Second and six

This photo, which I took on the last official morning of my last official summer, speaks to me today.  I love the softness of the fog, the sun-and-cloud sky, the unpaved road fading into the trees.  It was a happy morning for me, tucked between rolling Sandhills and the wild Niobrara. The deep peace of that weekend put me in a good place as I headed into the meeting-heavy start of this, my last school year.

Today, three months later, this photo acts as a telescope for me, a peek into the beyond that might be.    Its promise settles me, especially when I find myself wondering about my decision to retire. 

I am convinced that it's good to leave while my love is intact, but it is that very love that makes the leaving more difficult.  Especially when I'm nuts about so many Spartans.

. . . so, basically, I'm setting myself up to be heartbroken, come late May.

Most of the time, though, this impending heartache is tinged with something else--the strange pull of "what ifs" and "why nots"--and I am left slightly giddy, wondering how I will write this next chapter.

It is, I believe, a chapter that has been waiting for me.  I started to feel its as-yet-unnamed tug two years ago, when death and illness and Donald Trump came onto the scene.  Thinking back, I've come to believe that it's possible that a month of radiation literally left me filled with light.  How else to explain this transformation that fills me molecularly, intellectually, emotionally?

I am a different person today than I was two years ago.  Physically softer, yet stronger, too.  Less tolerant of BS.  More likely to question authority 

But I also am more willing to love ridiculously, with great joy and abandon, even if it means my heart will ultimately break into a million different pieces. 

These are my prism years, after all, everything beautiful and complicated refracting the light that fills me, and I can't quit staring at the wonder of it all.