70

You can call now, she's awake. My father texts from two hours earlier, their morning still dark and the first hints of blue just creeping above the mountains. I call to sing rusty voiced congratulations into her breakfast. Seventy years old. It seems an impossibility. I remember my grandparents at 70, remember my own parents at 40, barely understand how we got to where we are today. Time keeps running even when we stand still. 

I wake with anxiety these days, fall asleep with a racing heart and barrel through my days trying not to think, really, at all if I can help it. February strangles what little life we have left, everyone is struggling, I try to remind myself that spring comes if we just wait for it. And all you have to do is survive. At last, a task that seems achieavable, amid a mountain of unsurmountable asks. 

At last I make it out to the river. It's been a week, it's been since before the last storm buried us, my bones ached then, too, but now I think my lungs are giving out. I am almost alone in the cold, gray afternoon, little flecks of sleet teasing in the margins, but oh. How the long steps and pounding breath release me. How my body collapses but at last, at lasts my mind rests. I walk back home in peace, with just a moment's gift tucked under my arm, I am alive. The inbox lies waiting, bursting at the seams, angry, and the wheel spins again. 

But I had a moment with New York, I had a brief reminder of the straight in my spine and I will remember it now. I will take it to bed with me and it will keep the nightmares at bay. My mother turns 70 and we all have our health, we all have another day. 

Set the bar where you can hit it.