New socks and underwear

Few other things make me feel as secure and contented as new socks and underwear.  Although I’ve had a few new socks and a couple of pair of boxers a couple of times since I got sober, there were none in the 2 years before and no new t-shirts at all.

Yesterday I threw them all out.  Every sock, every brief, every boxer, every t, and drove myself to Macy’s, coupons in hand, and replaced them all.

Pulling on new socks and a new t-shirt reminds me in a powerful way how much I love my life today, how much better it is than it was 2 years ago surfing on the sofas of people I hated.  I am really grateful to be in a position today that I can buy my own new socks and underwear.  It sounds silly, I suppose, but there it is.

The day after Thanksgiving my dad and I went to pay off the car.  As we drove to the dealership he paid me one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever had.  He said that it was the right car, at the right time, and that I had approached making that choice in exactly the way that he would have.

We talked about how much the scooter had helped me come to be in a position where a car became possible and necessary.  Then he gave me a direction.  I wasn’t sure I had heard him correctly so I spoke with him about it again later that evening.

I am to give the scooter away.  Not right away and not to just anyone, but I am to pay the scooter forward.  “The question isn’t whether to give, but when and how.”

“When you find someone who is working as hard at recovery as you were, and who needs it as badly as you did, I want you to give it to them,” he said.

That is a very special “when and how.”  I don’t know that I’ve seen it in the rooms yet. Maybe I just haven’t had my eyes open.

I seriously think my dad is one of the most spiritually awake people I have ever known.  After all the months of walking and the months of riding my bike, the scooter changed my life.  I have not attachment to the scooter; no feeling like I should sell it or keep it.  I have no feeling like it’s “mine.”  I just am really grateful to be in the position where I can help someone else the way I have been helped, and really grateful that I can do that in new socks and underwear.