Friday, January 1, 2010

Not Related to the Calendar, Directly

While I like an occasion as much as the next person, and we always have an especially nice, traditional (to us) dinner on New Year’s Even, it’s not really a celebration or anything other than a date on the calendar, usually. We’re not big on resolutions or big parties or any of that stuff. We observe the social niceties and we certainly do like the quiet days when the external world stands still around us; it makes the time at home even more special knowing that the outside is not likely to be knocking on the door. Still, yesterday did make its mark on me, though I didn’t realize it until this morning.

Waking up, it dawned on me (only metaphorically, since it was well after dawn here) that, in an exchange of email with an old colleague catching up on the decades since we worked together, I’d completely omitted this recent medical adventure in my summary of the turns of our lives. That was a happy moment. The diagnosis and aftermath have been so central to my recent life story that sometimes it feels like they’ve taken over. It was a great moment to realize that my self-concept, or maybe more accurately, my self-narrative, might be repairing itself, along with other things. Maybe I am and will be more than someone about whom the central fact is "had brain surgery." It’s hard to explain, and I haven't done so very articulately, but it marks a nice milestone.

Happy new year to one and all.

1 comment:

  1. Congratulations! It's nice to be able to put the whole mess in the context of a much larger life.

    I'm still happy, too, every time I notice that I haven't thought about this 'brain tumour thing' for a day, or even longer these days. But I must admit I'm still waiting for the day where I won't even notice anymore that I didn't think about it for a bit.

    Happy 2010, and I hope things continue to go well!

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