I forgot to tell you about all the magic we’ve been seeing on our morning walks. This week, it was two beavers, one on each side of east McMurry Pond. Two herons flying together, floating east along the Poudre River. A dog park full of tennis balls. Fog and a light mist softening everything until the sun comes out and warms it away.

This morning, Sam wanted to see another beaver so badly, was so sure he’d see one again that he barked at a log in the water. That happens sometimes, doesn’t it? We want something so badly, want so much for it to be true that we see a beaver when it’s only a piece of wood floating in the water.

The sun has been orange first thing in the morning. Sometimes it’s pale, and other times it’s lit up like the ball of fire it is. Everything green is turning yellow, orange, brown, and gray, so when the golden light of the sun reflects off the turning of the green, it feels like we are walking in a dream.

I forgot to tell you that Dexter is feeling better. We’ve stopped giving him the anti-inflammatory, (although if he starts to get worse again, we might try another type, because that therapy did seem to help, except for the trouble this particular one gave his belly). He still “maybe might probably but we don’t know for sure” have cancer, but right now, in these moments, he is happy, whole, and so loved. We have decided against doing a CT scan (the next step we were offered) because it would require him being under anesthesia again, cost $2000 (wth?!), and:

• the results still could be inconclusive
• the scan might reveal “something,” but it might be unclear what exactly that something is
• it might confirm the cancer, give us a very expensive picture of it, but the treatment for that type of cancer isn’t a cure, doesn’t result in much more time, and the time you get might not be good quality, so isn’t something we’d do anyway (for this cancer, this dog, this family, it wouldn’t be the right decision)

So we continue to live with the uncertainty–which isn’t all that different than what life is always like, the nature of things as they always are. We never really know, can’t be sure or certain about much of anything, and everything is constantly changing. Impermanence is the only thing we can count on, so for now, we are knowing just that.

I forgot to tell you that I bought myself flowers. They remind me that while impermanence is real, that death comes to all of us, sometimes quickly and without warning, life is so beautiful.

I forgot to tell you, kind and gentle reader, that you don’t need permission, you don’t need to earn the right to be who you are and do what you love. You were born with it, that light and deep knowing, that thing that is yours to manifest, that only you can embody, that only you can do and be. There’s nothing that needs done first, no mastery or skill to be learned before. You can take the one, tiny step right now, walk right into the thick of your life, stand in the center. All you have to do is decide, start, begin.

And, I forgot to tell you this:

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.