Before the week begins

Mondays are strange. I'm not ready for my week yet. This weather urges me outside. A lone sailboat is anchored in the bay; the water's surface is almost completely smooth. A single cormorant swims, dives, surfaces, and swims again. Its trail is virtually the only blemish in the otherwise glass-like lagoon.

Commuting is like swimming, I imagine, if you're a fish. You are part of a large, ever-shifting school of similar units flowing and weaving through the environment, as if you all know where you are going. When a hazard develops, everyone slows, swerves, and changes lanes. It may not be as rhythmically pleasing as a school of fish, but it has its moments.

I toggle between news and music. My mind is almost always elsewhere. I like to snorkel but I have not been able to do that this year. Remembering Hawaii, Tahiti, Mexico, Costa Rica, Florida, India, and Malaysia all in the same moment.

Reviewing what I sent in the kids' backpacks: homework, notebooks, lunches, soccer clothes, and empty milk boxes for Sunville. What is Sunville? A second-grade project. Julia said she wanted to be Mayor of Sunville, until Dylan told her she'd have to make a speech.

When I send lunch for my kids, I always overdo it. I sometimes get criticized for including too many items, some of which are too sweet or not quite nutritious enough. This criticism makes me sad, but I have come to expect it.

Lately, a sense of contentment has swept over me. I'm who I am; which includes being much more open to change than others I observe around me. But I also feel newly complete, not necessarily needing a partner, at least not one who has to always be hanging around me. There is much richness in my life; I'm content much of the time to be alone.

It is special to run into friends at local cafes, and I seem to be doing that regularly. It's extremely special to get phone calls from friends who are far away. Some people call frequently, some call only occasionally, some never call.

A friend is a friend even when you don't see or talk to them for a long, long time. I understand this now, in ways I never did before. In my new peace, I forgive all of those who have long been absent from me, and I don't take their silence personally. I trust they feel the same toward me.

Maybe this rambling needs to cease. I must not only perform my primary duties at work, but also prepare for tonight's opening class in memoir writing for baby boomers, at the downtown campus of SFSU in San Francisco. There's a coffee store downstairs. They sell red licorice swirls that are otherwise hard to find.

Up the elevator, licorice in my pocket, I will be readying myself for the inevitable emotionality of people letting each other into their lives. That's one thing that can change over time -- even the most guarded among us can learn to open her doors and windows, and let her new community come in for a visit.