High Kicks

This is my next puzzle. Isn't it a perfect New Year's Eve image? It was sent to me by a very dear friend. The fact that her fingers touched every piece in this box as she herself did the puzzle will make the process of putting it together myself that much more special—like a communion across miles. Thank you, my sister spirit. You knew I'd love this one.

And now it's the last day of the year and my whole family is either down with or emerging from Covid. My son seems to have had it the worst so far, but he just called and believes he's turned a corner, but now his love is coming down with it. "If she had to get sick I'm glad it was delayed," he said, "because she's been taking care of me and now at least I'm on the mend enough to take care of her." His bout was not mild. For three days he was miserable. He also had to go to Urgent Care to get a PCR test done, as the fire department requires it. This morning, when he went to headquarters to turn in the sick leave paperwork, he was in a line with about ten other firefighters, all of them also sick with Covid. 

A newspaper headline today read, "Everyone in New York City is sick with Covid." It's like that Omicron winter two years ago, except this strain, whatever it is, seems to kick your ass a bit harder. And it seems to rampage through any group of humans it comes in contact with, because what were the odds before this that my entire family would be down with Covid at the same time. My husband, who slept most of yesterday, keeps responding to "How are you feeling?" with a terse "I'm fine." He may well be, despite the bouts of coughing, because he's right now yelling at the refs for the Arsenal-Fulham premier league game on TV. I hope he never gets as sick as my son just described feeling.

The book. It's morphing. As we address the editor's comments, my subject and I, we happen across new stories worth telling, and so we are writing fresh pages and layering them into chapters, and I need to ensure the insertion of new material is effortless, and not janky. My subject goes back to work next week, and so our three week period of full engagement will necessarily end, but she's been a queen, giving me everything I need and then some to do my part. I worry the book is getting too long, too dense, but as my husband said, "She's had a big life, of course it will be dense." I need to make dense flow, however, make it accessible, not bogged down with too much detail, even though my subject has a very detailed mind.

Yesterday I caught myself rushing, trying to be the good student and get the thing done on a timeline that would be relieving to my subject, but the chapter I was in still felt unwieldy, and then I realized that I'm working with a lot of new material, first drafts of new pages, and I need to give them their due, weigh every sentence for purpose and pacing, make sure things hang together, and so I texted her that, to explain why I needed more time than I had promised, and she texted right back, "This makes perfect sense. And I'm grateful. Please take whatever time you need." Have I said yet that I adore her?

This does not in any way feel like New Year's Eve, and I'm just going with that. The year that is closing had a lot of hard moments, but I'm choosing not to tabulate them,  and to just lean into the impression that I was outrageously blessed as well. If we're lucky, the curtain on 2023 will find the man and me sound asleep. How's it going where you are? What are your plans for the turn of the year? 2024! Still sounds like science fiction to me.