Flying Solo

On Sunday I dropped my son off at the Tulsa airport and hugged him goodbye for the last time until August 9.  This will be the longest amount of time I've ever been separated from him:  this, my "little boy" who once grew inside my body and now towers four inches over me.  The longest I've ever been apart from him before is four weeks. This will be nine.


I was strangely okay with this. I got a little teary as I was saying goodbye, but as I got back into my car I was already thinking ahead toward my summer flying solo.  I was already taking advantage of the new found freedom:  instead of returning straight home from the airport, I took a half-hour detour up to Foyil, Oklahoma, where I spent a few hours volunteering for Wild Heart Ranch, a wildlife rehabilitator. I scrubbed hawk poop out of cages, refilled supplies, folded laundry, squirted food into a dozen wide-open baby bird mouths from a syringe, and, best of all, I got to feed several tiny baby skunks, just big enough to have their eyes open.  I got home sweaty, tired, with my shirt smeared with hawk poop, but happy, at 10 p.m.


I know I will miss my boy. He is, as I mentioned in an earlier post, always a presence in my life and my home. But this summer feels different. This time is mine.

I'm also working furiously on raising money for Lucky. Our GoFundMe campaign is now up to more than $1,000, which is amazing. I've been really touched by the way my friends and co-workers have come out with support, both emotional and financial. I have even received an offer of a free apartment to stay in while I'm in Stillwater for Lucky's surgery!  One colleague baked and decorated beautiful sugar cookies shaped like shamrocks and dog bones and put them in the breakroom with a donation jar.  They garnered $150!  And at the end of the day yesterday, I received an envelope of cash from an "anonymous donor" that put the fund over the $1,000 mark.


Still, that leaves about $2,000 to be raised, so I've listed several items for sale on Craig's List. These are big items, things I've been hauling around for six years now for one reason or another:  the armoire my X and I bought on our honeymoon that weighs a ton; the ginormous coffee table that was scaled perfectly for the large living room we had before, but looks like an ice rink in my current space; a chest of drawers that belonged to my great grandmother and is the last of a bedroom suit that has long since been broken up and sold off piece by piece by various family members.


I've been attached to these items and have argued with myself that I need them, that I love them. But it feels somehow liberating to put them up for sale now. I crave the empty space in my home, and the opportunity to go through my stuff and decide what warrants space in my reduced storage capacity and what has to go.


Perhaps in the same spirit, I've gone back to the gym. I find I am no longer resigned to the 20 pounds I put on over the past two years.  Hormonal changes made me pack on the weight and depression made me feel helpless to do anything about it.  But I feel stronger these days, and I realize I'm not helpless. It's not impossible to regain the body that feels like me, and I want to get my strength and stamina back.


So I'm doing okay with my looming stretch of solitude. I've got shit to do!