Mr. Eliot's especially known for his lines about returning to a place he started, and for the first time, seeing it. That's how I felt a few days ago, when I awoke still wrung out from too many hours of working. I thought plenty of sleep and a bracing shower would send me back where I'd started, too. But new habits that soon became as second nature as my old ones, seemed to interfere with almost everything.

While at work, I'd think how relaxing enjoying a morning paper, with extra coffee would be. But with time the papers stacked up, until they went out with other garbage. Friends would ask me to social things, but telling myself I was too tired to be good company anyway, I'd find reasons not to go, and hurry home to my comfy sweats, and after a while the invitations pretty much stopped.

So when I awoke the other morning, and lay there drinking in being able to, I realized perhaps Mr. Eliot meant more with his wise old words, than only about where one starts from. I slid myself out from under the covers, and started coffee, so it could catch up with me.

I opened the door of my pretty house, and drank in the yard where some beauty-loving person had planted huge beds of iris, all the same color. Stately they stood as if in harmony, banking each side of me, as morning sun softly reached for my tired old shoulders.

After a few uninterrupted cups of coffee, I drank before it cooled, I headed to a store where I'd seen more flowers, and chose a different kind of bouquet, to mark the moment, a lovely rose bush that's already in bloom. It's described as Electric deep pink hybrid tea, with sweet rosy perfume fragrance. I don't yet know the proper way to plant it, but soon I will learn.

In time I may even make lists of all I want to do, but not for awhile. I have a lot of remembering to do. Things I've set aside, or let slip away. I may even surprise old friends who haven't given up on me, and call them for lunch sometime soon. I don't know if even all these words are enough to tell all of you how wonderful it is be reminded, not only of where I started from, but coming back to the me I used to be.