I spend a lot of time stopping to wonder who I am becoming, noting small and large changes, scrutinizing all of them.
Sometimes I find things that have remained constant forever, and clutch them with sore fingers, putting them on a list of "this is the core of me", as though they were clues to the holes in the universe.
At a sit-around-and-chat party (my favourite kind) last night, surrounded by strangers, I breathed with gut instinct and watched my babblings and fumblings carefully.
Three themes stood out, two of which I am secretly proud and congratulting myself although that somehow tarnishes the shine, and the third... I'm not so sure about.
The third is my anger/violence/teeth-gnashing growls and retorts, which has diminished steadily each year in the last ten, but which somehow seems as though it will never disappear.
I had almost forgotten about my anger, until a quiet moment out on a balcony when I asked Dave somewhat innocently "am I that violent", and his reaction was so bitingly strong.
Here I was somewhat worrying that I'd gone completely soft and completely abandoned the fire for my daily fight.
But part of me saw his shiver and the way he spat out "you can be a little caustic", and I am looking around at some of the more opinionated people around me, who do nothing but insult and bite and rant and growl and attack everyone around them for every inch of what they portend to... deserve, and I am realizing that there is still a lot of work left, letting go of my hate and trying to keep some small portion of my ability to survive.
I have been going soft lately, but apparently not soft enough just yet.
And deep down inside my arrogance claims that I am never going to lose my roar, or my YAWP, or my indignation, but in that same place there is a little nugget that is afraid that the suburbs will swallow me.
I don't want to hurt anyone, ever. And yet, I don't want to roll over and expose my belly and give in to all the wrong I feel around me, either.
As for the good stuff, I surprised myself last night when a friend of a friend announced that she was having trouble getting a ride to Waterloo to pick up her kitten, and I offered her my car without really thinking about it.
"Do you have a driver's license?"
"Do you want to borrow my car?"
I wondered momentarily at what I wouldn't be able to do today without my car, and then let that go too, without very much difficulty.
The look of awe at the kindness of strangers on her face felt so right.
So very right, and somehow I don't fear my anger so much when this is what it is protecting.
The other thing that I am inordinately proud of, is that learning something new is still my favourite passtime of all, that when I offered to show up a couple of hours early for the party to help roll sushi, it turned into a grand experience.
First, it reminded me that there is something else I can do besides push papers and fail at rock-climbing.
Second, we just got so into it that I learned a hundred new tricks just by sheer inspiration.
Those maki rolls with the rice on the outside of the nori? Easy. Put saran wrap down, and make sure you roll it real tight.
That small triumph spurred an outburst of sheer creativity, tiny littly maki rolls with one colour inside them (green vegetables or maybe even fish-flake dyed pink rice), put together inside a larger roll, with strips of fish or anything else, carefully arranged and rolled a-la-beadmaking style, leaving cross-sections resembling jewel patterns or flowers.
Enough practice with that could yield quite the pretty dishes, and the easy triumph of just putting my brain to it and figuring it out spuriously last night felt good.
Really good.
Last night I did something special, and I really needed the reminder that sometimes I still can.