flu season

It hit today. Over the weekend, really. They've been heading out to the hospital like a flock of startled birds. We care for them, and about them, and still the sickness visits us each winter, claiming the old and unaware, the good and the better. We feed them banana popsicles and chamomile tea, we let them stay in bed like I did when I was young and had high fevers, thrashing in my bed, clawing the sheets like I was being chased by a bear. We get them boxes of tamiflu and hope it is magic and all its cracked up to be, but we know and they know that this is the thinning of the herd. This is life. Its what happens. They all go to heaven. I'm certain of it.

The staff get masks and vitamin C and disposable yellow paper gowns and hand cleanser with glitter in it, pink and purple bottles they argue over at shift report. They are so good to come and to stay, considering the certainty of exposure.

This is the hardest time. 

resolute

Its not that I have a lot to say. This blog has never been about that. It is mostly a document of the mundane in carefully chosen words. I do love to stack words like beads on a string and sometimes I forget to make a knot and they slide on one end and off, the other, jumbled and meaningless. But now, with my next new job leaving me some space in which to consider my days, the things I see and how I see them, I feel more time to write. I don't necessarily have more time, I just feel it like an old chair that has been waiting for me all along.

This is my new year's resolution, to find time. I think you can only find time if you slow down. It hides in busyness and routine. If you are patient, it will bring you ripe oranges and chamomile tea and light a candle to read by. When you hang out with time you can do anything you want to, but be careful not to look away or time will slip by unnoticed and you will think you never had any at all. I don't think you can save time. Just try to spend it wisely. Its really all we have.