"Hold for New York"

Our epic summer plans were sidelined by Life Stuff, but the floor tea spoke to me. (I am not on drugs.)

Hi, it’s me. Happy solstice! In a past life I’ve gone to parties on the solstice and let our kids run amuck outside until their feet were dirty and their faces were muddy and/or smeared with some sort of berry-chocolate combination that drooled its way down the front of their bare chests, because who wears clothes on the solstice??

I mean, I do, but that’s for everyone else’s benefit.

I love a good solstice as much as the next person, but honestly? This year I’ll probably be in bed before it’s dark out. The year has been a lot already — an extra long day doesn’t feel like a bonus.

We’re supposed to be in New York City this week.

During our annual what-are-we-going-to-be-about-this-year meeting in January, Bryan and I started planning an epic family trip to New York City and the Hudson Valley in upstate. The kids have always wanted to visit New York, and this was going to be Our Big Trip Together after our youngest graduated high school.

Screenshot of my calendar taunting me.

I was excited to show them where I lived for two years in my 20s, when I worked at a residential drug treatment program in the Hudson Valley and spent weekends exploring all of New England. We were excited to visit our close friend from Seattle who moved to New York last summer – she lives just across the river from where I spent those years. I was preparing myself for a Big Emotional Return to a place and a time that was a huge part of my coming-of-age story as a fearful yet adventurous twenty-something.

We were on the verge of buying plane tickets when Bryan’s cancer diagnosis came in. We stalled plans with great optimism, thinking we could regroup after his April colon surgery and continue with our epic journey.

Then came the surgery, and the pathology report, and the recommendation to pursue chemotherapy for six months. It was a disappointing blow to give up our epic family trip at such a peak time – the kids are old enough to appreciate New York and unattached from jobs and school and life partners and anything else that might prevent them from joining us in the future. Who knows how long these young adults will still want to go on epic adventures with us?!

This new reality bums me out.

In this post that I wrote back in January, I was full of so much hope for the year when I wrote, “I’m looking forward to a 2023 that is less dark.” I hate that I wrote this. The year was pretty much fucked after that, obviously jinxed by my optimism. If you’re reading this, Bryan, this is why I’m such a downer all the time. Entropy! 

On Friday one of the cats messed with a harvest of chamomile flowers I was drying for tea on top of the chest freezer and the whole thing dumped on the floor of our laundry room. This mess represents the time and effort of growing, harvesting, and anticipating the enjoyment of future tea. Yes I already have one jar filled with dried chamomile and a second screen drying on a shelf out of the cat’s reach, but still. This was a breach of my trust in an uneventful day, and my Eeyore brain went straight to: of course it’s destroyed. 

Non-destroyed chamomile in my garden.

But then I did a brilliant thing. I called Bryan and said, the fucking cat dumped all my chamomile and I don’t know what to do. He suggested I sift it through a colander, which of course was brilliant. I was too mad to see my way to an obvious solution, but he optimistic’d as usual.

Once I got on my hands and knees to start gathering the flowers, I noticed it wasn’t all that bad. I had recently swept, and the floor was only nasty by a pole the cats turned into a scratching post. I was able to salvage three fourths of it, which is better than expected, and now I’ll have a jar of chamomile labeled FLOOR TEA that only I will enjoy while guests get the non-floor tea.

And now I have a great story to tell and we’ll have our little inside joke about floor tea.

The Floor Tea origin story.

All is well. I made the tea work and I’ll make the summer work. We have a good life, all considered. We have several outdoor concerts and weekend trips to look forward to, and maybe I can wrangle the kids for a New York trip next year…

🤞If we can manage to avoid any more life disruptions.🤞

Alrighty. I’m going to go watch the sun set behind the birch tree for a bit. 

Until next time,

Jen

p.s. I’m rebranding the Jen Zug Writes newsletter in the coming weeks, and I’m so excited to share it with you! I had given myself a year to wander around on Substack and figure out what I want it to be, and I finally know. Stay tuned.