A taxing year, and yet...

Entering all of last year's receipts has been a pretty sobering walk down memory lane. There's the overt stuff... the receipts for hospital visits, going from monthly to weekly to daily to round the clock. Lab requisition after lab requisition, recalling 50 vials of blood drawn in a single week... x-rays, ultrasounds, MRIs. Equipment pressing down into my throat and into my veins. More meds than I can recall the names of.

There's the subtler stuff, the stuff that's missing. Hardly any restaurant receipts. Only a handful of movies, the big blockbuster films that were seen more out of a sense of "must catch this one" than "let's go to the movies tonight." Very little entertainment anything... I just didn't have the time.

But there's a lot of reminders of blessings too. My least expensive moves ever, of both home and office, made possible by so many of your helping hands and vehicles. A loving and amicable separation, punctuated by cooperatively divided goods. My mother getting to see just how strong a community I have around me, as so many of you came to my hospital room and looked after me and brought me to appointments and ERs. The blooming of deep romances, with dear ones who have been here for me in vital ways through hard times, and the generosity of their other dear ones who have supported my coming to love them and be a part of their lives.

I smile a lot these days.