Dancing on Halloween Morn

Some stories take a while to write themselves: days, months, even years. This is Dancing on Halloween Morn.

Breathless.  It’s Halloween morning.  I haven’t been climbing stairs or jogging.  The music’s loud.  And I’m dancing in the kitchen.

October was a success.  Each day, for a second or an afternoon, I peeled back the heavy translucent rubber windshield comprised of problem-solving, decision-making, chauffeuring, worrying.  And I absorbed the colors and crispness of fall.  Colors burned impressions that will take me through to the next season of cold, through the seasons of warmth, until I stand again at October 1st.  Where I will prepare for that change which is now 47 years familiar.  With Halloween here and the month of thankfulness beginning tomorrow, I’m full.  Content.  Like I just ate a big Thanksgiving dinner that was blessed with my granddad’s words.

I cook.  I dance.  And tonight I will be a witch.  This morning, four years ago, I was GI Jane.  My hair had started to fall out with the chemo, so I had it buzzed off at 7:30 a.m. in the salon, before the days’ clients, the regulars, opened the salon door.  I was an irregular that morning.

This morning, I skipped the 3-product process to straighten, glossen, smoothen my bobbed, wavy hair.  It dried naturally.  Strings of velvet danced in the wind as I drove, windows down, that familiar route home from school drop-off.  My fingers felt it and remembered.  The short spikes of four years ago.  Soft chicken fuzz.  Tight, tight spiral curls.  Loose curls.  And now the luxury of these soft, wild, living waves.

So… we celebrate.  Me and my hair.  Loud music.  A steady, heavy drum beat.  We dance in the kitchen on Halloween morn.

When Plans Change

Running a tight ship. Magically getting it all done. Type A personality. Everything has a place & everything in its place. A Pottery Barn house. Not me. So not me, particularly post-chemo with not a hormone in sight to glue it all together in the old memory bank. Consequently, I'm taking an Executive Functioning webinar, trying to re-train my brain in the ways of time management and using visible tools daily. It's helpful to have daily, weekly, monthly, and long-term planning pages in front of me -- as long as I remember to use them.

Early yesterday morning, I had created the perfect do-able list: take boys to school, meet workers at the house to get gas fire place working, write the Hump Day Short, grab lunch, buy humidfiers and toothbrushes, get home for webinar, pick up boys & take them to play dates, buy groceries, reverse pick up of boys, make quick taco dinner, have dinner together, get boys to bed at a decent hour.

Well, plans change in my non-Pottery Barn life. The best goof-up in my schedule was lunch. I stopped at a little restaurant that I had recently discovered; I'm usually there at odd times but yesterday I as there at noon. I sat down with my planning clipboard and a blank piece of paper (aka: grocery-list-in-the-making) as diners filtered in.

I recognized one woman as the mom of a Little Leaguer that played on Liam's team. And another as the mom of a little girl in my god-daughter's class. Long story short, we slid my table together with another and had lunch together. We chatted, laughed, joked, and poked. For not remembering either of their names nor ever having met the third woman, the conversation was lively. Enjoyable.

So if you felt the world brighten a bit around 12 Eastern time yesterday, it may have been the sparks from that lunch. Why won't you take your child bowling? Roller-skating? Should an inmate on death-row receive cancer treatment? When should you pay a contractor? Why was my Christmas wreath on the door until March 6th? (See the 1st and 2nd paragraph... and there WILL be new decor on my door TODAY! ...I'm putting it on my daily planner.)

Alas, much like the rest of the day's events, lunch went on longer than I had allowed in my planner. "Inhale lunch" then "Write Hump Day Short at library" then "Webinar at home." I skipped the middle task to get the next one done.

So, I'm writing the Hump Day Short at 5 a.m. And happily so. Lunch with these ladies and another surprise visit with old friends were the highlights of my day. Conversations when plans change.

I didn't have "Lunch with virtual strangers" nor "Unexpected chat with old friends" written in on my daily planning sheet.

Perhaps that's why I plan my day in pencil?

Happy Hump Day.