A veil of icecles

My heart is full. What a beautiful unmeasurable gift to be able to reflect upon a year of your life and have your heart physically feel like it might break free from your chest and dance to the music filling the air. There have been many struggles for sure but the moments that sparkle in my mind are ones of true beauty and grace.
This freezing second morning of 2008 I am nestled in my pink bunny-soft robe at Chris's computer. She is playing her classical pieces on the piano in the other room and Dave is tucked away in his little cabin that I can see out the icicles veiled windows. My tummy is full of cream of wheat and Bengal spice tea and my heart is well on its way to being filled with love and my mind to finding balance and peace to enter a new chapter of my life.
What a brilliant year I have lived. Although I did not enter it with the vigour and determination to fill it to the brim as I did the year before, it filled itself quite nicely. My legs continued to amaze me with their strength this year. They make me cry a little my little legs do.
They kicked and petaled and ran as hard as they could for months and months until they finally, after two years of trying, finished their second sprint triathlon.
Leaving me so proud and amazed at how we heal. A year before I had just been coming out of radiation and was barely able to pull my pile of clothes with my some skin and bone lost inside up the stairs. It was a moment of celebration and my friends smiles and cheers and red noses from the cold made it even more so.
My legs took me up mountains on the west coast of Italy, among vineyards and pine carpets looking out over the most brilliant blue coast. They walked up the towers of some of the most brilliant cathedrals and castles, across bridges in Venice, through ruins in Rome and Athens. They kicked through endless waves and melted in the sun covered in sand. They held on to a quad with such intensity as Sarah and I flew across Santorini, nearly escaping local vehicles whipping back and forward across the endless turns and twists. They climbed hundreds upon hundreds of stairs to small towns perched on huge cliffs where the bay below turned into a Lego land of tiny ships and people. They ran through the hills in Glasgow and down the streets through a Communist festival in Florence, up a sand dun in Ireland, and from scary people in Naples. They got lost and they got found.
Yet the farthest distance they took me was much closer than Europe, and much closer to my heart. Perhaps the biggest risk they have ever taken landed me in a brilliantly pink room in the basement of a Hamilton home. They half walked, half skipped me 20 minutes into a classroom filled with nine other nervous and excited girls. My little legs tapped and waited patiently as they sat for endless hours graciously allowing my sweet little thinker to grow and question and share. And my heart began to grow, to fill with passion, to fill with peace, to know that it was all worth it. To know that, at least for now, my work is at peace with my life.
I think that God filled my year with so much beauty to protect me this year. This year brought much sickness to my family. I have watched my Grandma begin to slip away as she fights cancer. I have looked down at my sexy black boots covered with my Grandpa's blood as we sat in the 8th and 8th clinic till the wee hours of the morning waiting to get him stitches from falling, and have anxiously waited for an email saying that he had made it through yet another procedure to manage his bladder cancer. My mom's health continues to break my heart and make me so sad that she is so disabled at such a young age. I have seen my sister's broken heart in her empty eyes and been pushed away from loving her. I heard the words "Your Dad has prostrate cancer" and found no comfort in sharing this with my closest friends. Your parents are always your parents no matter how removed from their live they are, they are always your parents.
And so I am soaking up all the peace and love from my being swaddled in this brilliant mountain valley in Idaho. Wishing that I could shrink Chris and Dave and so many of my wonderful Calgary friends and pack them with me as I fly away east.
More so than any other year in a long time ... I have before me a new chapter with the barest of an outline. I will strive to be guided by my heart and my passion to support little hearts through big hurts. I will challenge myself to keep my heart open to new and old ... and I will let my legs be free.
Thank you for flying with me last year. This blog continues to bring my heart peace in the roughest times. Thank you for witnessing my brilliance and my brokenness.