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Today is my 37th birthday. I’m feeling terrific about it, and as always, am taking a look back at the past 365 days and what I learned along the way.
This year I discovered the shoehorn. What a splendid invention.
I’ve never really used one before. I always thought they were an old man thing. but lately I’ve been wearing fashion sneakers a lot a lot more typically than I used to…and a full-sized shoehorn lets you put YOUR sneakers ON perfectly WHILE STANDING UP, WITHOUT BUNCHING UP YOUR SOCKS.
How about that.
I also got my first pair of glasses and realized that I need to travel with my own pillow.
In all seriousness, though, I feel deeply grateful to be here today, healthy, vaccinated, COVID-free, my family and pals doing well, my service crawling back to life. Not everyone has been so lucky this year.
Prague, Czech Republic
A Year of Patience
When I think of age 36, I will remember paperwork and waiting for the slow wheels of government agencies to turn. Waiting to finally be allowed back into the Czech Republic. waiting for my bridge visa. waiting for my family reunification visa. waiting for my trade license. waiting for my health insurance card.
Waiting for COVID vaccinations to begin. waiting for my age group to become eligible in Massachusetts. waiting for my first vaccine appointment on April 26, hours after I landed in the US. waiting for my second vaccine appointment on may 24. waiting for the two-weeks-post-vax celebration. Waiting nervously in immigration lines. waiting for my EU green Pass.
Waiting to complete 84 days of Lewis the cat’s FIP treatment. 67 days of exceptionally uncomfortable injections that made him shriek. 84 days of nervous observation. but he got better, stayed better, and Lewis is now cured of FIP. A miracle.
This year was an exercise in patience, made a lot more significant because Prague was essentially shut down for six months this winter. only vital shops open and we had a 9:00 PM curfew every night. At one point Charlie and I couldn’t leave the city limits. At one point the Czech Republic had the highest infection rate in the world. Our lives shrank down to our apartment.
Between my arrival in Prague on September 26 and my return to the us on April 26, I left Prague exactly twice: to Mělník, just outside the city, to the foster home where our kittens were living before we adopted them. once on November 14 and once on November 21. That was it.
(Once we spent three days in another Prague neighborhood while our apartment or condo was being painted, and it felt like an exotic vacation!)
It was a hard winter. but we were healthy, and that was a lot of important. We had a safe home. We were able to work remotely. We were financially secure, if not financially thriving.
This wintertime could have been an opportunity to claw our eyes out with boredom. Or worse, to throw ourselves into traveling the world, unvaccinated, unmasked, ignoring local rules, when the virus was raging at its highest levels yet.
Instead, this wintertime was an opportunity to give our kittens a consistent home environment while they were young. This was even a lot more crucial when Lewis got sick. It was also an opportunity to live cheaply, to get all my Czech paperwork done, and to get me acquainted to living in Prague, albeit Prague on lockdown.
It couldn’t have been a lot more different than the wintertime before, gallivanting around Mexico with our friends, guzzling cheladas and mezcal margaritas, jumping into dark cenotes and swimming in shimmering blue lakes.
And yet there was appeal in this window. Seeing fat snowflakes fall from your window as you sip a cup of tea. finding the mustard-colored pillows that pull your living room together. enjoying the moment of Ted Lasso when Keeley leaves the club and sees Roy waiting to walk her home. Seeing Lewis learn to run again, play again, jump again, be a kitten again.
More than anything, this year was an exercise in being delighted where you are.
Prague, Czech Republic
You need to be delighted where you are.
It’s so easy to get wrapped up in what you’re moving toward. To look into the future and say, I know this sucks ideal now, but my life will be so much better once things change.
Once I have a lot more money.
Once I’ve lost a lot mnullnull
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