Posted by twinleaf on June 20, 2007, at 3:20:20
1. My husband, who has stood by me through all my ups and downs, and has been my best friend. It will soon be 30 years, and he is still tall, slim, dark and sexy!
2. My older son, who now has a PhD in physics and is a "post-doc" at Princeton. doing research on electromagnetometers, which can be used to study the accuracy of physics theories, such as string theory, but can also have other applications, such as making a new, more sensitive generation of fMRI's for brain research. He and his new wife, also a physicist, have bought a pretty little house there. There were lots of changes when he got married, some of which were hard for us, but the strong connection with him is still there. And my daughter-in-law, who was a bit cautious and wary of us at first, has been steadily becoming warmer and more trusting- now much more like a daughter. And we know she is the prettiest physicist around (she's lovely, but there isn't too much competition, as yet!)
3. My younger son- still quite young and very cuddly and loving. He's not at all scientific, like the older one, but loves to read, draw and paint, ski, snowboard and play hockey- kind of a more mainstream boy.
4. My work. I have only done it part-time since the birth of the older son, but I do love the teaching and consulting- the teaching especially. It's really the only time I'm "me", separate from "them", and that is such a good feeling!
5. Hiking in the mountains- here and in Europe, and once each in New Zealand, Turkey and Iceland. The boys both started doing it with us when they were five, and they can both now leave us so far behind that it's really embarrassing! (My most thrilling, and terrifying, memory from the past is climbing a 12,000-foot Swiss alp, and being able to look over the snow and glaciers into four countries.)
6. Along with the hiking, we've learned about mountain flowers and orchids, and love to photograph them. We've just switched over to digital, so that we can download them onto a small computer in the evenings, complete with names, locations and GPS readings- so that we can find them again if they are especially rare or beautiful.
7. Friends-I'm a bit less busy now, and find myself especially wanting to connect more with the friends from my childhood. None of us live near each other, but we do plan visits now, which we didn't very much earlier. Among the friends my husband and I have made together, three of the women have died, quite young, (all of breast cancer), so we have sort of adopted the husbands, who seem so lost. We try to take them on walks, flower trips, to dinner and concerts. Their wives all died quite recently, so they aren't interested in dating, at the moment anyway- and perhaps never will be. But strangely, we don't have any friends who are widows anyway.
8. My horse. He is gorgeous and adorable; we do dressage, and are preparing a wonderful musical freestyle, in which he does various movements in time to the music, which is a group of Spanish flamenco dances. Really fun! (and can be done by all ages, unlike jumping)
9. Our springer spaniel. She is gorgeous, too, but a handful. She's eight, but needs to go out and really run twice a day. Running with her is our daily exercise.
10. Finding my new analyst. I feel so lucky to have found him! In just a short time, he has helped so much about the rupture with the old one, helping me preserve what was good, and not blaming myself for what went wrong. These relationships are so mysterious- I'm not even sure what we have been talking about, but I'm feeling a lot better. The meds are down to 300 mg of Lithium, plus 5 mcg Cytomel three times a day- far less than I've had to take since I developed MDD when my mother died. I'm not bipolar, but the low-dose Lithium is very helpful, I think- and free of side effects
I realy apologize for the enormous length of this post -just can't seem to write short ones!.
poster:twinleaf
thread:764361
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/esteem/20070330/msgs/764361.html