leaf

Another solstice has come and gone. Yesterday there were fifteen hours and thirty seven minutes of sunlight in Saint Paul. Fairbanks, where it is hotter and summer wildfires are burning in earnest, got a whopping twenty one hours and forty nine minutes and no full darkness to be had. I have found myself a little more content here, a little more willing to dig into the days and pass them, but I remain as homesick as ever. Jodi is up on the glacier running her dogs all summer (with a brief pause for a burst appendix, but hey, you can’t have everything go smoothly, right?), Jenny is building a deck, tending her huge garden, raising chickens and planning a first puppy litter, Toni is spending her summer learning to navigate the road system on a motorcycle in anticipation of a long fall trip across the country. All under the midnight sun. I’m here, with a few more visible stars, watching northern wildfire reports carefully in case they spring up near our house, and working my way through a packed summer school schedule among other small projects (a sewing machine! and tomatoes! and formal obedience for the puppy with an eye to therapy dog certification!)

I got my first CSA box of the season, and am a little overwhelmed by how I’m going to ingest so much greenery on my own. With Peter essentially gone and the dogs unable to help, I am left with mountains of lettuce and cabbage and spinach and other leafy things I still can’t identify despite intensive internet research. But overwhelmed in a good way. I am starting a new food & exercise program in a week that focuses hard on greens. And I am well overdue for a change. Although doubtful, as usual, as to how well this will go, I am jumping in with both feet.

The last three weeks have been dark ones, despite the sunshine and beautiful weather. Everything has seemed overwhelming, from laundry and dishes to school, and I have for the first time (and for no good reason) considered dropping out. Despite the fact that everything is clicking along smoothly, a combination of frank depression and the constant second guessing of my current trajectory (as always, rimmed with homesickness for Alaska) is making it hard to stick out the endless cycle of clinicals and reading and lectures and labs and the general and constant chaos of a program only in its second year. I’m in a little bit of a better place today, enough to be writing about it, at any rate. But the dark edges remain.

A few months ago, I re-made a bracelet that I used to have in college. The bracelet has four bands, and a fifth tying the four together. The main bands stand for courage, wisdom, discipline and compassion. Tied together with hope. It’s a bit of a cheesy sentiment, but also a concrete way to keep the things in mind that I strive for. These days, the thing I need most is the hope.