In Autumn

I meant to write this earlier this week... or even within the week prior. Specifically so I could post it no later than yesterday, October 8th 2018. This is not a day without significance, this is not a week without significance. This is not a month without significance.

I have a love hate relationship with fall and particularly the September October stretch. As autumn rolls in and the summer fades away I always feel a certain melancholy or the feeling of love lost, as if I had spent the spring falling in love, the summer adoring my love and early autumn finds my love's full potential as the foliage bursts into fiery reds, orange and yellows. But as the leaves fall away bare tree branches seem to be pointing to the oncoming cold and lonely winter sky. Hibernation is nigh. Time to gather... gather my thoughts, harvest my emotions, process them for the winter pondering while I await the spring and with it, my new love.

That's probably far more revealing than I should ever be... you're welcome.

Thirteen years ago, as Meg was spending countless winter and spring hours with her mom, who had a stroke just before Christmas, I was working on the bits and pieces of a dream. As Meg spent the spring-summer stretch losing her mom, we were in the throes of construction... in more ways than one. As autumn approached and Meg's body was building a baby we were assembling the final components of our small business and on October 8th of 2005 we opened a little tea house called Licorice & Sloe Company. One of the finest endeavors I would ever undertake. The baby was pretty cool too.

Ten years and a week ago we closed the doors to said small business. I could talk about all of the reasons why, but they don't matter anymore... only the memories matter, only the friendships I still maintain from that period of my life matter, only the people who found each other in that tea house and are still connected or eventually married matter. To this day I walk around town or at the grocery store and former customers, familiar but still virtual strangers, approach me to tell me they miss the tea house. Some times they just walk up to me and say... "hey, you're the tea guy." I think that's my personal favorite... it's not a bad thing to be known as the tea guy. The kids that used to work for me would call me Teadog. It became my trail name whenever I hiked. They're grown up and living lives across the united states but they still visit us when they get the chance and we consider ourselves lucky to know them, they are just wonderful people... all of them.

Just prior to ending the Licorice & Sloe Company Tea House, I began to get these severe headaches. I tried dealing with them on my own, but eventually saw a doctor. They never quite figured out what caused the headaches though I have my own theories, but during the doctor visit they discovered I had kidney disease (that's an oversimplification... but let's keep it simple today, ok?). Upon official diagnosis they told me I'd be fine, that they'd give me some blood pressure pills and that would prevent me from needing to even consider dialysis until I was in my late 60's or early 70's. Four years later I was on dialysis and another four plus years later, a year ago this month, I had a kidney transplant.

As this year anniversary approaches and I ponder my last 10-15 years, defined by myriad springs of falling in love, summers of loving, autumns of brilliant colors and winters that run the gamut from frigid cold and deep snow to unseasonably warm and all the ups and downs that filled those years... I feel a little lost for direction. There is this potential for a "reasonably normal life" post transplant, but a wall in front of me of my own making that I can't seem to climb. I want to go do... but do what? I want to not waste this time, but the time I spend not wanting to waste it is wasting that time. I don't know where to begin. I feel stuck in the muck and the mire of my own comfort. I'm incapable of breaking away from this stagnant place. I feel bound and cemented to the earth of my life... like a tree... whose leaves have flashed their brightest colors and are falling away... with winter at my door.

Maybe I'll find answers in the spring.