life in the current

Last week I started a new job. I'm being a therapist again, after more than four years away from clinical work. The counseling center where I've started seeing clients is slowly generating bookings in my part-time schedule and so the re-entry has been blessedly gradual. On Tuesday morning I had a great second session with someone, spent way too long on paperwork, ran home to relieve our excellent babysitter, hung out with Gabriel for a bit, and visited with a new friend who is also a clinical social worker and stopped by to give me a crash course in a particular clinical problem while the boy watched a video...then it was time to get Frances, drop off both kids at a friend's house so I could see an Eastport Girls Club family, get everyone home in time to throw together a quick dinner, and oh my goodness by the time the kids were in bed and a work call had been made I was so very exhausted.

Yesterday was yoga class in the morning (after far too long away) followed by a happy surprise collision with Mike at home before he went to class and I went to pick up Gabriel. Then my dear boy and I raked leaves in the backyard. Or rather, I raked and he attacked the piles with a very big stick.

He charged the leaves with such gusto! Clearly there were all kinds of imaginary opponents lurking in the leaves, invisible to my limited eyes. I'm lucky Sir Gabriel was there to keep them at bay.

I was filled with a kind of crazy euphoric gratitude that afternoon, thinking of all the supportive people in our lives, the opportunity to do the work I trained to do, the growing village this town has unexpectedly become. After we picked up Frances I spontaneously suggested we invite one of her pals to come out with us for hot chocolate. Which we did. At the cafe we ran into more friends and the kids earnestly - and hilariously - performed magic tricks over and over for me. The big kids did not exclude the little kid one iota. And I felt so content I do believe I might have been glowing.

Then today I somehow completely missed the fact that the calendar said I would be at a meeting and taking Frances to gymnastics at 4 pm. Eek! Midway to gymnastics I had to pull over, apologize profusely to Kate the stood-up babysitter, apologize to my colleagues, apologize to the children who desperately wanted to play with Kate, and then head back onto the road only to slide into the parking lot and run Frances into class late (much to her well-articulated chagrin).

But even as I rushed her in, it occurred to me that this is what approaching balance in one's life is like. You don't actually ever get to a particular spot where all things are in their proper places. Balancing isn't being perfectly still, when you think of it - it's shifting and swaying ever so slightly, executing gentle movements that realign one's weight and center over and over. There are too many moving parts in a living body for stillness to make any sense, and there are too many moving parts in a family to ever really settle into a fixed approach to daily life. Even when jobs and schools stay the same, the very fact of so many people living and growing together ensures the need for adaptive movement and change. Kids are potty-trained, develop a new fear, or meet a new best friend. Marriages grow, friends come in and out, illness visits, community unfolds, babies are born! And each part has to shift to accommodate the moving, glorious whole.

Maybe it's pregnancy, or rejoining with people in the unique environment therapy allows. Or maybe it's the season - the last leaves lingering, poised in golden light, all of it about to give way to winter. There is so much change in the air, and - second trimester hip issues notwithstanding - it is extraordinary to realize I can move with this current. That we all can.