Gratitude II

Life is very comfortable right now in spite of the fact that all my money, and then some, is spoken for for the foreseeable future. Except for money I have everything I need and there is a lot to be grateful for in that.

So . . . to pick the next thing is not easy, but I think it is the adventures I've had over the past sixty odd years.

I ached for adventure as a child. Everything that happened felt like it might be the door to some magical place: that field of kittens where my mother said my cat got her babies, the smell of new wood that signified my Dad was building something new in the basement, the sunny day that just begged to take me somewhere special. And yet my world was so restricted that even getting to explore the tree filled hill in the park was exciting. My mother was afraid of everything hurting us. I didn't get to go to museums until I could take myself and I wasn't even allowed to cross the street, or go around the block without permission until I was ten.

But once I was twelve I had the opportunity to ride my bicycle, or take a bus and explore our city. I spent hours wandering in the old Illinois State Museum and library. For the first time I had as many books as I wanted to read. Life was good. Then we moved to a tiny town and I explored the Tom Sawyer side of myself, turning the old chicken house in the back yard into a club house, hollowing out an old book to hide the copious number of pages I wrote creating adventures of the mind.

I went away to college and began my adventure into far east art and meditation. I got a little daring and ended up spending the night in a car in the middle of an icy country winter. I joined groups of my peers singing and dancing and drinking. I negotiated my own life for the first time ever.

I suffered incredibly painful losses when my parents died and magnificent miracles when each of my three children came into my life.

The middle ages were filled with traveling in the only way I could manage it. Camping. I dragged my children across the country to see all the things I'd read about and tried to do things to broaden both my and their views of the world.

Post divorce I began my flying adventures, learning to get around the Bay area on Bart, or walking. Spending hours exploring San Francisco with my oldest son, or alone. Happening on ponds overflowing with basking turtles in parks, eating in Zen restaurants, meeting teachers in the most unlikely places. The constraints of my childhood were violated in every way. I was free.

Then I met Bestest and learned about the joys of traveling and playing and doing research in university archives. I began to taste the thrill of seeing words I had worked on turned into books that were actually in those libraries I dreamed of as a young child.

I could write books on the adventures in my life and I am grateful for every one of them, both good and bad.