed-making and mustering out on the tarmac prior to being marched over to the chow hall. In January, this frequently meant facing biting winds from down the mountains, having our nose-hairs crackle with every intake of breath, and arriving with stiffened cheeks (all four of them) to stand in line outside until we could enter the hall. This morning, the cold air racing into my lungs took me right back to 1969.
On this morning, grandson Donovan is getting ready for surgery. He's having a septoplasty done, to repair a deviated septum and to remove a bone spur that is growing toward his eye. He'll be under the knife for at least two hours, possibly longer. The surgeon will have to break a couple of bones to remove the spur and widen/straighten the septum. He's going to miss the 'pretty lights' this season. We were scheduled to go last night, but he changed his mind and preferred to stay home and set up a gift he'd received from a friend yesterday. It's a new game machine, an X-Box something. After his surgery this morning, he isn't going anywhere for the rest of this week, so we'll have to catch the lights next year.
The day before the new year always finds me in a reflective mood, an old habit from the days of resolution writing, started when I was a pre-teen. I don't write resolutions anymore, but the reviews of my life, past and future (hmmm, how does one re-view the future?), take up most of the day.
I found an envelope among my papers last week on which I had written the question, "Has my life lived up to my expectations?" I cannot remember when I wrote that, nor can I recall ever having expectations for my life. Certainly, I must have; just can't remember them this morning.
Must be that frosty air.
I sincerely hope all of you whose blogs I read, and who have been kind enough to visit/comment on mine, have a new year better than the one we are leaving behind. Much joy and happiness!
9 comments:
I hope the surgery went well for your grandson, Martha.
Wishing you and yours the very best in the New Year.
I know that smell, although from Ft. Dix. When were you in? Not year, but in you life?
Grandson will likely be very nauseated. Blood gets down the stomach, and is very irritating. Poor guy.
My life is nothing like I imagined a good life would be like, but I'm not disappointed.
I didn't know the Navy had a boot camp in MD...was it for women only?
Sounds warm, I think it got up to 20 here today.
Hope you have a good new year.
Sounds like that would be a miserable surgery to recover from; will he be in the hosp. overnight?
Cheers
Mike
I will be keeping my fingers crossed for young Donovan to recover quickly and completely.
Oh dear, I was one of those who grew up in the countryside of southern Ontario and remember that kind of cold only too well from the long walks to and from school. It gets pretty cold here as well (now, for instance, it's 25° with 30mph winds making it feel like -2°). After 18 years on the west coast I know I'll never get used to hard winters again.
Still, everything seems well with those I know so it's been a good year overall. I'll hope for better for all of us in the coming year.
I agree with you: never expect. By all means engineer things so that they may happen advantageously. Or let the minutes pass like beads already told. But never stare passively into the future. Hope has two edges.
For boot camp read square bashing. In my case Spring had already arrived and I wasn't subjected to all that invigoration. Some of what lay ahead would be intellectually entertaining (a movie about venereal disease), a case of keeping my mouth shut (the padre selling Christianity over philosophy), or one of those ridiculous periods of drill where being shouted at was all part of the training.
This year VR received a monster calculator as a joke present and I used it to show Zach how many seconds he'd already lived. At square bashing the process was manual: I faced two years of enforced national service: 730 days, 17,520 hours, 1,051,200 minutes, 63,072,000 seconds. Why, those seconds simply flew past; it was the days that seemed rather more cumbersome. Little did I know that those cumbersome days would include weeks spent enduring incurable athlete's foot in sick quarters, and reading, endlessly reading. Looking back, I endured real well.
Not seeing the lights may have been a disappointment to you but you can take adult pleasure in that D had another option and chose it. A tiny act of independence.
As to life living up to expectations the answer - for all of us - is not at all. For me, so much of it was utterly unforeseeable. Could I have imagined as someone smeared Whitaker's Ointment on my crusted toes in the airy medical ward on RAF Seletar, Singapore, that one day I would sit down in Forbes Field, Pittsburgh, Pa, USA, The Universe, and watch the Pirates play... now, who the heck were they playing? And see, I've just passed another fork in the road.
Funny how we can't help but mark the turn of the year by these kind of reflections, even though logically it's an arbitrary turning point, it could be any time...
Like you, I don't actually remember very clearly having expectations, as such. Like Zhoen, I find life is probably very different from what I might have imagined once, but I feel grateful for so much, and in many ways it seems right to be where I am. I've got off lightly, I guess!
Wishing Donovan well for his op, it sounds difficult but must be for the best. It's good he chose what he wanted to do for Christmas really, even if he did miss the pretty lights.
Happy New Year, Martha.
Hope all went well and that it will be in order to wish you a Happy New Year and Donovan too.
I still remember the cold cold winters of my youth in Winnipeg - have gone soft here in the rain forest.
Hope Donovan'ssurgery went well and wish him a gentle and quick recovery.
And you take care of yourself too, Martha. All the best of health and good things in this New Year to you and your loved ones!
Everyone:
Thank you for your kind thoughts for Donovan. He is doing well, came through his surgery in fine shape. In fact, he and his mother are out shopping today, just to get out of the house before cabin fever takes over.
Zhoen: I was 21 when I went in. My brother Tom had been back from Viet Nam for almost two years, recovering from wounds he received there. I wanted to serve by helping in the hospitals, to help care for wounded sailors and marines like Tom. As I've said before in earlier posts, I think there was an element of wanting my mother to be proud of me, too,as she was of him.
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