Playing for Time

Everyone needs an epiphany for the new year and mine showed up this morning when I was making the bed.  While I was looking out over the snowy rooftops of the town we love, a thought exploded in my brain.  I’m in the process of checking for collateral damage from the explosion, but the idea itself came on like a freight train:  “Why are you still holding a grudge against the people who got you to this wonderful place?”

Why indeed.  Toward the end of December, WordPress put out a Daily Prompt that said “Share a story where it was very difficult for you to forgive the perpetrator for wronging you, but you did it — you forgave them.”  Someone instantly came to mind and I kept thinking about her off and on until this morning’s little gift.  I knew she’d wronged me, and I knew I hadn’t forgiven her.

Wikipedia says:  “An epiphany is an experience of sudden and striking realization.  Generally the term is used to describe scientific breakthrough, religious or philosophical discoveries, but it can apply in any situation in which an enlightening realization allows a problem or situation to be understood from a new and deeper perspective.”

Exactly.  It was suddenly clear to me that if it hadn’t been for the wild whims and incomprehensible decisions on the part of Kim’s boss, we’d still be caught in our old life.  Instead, we’ve been able in the last four months to exchange:

• seriously reclusive habits … for a busy, fun, crazy social life;
• a smattering of fast-food places and Mexican restaurants … for nearly every possible food category, in abundance;
• a once-in-a-while opportunity to go to a concert … for a nightly offering of live music from around the world;
• limited opportunity to be part of a vital, welcoming theatre community … for nearly unlimited ways to do so;
• a situation where we were two blue marbles in an enormous sea of red … for being part of a big blue sea;
• feeling like a couple of sore thumbs … for feeling accepted; or to channel Sally Fields, for knowing that “these people like us.”

And there’s so very much more.  We love it here.

But we’d still be immersed in our same old situation if not for Kim’s boss giving him an ultimatum:  NO days off during the run of a show.  That would have meant twenty-three straight working days every other month, many of them 12 to 14 hours on his feet, with no break, seven months out from a serious heart attack and bypass surgery.  I was livid — this woman was trying to kill my husband!  She’d already stacked his schedule to the max — this was the last straw.  I put my foot down.  The job ended abruptly, and then a really amazing thing happened — circumstances fell into place, one by one, to get us the hell outta Dodge.

This morning I finally got it that I owe that crazy lady a debt of thanks.  For one thing, she didn’t truly wrong ME.  And for another, she didn’t deliberately try to kill my husband.  And all the theatre friends who “abandoned” us were simply living their own lives.   Finally, I can stop taking poison and expecting someone else to die.  After months of angst, I can unload the whole thing and celebrate the fact that what may have been meant for ill has resulted in boatloads of happiness.

And then I saw on Facebook that today really is the Epiphany.  Perfect.