In Which I Am Alive

My brother is home. I have friends who make me grin just talking to them. My research group was selected to present at a conference in Portland this October. I was offered an assistantship at a children's choir camp for the last week in June. Today was my last day of class until September. I'm going to Disneyland next week. I leave for Scout Camp in less than a month. Oh, and did I mention that my brother is home? Life could not get much better.

Do you remember the first time you began to love your body? Was it all at once, one fine day, when you realized, "My goodness,  I am lovely"? Or did you grow, piece by piece into the knowledge, beginning perhaps with an ambivalence (or even a loathing), and then sliding into a contentment, a satisfaction, a love? Did you catch a glimpse of your eye in the mirror one day and find yourself mesmerized by its depths and patterns? Or did a friend tell you that your smile was radiant, and you let yourself believe them? Did you fall in love with the way your muscles throb when you run, or the way your hands smoothed your crying child's hair out of her face? Have you ever glanced at yourself in the shower and shivered with delight at what a completely matchless, flawed, ever-changing wonder you are? Or catalogued your list of wishes: that your armpits would sweat less, that those three perfectly stacked rolls wouldn't appear whenever you sat down, or that your h...