I am excruciatingly bad at being sick. My brain cannot comprehend that my body can be felled by a microscopic virus turning pirouettes among my cells.

To be more accurate: I’m bad at being mildly ill. The under the weather when the symptoms are fatigue and chills but lack a fever or gastrointestinal distress.

I’m sternest with myself when I am this kind of sick. It’s the only way to get myself to stay in the chair drinking water and not “powering through” because it’s “not that bad.”

Get a flu shot. Mine is keeping me in mild discomfort and tired. Beats the pants off the alternatives.

Yesterday, I sent out my first four query letters to agents. It’s a scary concept, putting myself out there like that. Nobody likes rejection, and I am intentionally putting myself in the path of it. There’s no formula, no guarantees, no easy way out of this one. If I want this, which I do, I have to put myself out there, which I am.

It’s been two months since I stepped away from my career as I’ve known it.

Away from managing concurrent multi-year projects. Away from organizing and archiving and writing within prescribed boundaries. Away from cramming dinner and homework and errands and soccer and and and into small blocks of hours.

Towards walking my kids home from the bus. Towards regular exercise and meals that take more than thirty minutes to cook. Towards writing for myself and my kids. Towards a happiness I have not felt in years.

I’m revising the book I drafted. I’m taking care of house projects that have lingered. I’m walking dogs and running errands and donating platelets and meandering in the woods and helping with homework and working on an exhibit installation contract. I’m adjusting to a less frantic pace and pausing to watch the late summer light make magnolia leaves glow.

It’s glorious.

August 5 is special. It’s not a birthday or my wedding date. It’s not a religious or secular holiday for me. The weather is often brutally hot, and it’s always during the rush to get the kids ready for the beginning of the school year. Yet, no matter what else is going on, it’s a day for me to pause and remember.

August 5 is transplant day.

I’ve written about being a living kidney donor, both on this blog and for StoryBoard. At this time two years ago, I was under anesthesia. I remember – in that abstract way that pain induces – the couple of days in the hospital that followed. The most salient part of that time were the moments I spent in George’s room trying not to make each other laugh. Our spouses couldn’t be with us because of COVID-19 precautions, so we were each other’s only company. We were friends before all of the tests and surgery and recovery, but our relationship changed over those days into something I haven’t found the words for yet.

Today, I wonder how best to share my experience. There is a fine line between using this story to advocate for living donation and self-aggrandizement, and I strive to stay always on the former side of that divide. The doctor at my two-week postop appointment asked me to please tell other people about living donation. He said living donors are the best voices they have to help find matches for their patients. We are the ones who can say, “Did you know someone like us, with no special training or saintly disposition, can save a life? We can help just as we are by getting tested to see if we’re a match and good candidates for surgery. It hurts, but it passes, and it is worth it. You remember the echo of the pain, but not it’s intensity. It’s like childbirth that way. Think about it.”

I recently had the realization that my path to living donation started years before I realized. It’s the kind of thing that could only be recognized in hindsight. Over a decade ago, my friend Steve mentioned that someone we went to church with was an altruistic kidney donor, which he thought was incredible. That was my first exposure to the concept of living donation. That it came in a conversation with a person I admired and respected mattered. It stayed buried in my mind until the day I started to ask myself if I could do the same thing. When I started asking, that man from church was there as an example of what saying yes looked like. And it looked like something I could do.

And so, each year, I’ll share this story again. I’m what a living kidney donor looks like. And so is that man from church. And so is a priest I know. And so is the caretaker of a church in my neighborhood. Examples abound.

I’ll share it in hopes that it kindles a question in someone’s mind. If you’re asking if you could do it too, I believe you can take the next step.

Pitter-patter shifting to a steady thrum then downgrading to distinguishable plinks.

While a kettle gently rocks its way to a whistle.

And the air conditioner purrs in the background.

Dry calm in the middle of a most welcome storm.

For many years, as long as my husband has known me at the very least, I have wanted to write a book. I haven’t had a plot or a research question or a compelling personal exploration in mind, but I have had an unrelenting whisper in the back of my mind that I want to try.

So, I am.

I find myself in a unique position of being able to devote time to my writing. With that comes the new reality that I have to put my butt in a chair and actually write. It’s one thing to dream of writing. It’s another entirely to devote time to sitting alone and putting words on the screen. It’s hard and wonderful and full of self-doubt. It’s a slog and a joy and might be terrible. Or maybe there’s gems in there. Maybe I’ll have an audience of five – two children, two nieces, one nephew. Maybe other people will read it too. Maybe I have no business writing fiction for 12-year-olds. Maybe I do. Generally speaking, I don’t love living in the gray spaces, but it’s where the writing happens, so it’s where I find myself.

Noah and I came up with an idea for a middle grade novel about a missing dragon, so that’s what I’m working on now. I’ve got eight chapters drafted and no idea how many more to go. I’m sitting my butt down and writing. Then I’ll edit. And then? Then, I’ll see what happens.

I have started so many writing projects without ever writing the elusive words “The End.” The evidence hit me in the face yesterday. I spent the afternoon cleaning up my digital spaces – reclaiming 1 gigabyte of storage by deleting emails and sorting my Google Drive into submission. As I compiled bits and pieces of writing into one folder, I found paragraphs I’d forgotten writing. Outlines for ideas that I never put time into fleshing out. I read reminiscences, reactions, responses.

I’m hoping this current project – the one I’m dedicating time to sitting and working on, regularly and with intention – will be the first one I end. My son is going to keep me honest because he’s heavily invested in the story; he helped me dream it.

My youngest not-so-little brother is getting married in a few short hours. To a remarkable, kind, funny, smart, talented woman who I am thrilled is becoming my sister.

It’s an amazing thing when your family grows. I was reminded at last night’s rehearsal dinner as I overheard members of discrete groups – some of which have been joined for years – create a new family. My mom’s family, my dad’s family, all of whom are my family. Sofia’s family. People from across state lines and down the road.

The family of my family becomes mine too. It is an expanding web of belonging that grows stronger the more threads are added.

A wedding, exciting as it is, is only the start. It is the tie that binds, the starting point that unites.

My brother found his wife. And incidentally my new sister. What a blessing.