Today marks twenty years since my mother died, by courageously stopping eating and drinking after years of decline from PSP. That’s one milestone. I’m grateful for a lot of milestones today. I still miss my mother. I can’t imagine how furious she’d be about this election outcome. She’d be apoplectic! (one of her favorite words)

This morning I clipped my own toenails! It had become increasingly painful and difficult to reach my left foot before the new hip, and I’ve just now got enough mobility to reach my feet again. Without pain! That’s another milestone. I read recently that the ability to tend one’s own toenails is an indicator of health and longevity in seniors.

I drove twenty miles beyond my own driveway for the first time since before surgery, another milestone, to drop my car off at the salvage yard. Not to be junked, though it is rapidly becoming what some might call a heap, but to have its fender repaired. Deb picked up me and Wren and with her little dog we went to the Paonia River Park, a project of the Western Slope Conservation Center, to walk the trail. Another milestone! I didn’t make it very far, but I did get as far as the citizen science station to take a photograph of the river. There’s a post with a bracket where you place your phone, snap a shot of the river, and upload it to chronolog, “a platform that allows organizations and individuals to create and explore time lapse photos of natural environments.” Check out the River Park’s time lapse at the link.

Finishing three Liberty puzzles before the Season officially starts might count as a milestone. Ocean Life is a treasure of gorgeous sea creatures. It provided melancholy solace through this discouraging last week as the Great Unraveling accelerates. Another milestone is the resolve I feel to not let this development destroy my equilibrium. I feel brittle and fragile, but also confidently aware of a deep resilience that is new in me, a direct result of mindfulness practice.