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Cheryl's Room

2013 was a very tough year for me, no question about it. My year started with whooping cough which commenced on the day after Christmas. From that I learned: 1) Childhood vaccinations for pertussis don’t last through adulthood. 2) Whooping cough is called the one hundred day cough. By mid-April I began to feel better, but three months of the year were gone. My year ended with surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff. In between the illness and surgery, the job I’d had and liked for almost two years was eliminated. I found no other job in the area where I lived, so I accepted a transfer to Indianapolis and moved from the state where I lived most of my life, and the house in which grew up.

When I learned that my year was going to end with surgery, I posted to Facebook that my year had started with whooping cough and ended with surgery. “2014 has to be better,” I concluded. But 2014 is starting with my arm in a sling for another four weeks. I spent my year-end break recuperating instead of doing the unpacking I had planned. I am starting the new year with over half of my house still in boxes. 2014 has not started out to be the better year that I had planned. Would I have to wait until 2015 to have that better year?

No, 2013 was not a good year, but it was also not a bad year. It was a year. Life is like that. Bad and good are mixed together and no year is ever the year that we had planned. I went though a lot in 2013, but at the end of the year, I had survived it all. My wonderful husband was there for me during all the illnesses and changes. During the months when I moved to Indiana before him he drove back and forth from New Jersey to Indiana, getting me settled in my temporary home, house-hunting with me, and getting the New Jersey house ready for sale. His daughter, Tanya, made many trips for Massachusetts to New Jersey to make repairs on our house and then spent her own year-end break in Indiana to help my husband with the unpacking. But for her and her daughter Theodora’s help, we wouldn’t have a livable house so soon. I started and ended 2013 with loving family by my side.

Will 2014 be a good or bad year? It will be a year mixed with good and bad, with challenges and accomplishments. What matters is that I will again survive it all, with the love and support of family and friends. Ahead of me are 365 unknown days to experience. Each day will be an adventure, which I think is much better than a year which is entirely predictable. Starting the year with my arm in a sling will make it more challenging, but not necessarily worse. After all, my surgery did allow me to get out of unpacking. Nothing is all bad or good.

One Response to “Mama Said There’d be Years Like This”

  • Claudia Mills wrote:

    I just found this beautiful post. It made me think of the ending of THE GREAT GILLY HOPKINS, which always brings me to to tears. Gilly has thrown away her chance to live with the loving Maime Trotter, and now she’s talking to Trotter on the phone. Trotter tells Gilly that life is tough, no doubt about it. Gilly says to her, well, if life is so bad, why are you so happy? Trotter says, I didn’t say it was bad, I said it was tough.

    You’re so right that tough years aren’t necessarily bad years. Good and bad DO come together. But I hope 2014 ends up being less tough for you. I do.

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Quote of the Moment:

“It's a good thing to turn your mind upside down now and then, like an hour-glass, to let the particles run the other way.”
by Christopher Morley