Game-Changer Day: Everyday Magic, Day 411

Suddenly, it’s cold out. How is this possible? my stunned body asks. It’s been hot for so long that I was astonished to find, when trying to work out on porch in a fleece jacket, my hands were too cold to type well. Just having cold hands was a novelty.

Back inside, I look out at the gray-blue expanse on the horizon, dissolving to white. Cottonwood Mel’s leaves are rapidly turning yellow, some beginning to fall. The squirrels dash across the railing of the deck, right outside to the window, while the cat watches with great interest. In last day, I’ve received good or hopeful news about areas of my work that have felt for months like pushing a boulder up a mountain in high heels while drinking a hot cafe au lait in a wind storm. No windstorm. No mountain. No boulder even, just my morning half-coffee, half-almond milk drink while my socked feet rest on the bed across from this comfortable chair.

Everything is suddenly different, and being alive feels surprisingly easy (or at least easier) at the moment. My expectation of impinging disappointment dissolves away. Resolution will come one way or another on the kinds of things I worry about in the middle of the night or day (Will my Holocaust book ever find a publisher? Will the poet laureate program step out of limbo to live in a new organizational home? Will my kids be okay?). There’s no weight to hold.

So I’ll relax in this game-changer day, even haul the recycling to the recycling center, which seems to fit more usual, and watch for what next unfolds.