Easing back into it and coming clean

Well it's summer, which is usually my favorite time of the year, it's field season!  For so many geologists, it's the time of year where you get paid (or at least don't have to pay) to travel to amazing places under the guise of research.  However, this year, unlike so many others I came into summer with dread and baggage.  This year has been the culmination of a few years of emotionally difficult times.  About 5 year back my Grandmother passed away of diabetes.  About a year later my Father was fighting stage II prostate cancer and I was dealing with the concept that my Dad wasn't invincable.  About a year after his surgery, something was wrong with my Mom's heart.  She was born with what we all thought was a hole in her heart, and throughout her life (and mine) having problems with her heart was not new.  However, this was not the normal problems that could be "cured" with minimally invasive surgery.  So for about a year my Mom went from doctor to doctor until finally they figured out what was wrong with her.  Apparently her heart never formed correctly, and while most people pump blood out of their heart and into their lungs, my Mom's was doing the opposite (or something like that) and to fix this, she would have to have open heart surgery.  Lucky this surgery took place last year (2010) over Christmas Break so I could fly home and be with my family.  After she got out of the hospital she came home and my Dad and I started to help her rehab.  Back to school I flew with some degree of contentment and the beginnings of happiness.  I mean both my parents had their "near brush/scary sickness moments right?  I thought things with my family and therefore myself were turning around.

This was clearly not to be, this past spring (so just a little over a year after my Mom's surgery) my Grandfather passed away.  So the party line I told everyone was, he was 94, he lived a good life, yada yada yada.  Truthfully, it still stings, it still makes me cry.  He was really sick, for a while and while it was hard to watch him the past year or so, I really miss him.  Recently, I just got through watching my first baseball game and didn't cry watching the game, or quickly afterward. It was a monumental achievement.  I basically have accepted that I probably won't watch much baseball this year or ESPN.  Every time I watch a either, I think of him.  Baseball was "our thing."  When I was a little girl he would take me to Phillies games on this bus of senior citizens.  He bought me baseball cards; he told me you always root for the hometown team (unless the hometown team is the Yankees and then you root for the Red Sox). He was in so many ways my hero. A man who loved his family, truly embodied the idea of money not being the key to happiness, he proudly worked for the Port Authority of NYC for years.  During the funeral, my Uncle gave one of the best eulogies I could imagine.  I laughed through the tears and began to realize just what a profound impact my Grandfather had on me.  All these sayings I have, I must have not even realized, came from him.  My spring was rocked.  My MO for dealing with all this was just to throw myself into my work.  Life sucked but at least my research took off (that will be another post).  Anyway, so I limped into summer with the lowest of expectations of what this summer was going to offer.

The past two years no matter how bad the year was, during the summer I went to Kenya for research.  Going to Kenya, for me, was like going on a vacation from life.  I was camping on the shore of Lake Victoria, doing research, meeting amazing people.  I was truly happy out there and everything back in the States, stayed there in a nice compartment for when I returned.  However, last year was my last field season for my dissertation, and I am not going back.  In so many ways, this year I needed to go back the most.  I needed the vacation from life, a means to forget about spring and a chance to start over.  Instead, I was accepted to a stable isotopes in ecology class, that I've wanted to attend for years.  5 years ago I applied and was rejected.  This past year was my first time, since that rejection I've had the time to apply, and I was accepted to the class.  I flew off to this camp surprisingly excited (considering I have been excited about very few things for a few months).  It was AMAZING.  I met so many great people who amazed me with their passion and interest and intelligent.  All the great people reminded me of what I want and why I wanted it.  Two weeks of intense lectures and labs from sun up to sunset!

One of the lectures.  Photo courtesy of SIFER.

I came back to Baylor excited to get back to work on my dissertation.  Some how the culture, the mountains, the "field work" of Utah was able to once again remind me to put one foot in front of the other and try to greet the future with excitement not dread.  And here I am, once again writing.  Once again thinking there might be something good on the horizon that will be worth writing about.