A few months ago, or wait, was it a year ago…? an old friend said, “Kris do you realize it’s been months and months since you’ve written on your Radish blog thing? Well, of course I knew and I didn’t care. My head, heart, feet, arms and fingers were exhausted. There was a pandemic for god’s sake, I had moved three times, sold a business, been in the hospital, gotten skin cancer, broken my arm, buried my father and worried myself into a swirling ball of anxiety.
Just like everyone else I was terrified that I might “get it” and die. My beloved mother would die, my children, my spouse, all my friends, the birds, the trees, the wine growers, the book publishers, deer, everyone and everything I had ever loved.
Just like you I didn’t stop living though. I wrote another book, found some amazing hiking trails, learned how not to breath in public and look unmasked jackasses in the eye. I gave up telling anti-vacers they really did not know more than the best scientists in the world and I embraced the quiet days and nights of my life with a kind of simple joy that has made me feel like a new woman, well almost a new woman.
This hiding from the virus time has also made me meet and get to know the limits of my own existence. No one is ever going to say again, “Oh, here comes Kris Radish. She’s tall and thin.” Now they say, “Wow, Kris stopped dying her hair, ate a lot of crackers, and it looks like her knees are shot to hell.” Yes! That’s me! I’m in my late frigging 60’s…I mean really late, I’ll never get back in those stupid-ass pants and tops I hated anyway and really, who gives a damn?
I’m still me but I know so much more about myself and what I will do with the rest of my life. Honestly, not much has changed. I’m still going to write books and tell you to suck it up, pull up your bra straps, and laugh into the wind. I’m still going to keep hiking because I want to see what’s over the next hill. I’m still going to be a sap who cries at the drop of the hat and feels things so deeply that sometimes it’s hard to move. I’m still going to fail and wish and dream and I promise I will never cut my hair.
None of us really stopped living these past few years we just learned how to do it in a new way and isn’t that freaking wonderful? I plan to keep hoarding my quiet moments because they have given me a new kind of strength and power.
And I really want you to do the same thing.
Take your pretty self outside, throw your arms into the air, and kiss the sky. Life is still a glorious place in spite of the losses we have suffered. I am going to share my own journey with you in a way that I hope will make you feel and realize you are not alone.
We got this and no one can take it away.
