#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

riverrock

This morning I knew I needed to walk. I needed to ramble by the river. I needed to see natural things. I needed to take some pictures. It was cold but pleasant and autumn messy. I wanted to think about what it means to be now in December. First days of a month are special. Openings. Of course, now we are in the month of big holidays. So I wanted to reflect on that as well. What it feels like the holidays mean to me this year. I came to no conclusions except the awareness that change = opportunity and I want to explore this. I had lots to catch up on today. Emails to read and send. Prep for groups. Never had a chance to work on poems. But the walk filled me up and I liked the pictures I took of the river. No poetry workshop this morning or tomorrow morning—not until next week. I had a writing client and later in the afternoon Wave came home. We had saved turkey soup for him and I made homemade pizza dn vegetables for me and my daughter and dumplings for Frank. It was a casual dinner night. Wave loved the soup, had two helpings and ate the last piece of blueberry pie as well. So the holiday pies are finished, the cookies are gone, the turkey is eaten, the good dishes and roasting pan cleaned up and stored. After dinner I worked quickly on finishing a revision of a poem and brought it to my peer workshop tonight and got positive feedback. Tomorrow is my son’s birthday. My firstborn. Over three decades ago. It was sunny and warm where we lived in Clearwater, Florida. Not so sunny this night in labor for hours and hours. Was it worth it? Of course. A first birth is such a profound initiation. To discover what it means to have one’s own baby alive in the world. The terrific, exciting and amazing and frightening and overwhelming joy of it.