Waving Not Drowning

In the middle of their conversation, Ray leans across the table and injects himself into the story. Kerri stops short, caught off guard. She takes a moment to assess the situation, read Ray's tone, decipher his intent and decides against a defensive response, which is generally a wise choice. Lara'a oblivious to Kerri's sudden freeze out and gives Ray the floor. Kerri's new here; these people are not yet her people. A sprawling mass of  tables jammed together in a long row to celebrate a birthday of a new mutual friend where everyone seems to know each other intimately. She gets a sense of long term relationships, private jokes, battles fought and won and histories stamped in the ground. Boisterous, loud, rambling conversations and anecdotes overlap, cancelling each other out. Kerri's private conversation with Lara about her peripatetic childhood and father's journey in the service prompts an invasive and unsolicited query from Ray. He peppers her about her fath...

Another trip round the sun. Three hundred sixty five days, couple of blue moons, handful of seasons, myriad of cells sloughed off, regenerated and she's still here. One year older, arguably wiser, certainly more experienced with this thing called Life and all that entails. Every moment of every day carries within it the pure potential to swing wildly in or out of her favour so she's been practicing choice, adaptation, engagement, disentanglement, acceptance, forgiveness, righteous indignation, compassion, kindness and outright fear and anger wrapped in a bottomless pit of Now What? One more year, one more ring around the trunk. Roots grow deeper, sails bellow out a bit deeper and black and white becomes a tenuous shade of grey more often than not. The what ifs, the shoulda woulda coulda's mean something different now. That surprises her. Expect the unexpected. Better yet, lose all expectation. Investments are larger, losses are greater and the highs failed to manifest in an...