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A friend texted me last week.
"Congratulations on another bonus year," she said.
I had thought about that bonus year a few times as we moved into spring, thinking of all the things I would have missed if the toe-dip I made into the possibility of sudden death had gone south instead of north. Remember this? The pulmonary embolisms and heart attack?
During the first bonus year I was acutely aware of that event, and the wonder that I was still around to obsess over the bathroom remodel and to begin the search for the perfect Mother of the Groom dress. The adrenaline spike of unexpected survival wears off, though, and this year I have occasionally forgotten to consciously mark events I am so glad I did not miss when I was "imminently dead," as K. described me in her congratulatory message.
There is the delight I continue to take in the Taj MaJohn. Every time red carnations are available for $5 or less at the grocery store I buy a bunch and stick them into a white pitcher and they make me inexplicably happy. The tick-tock-tail cat clock approves, too.
And there is my perpetual amazement that people keep asking me to sit down at the piano and play. I now accompany regularly for a middle school, a high school, and a college, and it has been a hoot to see the progression from the usually-endearing-but-sometimes-excruciating-squirrely junior high bundles of hormones to the usually-endearing-but-sometimes-excruciatingly-self-important collegiate bundles of angst. People under construction are fascinating.
Also, there is astonishment that this spring has been glorious, because an abnormally wet winter has led to acres of henbit spreading a purple tide across the lawns of Small Town and the bees and I are grateful for its beautiful weediness.
This is without mentioning the joy of the group texts each Sunday in which Husband sends a geography trivia question to our family and everyone contributes a guess. The Lovely Girls are dominant in coming up with the correct answers, although Boy#4 is an avid vexillologist and can be counted on for a fascinating commentary on the topic.
There are the friends who make me laugh and cry, and the satisfaction of editing a doctoral dissertation into final form, and...
So many things. So many things I would missed without the second bonus year.
"It was in my memories...you wrote a blog last year," K. reminded me.
"I need to go back and read that," I replied. "And I need to start blogging again."
"Yes, you do. And yes, you do," was her immediate answer.
I will.
