My Own, Personal Event Horizon (Journal Entry #1).

A culmination of happenings, a trifecta of change, is within my grasp, crossing over my own, personal event horizon, and I figure now is as good a time as any to start my DU journal. These happenings?

1. My wife and I are expecting the birth of a little boy (my second, her first) any day now (due Feb. 5). Preparing for his arrival is an exercise in spiritual exuberance, physical exhaustion, and emotional and psychological oscillation (especially when coupled with the next two).

2. The State of the Union is tonight! This is as close to the 2-minute Hate as I will allow in my life. I can’t help but get fired up to the point that I want to scratch the paint off the walls every time I hear our fear-full leader speak for longer than 90 seconds. The ONLY saving grace I have tonight is that there will be a female Democratic Speaker of the House sitting behind the smirking bastard. Further, the juxtaposition of hope and evil sitting on the shoulders of the Indecisive One is just too good to miss.

But the state of the union, I fear, isn’t so great. We’ve been steamrolling toward a precipice for so long, and while the new Congress strives to put on some brakes, is our momentum too great? Have they damaged so much so quickly that our ability to regenerate, to rise from those ashes, is too little, too late? I can’t help but feel the responsibility of the future generations on my shoulders when I look at my wife’s belly, and wonder, “Why haven’t I stood taller? Why haven’t I done more?”

3. One reason is because we’ve also been fostering two nieces and a nephew for the past 6 months (nephew 4, nieces 3 and 16 mo.). There is some major talk of reunification, which fills me with hope for all families concerned, and how this interplays with the timing of the birth of my own little boy makes me feel like I’m holding my breath, and I just keep taking more little gasps in, but never releasing it.

So here I stand, on tiptoes, arms outstretched, balance slipping, with these major (to me) events inexorably churning around me, gathering like a thunderhead on my horizon. But the sun shines on, and this is a storm that brings life to a desert, soothing to the raw, overstretched tendons that make me who and what I am.

And lucky me, I get to share it with DU!
KJ

And congrats on your new addition to your family.

It's tough. We've done it ourselves.

#1 is exciting though!

Both of you.
KJ