December 17, 2025
We’re fully into the last
month of this year. Thousands of people are already celebrating Hanukkah, and
Christmas Eve is a week from today. The past weekend was one filled with
heartbreaking news from across this world of ours. News that made you stop
while you tried to breathe and tried to make sense of it all.
One can easily become jaded.
One can wonder, well, hell, what’s the point, anyway?
The point could very well be
that from the dawn of time when we humans first walked the surface of this
earth, life has proved, time and again, to be short and uncertain for us all.
Over centuries we have learned through trial and error how to grow, how to
change, and how to survive, thanks to the varied devastating and sundry twists
life can throw at us.
Survival is a multi-faceted
concept. It doesn’t just mean physical survival. There are emotional, spiritual
and intellectual aspects of surviving. But we’ve discovered, over time, that we
also need to do more than just survive. We yearn to do more than just
survive.
We need to thrive.
Life doesn’t give us very many
hall-passes. It doesn’t often make it easy for us. Life is doing its job,
fulfilling its purpose to try us, to teach us, to shape us. Life is the road we
must travel in order to become the best people—the best us—that we can be.
Nothing in this life is a
given, not even the next moment. Life will make you or it will break you. If you learn the lessons given, that will
help. Generally, you won’t have to repeat the exact lessons. And while life may
not become a whole lot easier with each lesson mastered, it will become a bit
more manageable.
Just don’t give up. Don’t
quit.
I am pleased to report that we
have a drop curb installed now, so that when, in the spring, they return to do
the landscaping to restore my original walkway (or a reasonable facsimile
thereof), I will have a nice, unfettered way to get from my house to the
street.
I understand how hard it is
for those who are not personally affected by mobility disability to wrap their
heads around just how profound can be the challenges of those who are. Sometimes
fate offers up a helping hand in this regard.
This past week, the machines
and the road crew returned to “finish off for now” that gap between the end of
the pavement and the curb. There was at the beginning of the week a deep,
though somewhat narrow chasm between the two. When they arrived to do the work,
it was this past Monday which is my daughter’s day off. A crew chief knocked on
our door and David went out on the porch to see what he wanted—which was for our
daughter to move her car so they could do that bit of work. As the gentleman
left our porch, he walked down our temporary walkway (leading to the neighbour’s
driveway), and thanks to a bit of ice, darn near ended up on his butt on the
ground.
When he regained is balance,
he looked at my husband who proved eloquent in the moment. David said, “Just
imagine how difficult it is for a disabled woman to walk that path.”
It seemed, David said, to
impress upon him the state that they had left us in. I absolutely don’t doubt my
husband’s assessment.
I’m not sure what all they’re going
to do beyond filling those two abysses on either side of the curb. But by the
end of day yesterday, there was a gravel path taking shape between my house and
the road, and it was aligned with the drop curb.
Looking ahead at my social
calendar, the only day I’m going out in the next few days is on Saturday, and with
my daughter. She can “spot me” on our makeshift path and get me safely down to
her car.
And to prove that I am not always
as logical as I would like to be, I can tell you where we are going on the 20th,
just five days before Christmas. As we did last year, we’re going to a very
large mall in a city about a half hour away. Why, you may ask? Well, because it’s
nearly Christmas.
And they have a Cinnabon
store.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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