Funny how one of my life’s top best, biggest summers ever feels like a quiet affair right now. Just me in my new home, all alone with my big bored dog, writing to the heat of the west-side sun through my window, savoring the sounds of lawn mowers and the rhythmic song of cicadas. A motorcycle’s roar barely reaches me from somewhere downtown. … Aah, the church bells clanging at the top of the hour. A bit of breeze is welcome on my cheek.

Of course, as you know from my previous post, what got me here was a two-months long whirlwind of packing, house-hunting, planning, job-searching, calculating, hoping, zeroing in, choosing. All in a kind of delirious hurricane of movement and joy. Then came the unpacking, the setting up, the furious cleaning, the cool mornings on the porch, the sweaty afternoons. This is the summer I celebrated thirty years of marriage with my beloved. This is the summer I picked up jogging/running. (I’m now officially obsessed!!!) This is the summer I’ve fully released performing and finally decided that I’ve got “nothing to prove and nothing to hide.” (*Quoting from a DailyOM Course called, “How to Communicate Like a Buddha.”) And now, on this final weekend before my new job begins (aaaaaah!), I’m just … here. I’ve been in this new home for just more than a month now, and the magic of it all is starting to feel like, of course. Like, where else would I be, LOL?

Think of something marvelous in your life. Wasn’t there a time when it was a dream, or a wonderful surprise, maybe? Now you get to be it, or be in it. Gives us some hope for anything — ANYTHING, no? Truly, truly, truly, what magic is stronger than gratitude?

On the other hand, I have been feeling slight apprehension this week. Slight, I think! I’m starting work at my new school on Monday. The job, too, is something I’ve manifested: I will be working in my local middle school as a 5th Grade Learning Support Teacher a.k.a a special education teacher. I’m SO EXCITED actually! (Obviously!) It’s just that my last job was THE TOUGHEST gig ever, socially and spiritually speaking, that is. And so I’m trying to honor the tiny part of me who’s got that first day of school will-my-peers-like-me? jitters. The one that lived through it pre-K through 12, and then, sometimes, beyond.

And so, to this part of me, I say, I see you, and I’ve got you. And, we’ve got this.

I get to work with the kiddos in my new community who are smack in the middle of that journey. School can be so freaking tough! We know this. (Though sometimes, we forget.) And so I want to do my best to be the one who gets them, too, and to be the one who’s got them. I don’t know, maybe this is the way that altogether we can manifest a better world?

Wish me luck on Monday, dear friends. And enjoy the summer’s final unwinding!

Love,

Katia