the games begin

Even though I’ve missed most of the Olympics, the afternoons I have watched those committed athletes doggedly doing their snowy thing have inspired me. There are sports I never knew existed – combined this and biathlon that – with skis and rifles(!) and corrugated jumps and bells and whistles and very little glory to go around.

One tiny woman got to the semi-finals on her own, with no coach or sponsors, and she skied, flying down the twisting course, hanging on, to everyone’s amazement, til the final hill. She fell and slid across the finish line, a fractioned second off the time that would have sent her to the finals.

I hope she didn’t break any bones. I hope her bruises remind her of the value of perseverance. She did all she could. Her very best.

My blogging takes up again today far afield from where it’s been lately. Well, maybe not so far. Themes continue, relentless, and when I pause I notice them.

Life is funny. The quest for certain goals can make me think I’m going after gold. But really I’m learning to persevere, whatever the outcome. I truly believe (can’t escape that word) that the stuff I’m doing is incidental to my story happening as it should. How I do things, why I do them, and what I see in the doing about my heart’s orientation are what matter.

I am now employed. The volunteer group that turned me down last week called Monday morning and asked if I was still interested in the job. I showered and went to their staff meeting. Tuesday and Wednesday I trained. Yesterday I tried to catch up at home. My hermit ways need modifying.

And yet, this is a very good way for me to be hired. Only now can I see it. I have really, really wanted writing to be my full time job with a part time paycheck. But I’m still waiting for a check for the last article I sold. It’s not a great time to get pay for words.

But for a writer it’s always a good time to live. For me, seeing real faces on the people I’m learning to work with is refreshing, especially when the job is one that’s been close to my heart for twenty-some years. It’s at a pregnancy support center, where the workers are anti-abortion (which, by history’s strange method, has become anti-establishment), but the mission is not political. I helped a woman who doesn’t speak English get diapers for her baby. A couple came in for infant clothing, their tiny one burbling in the dad’s arms.

I don’t know how well I’ll perform at this, or how many crashes will commence. It is very part time, though, and the people are treating me so nicely. They have been around this “game” a long time. I can catch back up, I hope, to where I was two decades ago when I volunteered for a similar group at the coast, where we used to live. Where I had screwed up my life a few years before. I promised God I would work with young women, if only I could quit my factory job, and things happened that let me quit the factory, be a stay-at-home mom, and serve people who were messing up their lives in a lot the same way I had.

Now my story arc has swung back around. Kind of the way an essay does, when the final paragraph ends up hinting at the beginning. Only this ending paragraph is a start at something new.