Lightening and early morning goldfish

I wake up at 5 am to hear my goldfish smacking it's tail on the kitchen counter.
I flip on the light, and there he is, all orange and white and waiting to die.
I scoop him up and put him back into his bowl.
Immediately he starts swimming fast like a miniature dolphin.
I stare, amazed that he is still going, waiting for something to malfunction.
But he doesn't.  He returns to homeostasis plunging his giant mouth in and out, splaying his thin tail through the first morning light.  
I siphon a few cups of water off the top, just so he doesn't jump out again.
He's lucky Kit the cat spent last night outside on the porch.

A few months ago Beckam decided it was time to clean the fishbowl.
Sophie was babysitting.  I checked my phone to find 8 missed calls from her.
I call her back.

"Mom!  Beckam dumped the fish down the garbage disposal!  Don't worry I got him out.  He's okay."

I am impressed to hear she reached her hand into the sink's abyss to pull him out.  I tell her she's a good babysitter.
Now the fish has a few chinks in his armor from his adventure down the drain. 
There was also the time we came back from vacation to find him barely breathing in a 2 inch puddle after the cats knocked his bowl down.  Once again I scooped him up, gave him water and he came to life.  This fish just will not die.

My next thought was:  why did I wake up at 4:51 am?  Was it to save the fish?  

But I know the truth.  It is because I haven't eaten for about 15 hours.  I also went to the gym last night.  Tiny and I climbed the rope to the ceiling 4 times.  Sweaty and beaming, we slap a high five.  My arms are tight with blood.  When I exercise and don't eat, my body won't turn off.  It can't settle into rest.  It's waiting for dinner.  I don't intend to wait make it wait forever...I just don't want to give this up...not yet.  There is a vibration, a rush through me.  I want to ride the crest until it smooths back into the ground.

Last night Andrew and I sat on the porch swing and watched the lightening storm.
No wind, no rain, just blue electricity against a grey sky.  My bare feet rest idle across his legs and I feel the leftover summer heat.  I laid my head on his shoulder and remembered a time when it was only this.  Only he and I and the summer.  Before the kids.  Before the two car garage and the budget.  Before we turned 30.  There was so much energy in the sky.  I wondered if any of it was entering our bodies as we sat there.  How can we witness it so intimately and not be affected?  Maybe that's why I couldn't sleep.  
Or maybe it's because I didn't want to sleep.  I wanted to stay with him, with the storm, and with my freshly laid skin still electrified.

When I was first in recovery, I was so afraid to loose my identity.  
There is a line in the 12 X 12 that says:

 "If I keep on turning my will and life over to the care of Something or Somebody else, what will become of me? I'll look like the hole in the doughnut."

I felt panicked with so many questions.  
Is it selfish then, to be in love?  
Am I not allowed to desire anything?
Is ambition really just self-centered fear manifest in the form of fabricated achievement?

Whoa.  Big questions.  I am still learning.  The answers swell and shift as I age.
But this is what I know about those huge, over-arching questions.  They are not helpful.
They will not aid in the walking of my path today.
When I hiked the Appalachian trail, all I needed to know was that my body was strong, the forest was worth walking through, my friend Monica was with me, and I could see the trail.

Rather then swim up river begging her to make me feel alive.  I ride with her.  When she is smooth I am smooth.  When she roars I let her echo fill me.  I understand that she is more powerful than I am.

Riding the wave in Lake Powell 2014

ticket stubs from the symphony

I tried to convince myself to go for one of those miraculous 6 am runs...but my body couldn't be sparked to lace up shoes.  Sore muscles snuggled in to the sheets.  They grumbled their acid in tiny pricks pinning me to the bed like a deceased bug in a collection.
"Here we see the housewife in her dormant state.  Soon she will rise and make coffee, waffles, and begin compulsively washing laundry."
My mind though, she bings awake at 5:30 a.m.
She is ready.  She is curious, still eager for what the day will bring after 35 years.
She doesn't know she is a housewife.  Her imagination radiates in 12 directions before the body rolls from it's pillow.  I sometimes marvel at how my entrepreneur father still dreams in full color at nearly 60 years old.  After so much "normal" life, he believes something amazing is just around the corner.  I guess we are are not so different.
So now I am hear, slugging the brown shit out of the pipes.  Trying to clear the throat of my writing voice.  Sipping coffee in my thin white robe and hair stwisted up in a bun from our trip to the pool.  We are swimming again today, so I get to stay like this.  A kid in yesterday's play clothes.

Tomorrow I will facilitate a writing group unlike anything I have ever done.
As so often happens, I am in awe of this new twist in my path.
How did I get here?
Four women are coming to my house.
The one thing they have in common:  they all lost their partner to a heroin overdose.
One of them is my sister.  She was with Troy from 16 years old until his death at 31.
For half of her life, he lived by her side.  Now he is gone.
Last summer when I cleaned out Mom's garage, I found a small box of notes he had written to her.
Nothing profound, just a post-it note that had been stuck to a candy bar.

"I brought you this candy because it is so sweet and you are so sweet.
 I hope you have a good day.  Love, Troy."

There were ticket stubs from the symphony.
Some of the notes were so small.  Things you might have thrown away.
Now they are all that is left.

Our group came about because each woman came to me independent of the others, and asked for help in writing about their grief.  I am honored by their trust, and I hope I am worthy of it.
I haven't lost a person in this way.
I won't assume to know what their experience has been or what ache still rolls deep.

I just looked up Troy's obituary.  His eyes in the picture looked alive, they were still bright and questioning with a bit of teasing behind them.  I can only imagine how my sister must look at his pictures and wish he would come to life.  How she must cry.
As I read his obituary I thought: this is not Troy.  This is generic.  This could be anyone.
I hope my sister gets to write about the real Troy.  The one who was hers.  The one who will always be hers.  Perhaps I've got it wrong.  Maybe she needs to do something else.  Maybe the story she will tell is different than I expect.  Probably.
So as I enter this new space, I pray that my expectations will wait reverently on the sidelines.