Back in August I had just spent some time with my family and they had dropped me off at my apartment with my brother and I was going to take my car and drive up north to spend some more time with them, but this way I could drive myself home. A smart plan. As I got into the car and got going with my brother, I noticed a glass of water from earlier that morning sitting in my cup holder.
I work early morning custodial. I’m up between 3 and 4 every morning and I’ve been doing that for most of the last 2 years. Getting up that early was a challenge at first but has since grown into something I enjoy (usually). Part of that was learning what worked for me to get up. Like taking a shower. A shower gets me awake, moving, and it’s a lot easier to talk myself into the shower then it is to talk myself into going straight to work. Another trick I started doing this summer was drinking a glass of cold water on my way to work. I’d fill up the glass in the morning, and then drink it while I got ready and as I drove to work, then leave my glass in the car and take it in with me in the afternoon.
So while beginning my drive to meet up with my family, my brother in the car with me, and some music playing from the speakers – I noticed my glass.This was a frosty, Coke themed glass that looked a lot like the ones in the pictures. Mine was a light green. I’d found two of them at a thrift store my couple of days living on my own and they were the first real kitchen items I bought for myself. I loved those glasses and used them all the time. Because of the narrower base, these glasses didn’t sit super well in my cup holder. Not a problem for a short drive to work, but for the longer drive up into Salt Lake City I didn’t want to risk letting the remaining water spill. So I rolled down the window, grabbed the glass and went to dump the water out.Instead of dumping the water out and returning the glass safely to my cup holder, to be used another day, my hand decided to have one of its moments and I involuntarily let go of the glass and sent it flying out into the dividing wall of the highway. I rolled my window up, hoping my brother hadn’t noticed, however, he’s a pretty observant kid and before the window was even up all the way he says “You know you just threw that out the window, right?”
Yeah. I noticed.
I only have one glass left. And I don’t take it outside of the house now. I wrapped it up in its own shirt when I moved. Overkill? Yeah, probably. But like I said, this was the first thing I bought for myself when I moved into my last apartment and was officially on my own for the first time since being home from my mission.
I see that glass though, and I laugh. Thinking of its companion shattered up somewhere between Provo and Pleasant Grove, Utah – it makes me laugh. It’s a reminder to me that while I lose things, sometimes important things, and sometimes just a glass I have a little too high of a sentimental value for, or while I have symptoms that make it difficult to sign my name or safely dump water out, there is always a reason to laugh and smile. And on days like today, where I can’t stay awake from class to class and just want be back in the bed I left at 3:17 this morning it’s the little moments I can laugh at that keep me awake, smiling, and moving forward.
Weird how the MS both caused the problem and gave me the strength to get through it. But I think sometimes our trials are like that. They become the very reason that we can keep going, no matter how hard it gets.
Yo-yoing With Zed 