I woke up this morning thinking about today, the last day of 2008, and about all the amazing things that have happened this year. I began working for hospice, Greg and I began our life together, we got engaged and married and I got pregnant. We traveled to Atlanta, Negril, Boulder, Costa Rica, Cape Cod, Los Angeles and Ohio. We plugged away at our jobs, getting better and worse at them. We both wrote a lot and published a lot. I began talking in "we" when describing my life (see above two sentences for case in point). I turned 30. I made some incredible new friends. I joined a new family and I began one of my own.
It's been a lot. But it hasn't been without its ebbs and flows, its highs and lows. I've felt incredible joy and also had moments of sorrow. I've thought a lot about my life path, where it is going and where I want it to go. In a weird way it's been a year of getting things done, of establishing things. There's a certain spontaneity and spark of the unknown that was more absent more than usual this year -- but perhaps that's part of growing into adulthood, of making a life with someone else.
I have a feeling that now that the foundation has been built, we can leave room for the magic of whatever may come next.
Here's my review of 2008:
January found me living out the last few weeks of my Lincoln Park apartment. I had moved there upon arriving in Chicago, only to find that I had seemingly chosen the most depressing apartment in the whole city. Nonetheless, January had been a welcome change from the previous four months in which I had been unemployed and darkly depressed. I also really began working as part of my hospice team in January, getting to know the nurses and doctors and visiting with patients for the first time. So although Chicago had become a bastion of snow and ice and endlessly dark afternoons, for the first time since I moved here, my life began to show little cracks of light and warmth.
We spent most of February preparing to move into our Lincoln Square apartment. Neither Greg nor myself could even believe we had
gotten this place -- and I still wake up marveling at our peaceful home here by the Chicago river. February was the darkest month we saw all year -- there was literally only minutes of sunshine most of those weeks. The sidewalks were piled with snow and sludge and more came down from the sky nightly. The afternoons were dark and the wind whistled off the lake and around the corners of buildings. Every night after work, Greg and I took turns loading up his little, green Honda and driving carload after carload over to the Lincoln Square apartment. I held onto nothing but the thought of March.
On March 1st we moved to Ravenswood Manor and life changed in every way. We were both so happy to be done with that dreadful Lincoln Park apartment and we were thrilled to be making a home together. Our new home was endlessly fun to settle into with the deck overlooking the river, the ducks quacking softly in the reeds, the little parks and the old-fashioned houses surrounding us. Friends began arriving by the week to visit, beginning with my lovely Zora. And February also kicked off the first of our true Obama-mania.
Also in March, I found myself delving into my hospice work and the relationships I was forming with my patients. I also found myself thinking endlessly about life and death and illness and the impermanence of it all. I drove through the snowy Chicago suburbs pondering the complexity of life purpose and marveling at all I had to be grateful for.
April brought all sorts of good things. The weather began to grow incrementally warmer and Greg and I had our first breakfasts on the deck. My aunt and uncle came to visit from Cape Cod (and unbeknownst to me, Greg asked them for their blessing in asking me to marry him). My friendships with the amazing women I'd met in Chicago began to deepen. Greg and I started She Wrote, He Wrote. I began writing all the time again and at the very end of the month, Greg lured me to the Drake Hotel and got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.
We spent the first week of May relaxing and celebrating our engagement in Negril. When we returned I got busy planning and, eventually, freaking out about the wedding. I learned very quickly that weddings cost a lot of money and can be really stressful to plan! Poor Greg who thought he was going to be making me even happier by proposing...only ended up being witness to even more tears than before. At the end of the month we went to Atlanta to attend a friend's wedding and to reconnect with family and friends. The end of the month marked my 30th birthday which was spent surrounded by friends and new family, altogether leaving me feeling more secure and loved than I'd felt in a very long time.
June brought with it the glorious summer. The world seemed to break open. Our house became a revolving door for guests and dinner parties. The trees draped their fragrant green branches over the deck and we relished in the warm evenings, the light finally lingering in the sky until past 8 o'clock. I marked the 5 year anniversary of writing this blog -- hard to believe, but true. And I stressed and stressed about wedding planning, fiercely feeling the absence of my family to help me through this monumental occasion.
The beginning of July sparked the last-minute decision to get married that month, on Cape Cod, in a small, family-oriented ceremony. Somehow we also went to Boulder, Co in the middle of it all for a story I was working on about a mountain biking chef for Bicycling Magazine. And the first few weeks of the month entailed a flurry of planning and excitement, followed by all of our dear family members gathering together for the most romantic weekend of my life in which Greg and I committed ourselves to each other.
Nothing slowed down in August. Summer
deepened in its heat and intensity and the city sagged slightly under its weight. The river moved more slowly and the ducks quack late into the evening. We welcomed a new nephew to the Boose family as Greg's sister gave birth and shortly after that we embarked on an amazing trip to Costa Rica. We hiked through the jungle, watched the monkeys play each morning, took surfing lessons and enjoyed being out in the world together. A honeymoon of sorts, although it was really a travel writing trip. At the end of the month I flew to Baltimore to reconnect with Liz and to finally meet her beautiful daughter.
September brought a slowing down of sorts. Summer began to thicken into the beginning of fall. Our steady stream of visitors slowed to a trickle. Greg and I became officially obsessed with the election and Barack Obama. I began writing for The Huffington Post and I also recorded an essay for Chicago Public Radio. Also, on September 11 we conceived the baby I'm now carrying, due to arrive June 6th, but I wouldn't find out that I was pregnant until the very end of the month when, after having dinner with some of Greg's siblings, I requested we stop on the way home to pick up a pregnancy test. I was late and I was feeling funny. Greg didn't believe me at first, shocked that it could have happened so easily, but pregnant I was.
I spent the beginning of October curled into a ball on the couch in the living room, tucked under a blanket and trying to fight off the swaying nausea and extreme fatigue that had taken over my life. We celebrated Greg's 30 birthday on October 11 in Los Angeles at a party with all of our friends. I wore my wedding dress again and we revealed the news that I am expecting a baby. The rest of the month passed in a blur of nausea and naps. Two brights spots included a visit from Liz in Los Angeles and an Obama canvassing trip to Indiana (we won that county by a landslide!). As tired as I was, it was thrilling to be pregnant and I relished in my changing body, reading as much as possible to learn about all the amazing things that were happening inside of me.
November began with a bang as we witnessed Barack Obama accept the presidential nomination amidst thousands of others in Chicago's Grant Park. Sadly, that same day my favorite hospice patient, the Reverend, took his last breath. I'll be forever grateful for the time we spent together this year and will always count the wedding blessing he gave to me and Greg as one of the most meaningful we received. The month finished out nicely though. My nausea abated. My storage from California arrived, providing incredible old relics and photos for me to sift through. And we spent Thanksgiving in Ohio amidst the ever-growing Boose family.
And now it is December. The cold months are upon us. The windows frost up with ice each morning and
the temperatures drop into the negatives on a weekly basis. Snow flurries down in the glow of the street lamps most nights and I curl up into my blanket on the couch as Greg lights a fire. We went for our first ultrasound and got to see the amazing little creature we created. It kicked its legs and waved its arm and Greg and I stared at each other in wonder. We also discovered the much-fretted-over ovarian cyst and found out that I will have to have surgery early next month. We celebrated our first Christmas as husband and wife, first at home with our tree, and then in Ohio with the Booses. We also welcomed another nephew to the Boose clan as Greg's older brother Alan and his wife gave birth to a beautiful little boy.
And now it is New Year's Eve. An airplane rushes by overhead on its way to O'Hare. The temperature is 18 degrees and snow is expected tomorrow. One of the cats is asleep on my lap as I type and Greg is stretched out on the opposite couch reading a book. The house is warm and cozy and I'll get up soon so that I can tinker around in the kitchen, getting a turkey ready for tomorrow's new year's day feast with friends and Greg will run out for movies and pizza -- our last quiet new year's just the two of us.
In the last week I've begun to feel the baby kick, just little flutters and taps. Each time I feel it there I am given pause, pondering the sweetness of life, the fleeting moments and the deep breaths we all take. I know that next year will bring with it much wonderment and change and I look forward, with as much bravery as I can muster, to all that will be unknown.
Wishing everyone out there a new year filled with light and love and all things possible.
