1) Health
Good health is relative. In January of 1986, at age 17, I lay in a hospital bed paralyzed from the neck down. As I slowly recovered from Guillain-Barre Syndrome, through observation of other patients at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, I realized I was lucky. I spent four months of my life in the hospital, then a few more months in a wheelchair, a few more with a walker/cane, but by September I was walking on my own.
Today, I am not in as good of shape as I’d like to be. I’d like to lose about twenty pounds. But beyond being overweight, I am generally healthy, for which I am thankful.
2) Close Family
Talking with others, I know my family is unusual. We are all speaking with one another, we get along well, and there’s no one I can think of in my extended family – parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins – who I have to put up a false front to get along with whenever I see them. On the contrary, if asked about each of my relatives, I think I would put a check mark by each one and say that I would rather see them more often, than less often.
3) Friends
I have developed a lot of good friendships over the past fifteen years in the science fiction fan community, as well as through my writer’s group, and at poetry open mics. At my high school’s twentieth reunion in September I was reminded that I had for the most part lost all contact with my high school friends. There are some signs that some of those friendships could be reestablished.