A Year Ago Today

I used to say my four years at college were the best years of my life. They were beautiful years, the way people's college years tend to be, with freewheeling friendships and begargoyled libraries. That campus was a great place to be nocturnal. My first October there, I learned to tell time by Orion, and the temperature by the mist rising over the creeks.

I used to describe the summer after I finished grad school as blissful. With the dissertation finally off my back, I spent my days in a state of bovine contentment so very bovine that, several times in an afternoon, I would actually moo, just because I had time to.

Oh, this year has been crazy, with the recovery from the C-section, and then losing Dan's mother to cancer, and then getting influenza and pneumonia. It's been hard, sleepless, and frustrating, and I miss my writing brain.

It's also been the best year of my life. Hands down. Gareth just keeps getting cooler, and motherhood is starting to get a little easier. I wonder if it's possible for next year to be even better than this. Surely there's some sort of cosmic ceiling on happiness. I used to think I knew where it was.