Secrets

 

I'm hoping the secret to life is to never stop living. 

I want to be discovering new ideas, new hobbies, new people, new ways of thinking for as long as possible.

Simply persevering isn't enough for me. I need more. 

So I sometimes dash head long into things that cause me to trip and fall, or fail and while that can be so painful, it also can be exciting. Even my scammer, as much havoc as he has wreaked on my life, made it extraordinary while he did it. And now that I am paying for my foolishness I am also being given the gift of a new job in the last quarter of my life.

One of the things I have always done is to rearrange my house when I can't rearrange my life. That is harder to do now. My house is an apartment and it is small. I have donated one entire wall to my paintings and that limits where I can put furniture. 

Once I thought I wanted to be a simple person who spent her life meditating and doing the same things over and over again, a sort of ascetic life. Now I realize that what I want is security, but not asceticism. That surprises me a little.

I do not want to be buried alive in some safe nursing home, or relationship, or way of living that takes all the joy out of being here. I do not want to spend my life getting ready for some place that may never be. I suspect that I am in this world to partake of it and that is what will be the most satisfying thing for me to do.

In this moment, which may be all I have, I need to start really paying attention to the way I live, because I suspect the universe is whispering directions in my ear all the time and I have been ignoring them.

Good vs Evil

 

I think people may have it all wrong.

It's not how much bad did you avoid, how many sins did you not commit, how much evil was not perpetrated in your deeds, or thoughts, or ways, but how much love did you pour into the world around you.

The quality of that love created your world. It changed the quality of the air you breathed in, the way the ground moved under your feet. 

There is no meter to measure this love. It cannot be finagled, or faked. A facade will not change its power or provenance. It cannot be bought or sold.

It is who you are.

At your core.

What some people may call your soul.

It is the only thing that lies between you and heaven or hell and it's all on you.

School daze

 

I hear the school buses coming as I sit here every morning drinking my coffee and playing Wordle or Words With Friends and I look out my window.

My neighborhood is diverse. We have all sorts of ethnic backgrounds here and they have a fair choice of elementary schools to go to from private parochial, to university, to one of two public districts depending upon their needs.

I remember what it was like sending my child to school on a bus the first time. I wanted it to be a wonderful experience for her. It tugged at my heart just to see her leave home, but I knew she would be fine. 

I see the young parents around me doing this same thing and they tug at my heart too. English is not always their first language. They know their child may face things mine never did simply because of the color of their skin. Our customs are not always the same, but our hearts are.

I wonder what it would be like to be in a different country where everyone around me spoke another language, where I didn't really know the neighbors well enough to ask the important questions about bus stops and schools and how important it was to buy the right brand of school supplies or backpacks, or even shoes. These things seem so unimportant unless you are a child going out on your own for the first time.  Even the food at lunch time may be strange if you don't take your own.

So I watch these people from my window. The eager faces of children heading off to kindergarten and their parents lurking behind garage doors, watching to make sure they got on the bus, then stepping out to blow a kiss as the bus finally drives off, their child safely inside and on his own for the next six hours.

Cranky crones

 

The older this body gets, the more work it takes to be naturally acceptable. 

Nobody ever told me about these things. Maybe because my mother died so young, or maybe just because she never really told me anything. 

Let alone that hair would grow on my face when I reached my seventies and my skin would become blotchy and my nails would need buffing just to look shiny and healthy.

I am not talking about beauty queen lovely. I'm talking about not looking like a crone!

I am living inside of the body of one of my childhood nightmares. When I loose weight I look like a prune. When I gain weight I look moon faced. My skin bruises in the breath of a moment. 

My toes ache! Imagine that, aching toes! And when I type the ends of some of my fingers feel bruised and tender. This isn't the body that played tennis for six hours a day and yet it is all I have to work with, so I'm going to make the best of it.

Watch out world, this old lady is not giving up, but now she understands why some old women are very cranky. 

Cranky or not, here I come!

Why work

 

The farther we get from our Puritan forefathers the better off we are. 

In the beginning work was to keep us alive. We had enough children so that some of them would survive to plant our fields, chop our wood and care for us when we were too feeble to do these things ourselves. By the time I was born there were more choices, but most people worked to put food on the table and pay the bills. 

People found reasons to be satisfied with whatever work they did, but they didn't necessarily choose work that they felt would bring them satisfaction. That kind of work was for dreamers, not real people. It never seemed to occur to many of them that they could choose to do something else. 

I was the exception in our family. The only one who did not find a job and do it until it ate me alive and spit out the bones. Now I suppose I am paying for that in their eyes, but the truth is I still need a job that I feel is truly meaningful. 

For years it was guiding my own children while they found the skills they needed to pursue their dreams. Then I worked in preschool teaching children to love learning, so it only makes sense that I end up back there again. 

I truly believe that if we love learning then the rest of life will eventually fall into place, so giving children both the desire and the skills to do that is a worthy job. It takes creativity and patience and perseverance. I have all those things in abundance, so I think going to work at my age is the best thing I can do.

Home

 

This morning I walked into my kitchen and felt an unusual attachment to a place. 

I lived in four different places before I started kindergarten and five more before I graduated from high school. After I was married we lived in nine places and since my divorce I've really ramped it up. I've lived in twelve different places!

I remember moving into our first home in Bloomington back in 1971 and thinking it only took six months to feel like home. Then I guess I forgot about that feeling. I've enjoyed living in all my homes, but not in any special way. Mostly they were just a place to be while other more important things were going on and often I have been on the lookout for something different.

Early today I walked out of my bedroom and into the kitchen to make coffee and when I looked around I had a strange satisfied feeling that felt unusual. Pausing I really took it all in, the furniture, the colors, the pictures on the wall and I finally realized what it was. 

This is my home! This is that place I've seen in movies where someone puts the kettle on and settles down for a cup of tea, or coffee in my case. This is that cottage in the woods I dreamed of in fairy tales even though it is on a city street. It feels cozy and safe and comfortable.

I am home.

Island living

I feel very isolated right now. 

I talk on the phone to Bestest and my son every day. I keep in touch with my Muse --- just barely. 

I am on the cusp of starting a new job that hasn't quite materialized yet. It is too hot to walk outside right now and so everything is different.

I am used to being alone. I am basically a loner type person, but it is different from this. Being alone and feeling lonely are two different things. Right now I am feeling truly stranded and alone in a situation that is unfamiliar to me.

It is as if I am on an island where I can see the food truck on the distant shore and a boutique on another, but I am stranded, eating local vegetation and wearing my at home uniform while waiting for the ferry.

I know I will have to pay my way by working on that ferry. I know I can do it. I've shoveled coal into the furnace before, but not for a very long time, so I'm wondering if I will find the shovel very heavy, or have trouble balancing it and not dropping pieces of coal on the floor. 

Everything is going to be different and I don't know anyone else who lives alone on an island who I can talk to about this.

New Eyes

Sometimes it is necessary to look at something from a different angle to truly appreciate it.

When I moved into this apartment I liked it, but it was also less expensive than my old one. I've been here over five years now and instead of being ready to move again like usual, I am more attached than ever.

That is a novelty for me. There is a part of me that actually enjoys moving. Not the actual action, but the being in a different novel place. I was almost at that point a year ago. I began looking at places with garages and places closer to parks. I looked at apartments with old fashioned woodwork and more character.

Then I began painting and putting some of my paintings up on the wall and suddenly my apartment felt like a new place! I also began to notice my nine foot ceilings and the built in nooks and crannies I have here. There is a lot of architectural interest in this apartment.

The final straw came when I lost my money, but my rent went up and I realized I really couldn't afford to stay here unless something radical happened. Suddenly I noticed how convenient this place is to everywhere I go from the grocery store to my doctors and dentist. I became more aware of how safe this neighborhood is. I realized how great the management is when I need something fixed. 

The other day I was driving up to park when it occurred to me that this is almost the perfect apartment for me. I really don't want to move.

And it looks like maybe I won't have to!

Pi or Pie

 

Children are born whole and full of possibilities. Then, in an age old tradition, we start chipping away at them, trying to turn them into acceptable members of our society. 

If we were all artists with an artist's eye, looking at that original child and trying to see what was inside, this might be more successful, but most people think, what do I want for my child. Then begins the process to make the child fit the mold rather than the search for which mold to use. This has been an acceptable process since the days of Sparta when all boys were groomed to be warriors.

Most children are pliable enough to fit into the mold. They may not thrive. It certainly may not make them happy, but they become acceptable citizens of the community they live in. Others just can't do it and they become the outliers, the misfits, sometimes the artists and sometimes the criminals -- all trying to make sense of something they were not meant to do or be.

Wouldn't it be great if we simply guided our children towards those things they naturally loved and excelled at? For some children pi is a number with infinite possibilities. For others pie is something you eat with infinite tastes and for a few it may just be a book about The Life of Pi.

Imagine what a great world it could be if we found a few hundred other possibilities and allowed them all to evolve naturally.

A purpose for me

 

Sometimes those crazy things people say when they are trying to encourage someone are true.

When you hit rock bottom the only way to go is up.

Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end.

Things like that.

Today I wrote a lot of words about the end. I thought about how my Dad gave up when he was just my age and ended up in a nursing home until he died a couple years later. I saw myself as incapable, undesirable, unwanted, unnecessary. It was a bad day. A very bad day.And then at 4:01 pm I got a call that changed everything. 

It is the first call I've had to interview for a paying job in nearly 25 years. No one else ever even called, so I volunteered. I volunteered in a museum leading kid's birthday parties and giving tours. I volunteered in a kindergarten class working with small groups reading. I volunteered in an elementary school library. 

Before all this volunteering I was a preschool teacher and Sunday school teacher. I even worked in a flower shop and an office, but most of my life I have been a mother and a teacher of young children. I'm good at that, so if this interview works out it will be the best of all worlds.

I will have enough money to pay the bills and I will have a purpose that I truly believe in. 

I am at a place in my life where my job could be a surrogate family. I am ready, willing and able to give these children the love and guidance they need while their parents are working. In fact, I am excited about doing this. 

Creative therapy

 

I have always fallen back on my creativity to survive. Not financially. I don't think I've ever made more than a couple hundred dollars and that was when I was making handmade, hand embroidered, beautiful rag dolls that took hours and hours to create then sell for less than thirty dollars. 

My creativity has given me something positive to do when life is hard, or dull. I began by playing the piano. Some people listen to music, I prefer to make it. Making it uses my whole body, my head, my hands, even my feet. It is all engrossing to play a piece on the piano.

Later I taught myself to sew and I made clothes, dolls, costumes, gifts for teachers and family, even my children's clothes. I embroidered pillow slips for the dog and made doggie collars that looked like bows.

I began painting. I painted character sweatshirts for the people in plays we were doing, wooden projects my husband hand crafted, and finally I made a foray into oils. This time I had a teacher, but I didn't really get into painting until this last year or so when I began painting for me.

I have no formal training for this painting I do now. I would call it primitive. I paint from my heart, only those things I truly love to look at and, at my son's insistence, I hang most of them on a wall in my bedroom where I can sit and just enjoy the way they look. I have given a few away to family members, but there are a few I will always keep for just me. It you look at my wall you can see exactly who I am.

And beneath that wall of paintings is a keyboard.

Belief

What I believe in one moment may completely change in another.

The circumstances surrounding every moment make life a never ending tale filled with surprises, both joyful and horrific. Although, thankfully, most of life is simply putting one foot in front of the other and going forward the best way we know how.

Most of us will never be heroes. We will never be Gilgamesh, or Samson and we wouldn't want to be. There is a lot of anguish in being a hero. Heroes tend to do great things, but at a great cost. They suffer both mentally and physically in ways I have no desire to experience.

Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. Jesus was crucified. Whether you are leading the people to war or asking them to feed the hungry our society reacts viciously to anyone who asks them to reassess their thinking. 

We are a violent uncivilized species as a whole and that is not likely to change soon. The easiest way to get what you want is to take it. Greed rules and power protects it. That is a tale as old as time. Believing otherwise is dangerous. Fear works hand in hand with both greed and power to keep most of us in our places. The hero knows that and goes ahead anyway.

I believe in heroes, but I will never be one.

Confessions of a septuagenarian job hunter

 

There have been times in my life when I felt like I had the world by the tail. And then, slowly, most of the people drastically disappointed me. The heroes fell off their pedestals. The lovers turned out to be unfaithful. The next door people were radical conservatives. Family? Well family is forever whether you like it or not. The jobs . . .

Most of the jobs themselves were pretty much okay, even wonderful. It was the people I had to work with that ruined them. The two exceptions were preschool and the flower shop, the two longest positions I ever had. Those people and those jobs were dreams come true.

Now I am probably at an all time low in my life. Almost out of money due to the scam. No one is responding to my job applications and my body is getting older by the day. Tasks that used to be so easy are now sometimes difficult. Heavy things feel heavier than I remember them being. 

I am sure that a little way down the road everything will be okay, but I am ready for it all to end.

Back in the race

 

Today I stepped back into the rat race. 

I spent hours trying to fill out applications on line, a good hour at Fed Ex where a woman tried to download the applications and print them out for me, along with my resume. Then I went home and sat down to laboriously fill out each little blank space.

It turned out I needed professional references and that began another long task of trying to find people from my past who would fill the bill and be willing to help out. I sent out all kinds of feelers and requests and began the wait.

Eventually things began to come together. I cleaned up, put on my most beatific smile and decided to deliver the applications myself. That way they might remember me better and have an idea of who I was. I am a fairly strong personality and I wanted them to know I wasn't some frail little old lady who used to be a preschool teacher.

I am a hale and hearty, loving and competent woman who has worked with all kinds of children and generally relates to them quite well.

I did the best I knew how from beginning to end and now I have to just let it go and wait. I am exhausted!

Red letter day

 

At least I hope it is a red letter day. Today I made my first foray back into the working world. I have thought about it for the last few weeks. Living on my new limited income is almost impossible. 

I don't feel qualified, or able to go for a full time position utilizing my education or experience. I'm just looking for honest work where I can do two things. Fill my time usefully and ease the financial crunch I find myself in.

I'm trying to think about it as an adventure in living. Some people go to a far away place and start over. I'm just going to work! I haven't done that, for money, for over twenty years, but I am personable. I can smile and I can follow directions. I should be okay.

I discovered everyone seems to require an online application in today's world, so I finally bit the bullet and did that today. One place. One application, but if it works that will be wonderful. 

However, if you want to spare a few good thoughts that I am successful and happy, I wouldn't mind at all.

By the sea

 

Why would a woman who has lived her entire life in the heartland; a woman who has only seen the ocean a handful of times in her life, paint pictures of rocky shores and beautiful waves?

I remember the first time I heard about the sea. My father had accompanied my grandfather to Europe and he called home. I was four years old and the biggest body of water I had ever experienced was Little Huron Lake in Minnesota. My father tried to explain that the sea was so large it was impossible to walk around it like a lake.

I had dreams that I was underwater all the time as a child. In those dreams I could walk and talk and breathe just as if I were on land.

The first time I ever saw the ocean I was twenty one years old and in Florida. I wanted to see the tide come in, but it was so dark and we were so high up in the hotel that this didn't happen. Nearly twenty five years later I would see the ocean around Kauai and find myself totally entranced. 

There is something about a rocky shoreline that draws me. It feels like home for no reason I will ever understand. Large dark rocks, waves pounding against them, spray rising high into the air in moonlight or sunlight it matters only that I am there.

And so I paint pictures of places I've never been, but yearn for.

Little things

 

I am often not ready to end a conversation when others are finished with it. 

There are so many sides to everything, so many opinions and nuances, so much history that gets lost in the muddle of words we toss at each other.

I love to dissect the words, connect them to facial expressions, try to trace them back to where they may have started.

One of my favorite things to do is have a conversation with someone. A time when we share something that is really important to us and virtually talk it to pieces. Then take all those little pieces and look for their stories. 

I want to pick the minds of people, know them from the inside out.

I wonder things. Like why is your favorite color blue, or green, or fuchsia, what was the first word you ever heard your child say? Where does your mind go when you exercise? What does water make you think of when it is icy cold, or boiling hot? These things may seem menial, but the world is made of things smaller than atoms! Little things matter. They are interesting.

When I ask why I am honestly wanting to know. I will listen and you better believe I will think about it later. That is just who I am, so I am often left wanting when we are finished talking.

A whiff of the past

Decisions are different than choices.

When I think of choices, I envision choosing between a hot fudge sundae and an ice cream cone. I imagine picking one beautiful garment over another. I anticipate all the colors of paint I might use on my next painting. Choices imply something good to me.

Decisions feel harder. Decisions mean doing things I have to do, or need to do, or should do, or even things I don't want to do, but feel are necessary.

 

Decisions like whether to go out and get a job, or whether to block someone I've been chatting with, or what not to eat in order to stay healthy, are the sort of things I want to put off, or avoid altogether. They are awkward and unpleasant things. 

Today I felt a tinge of something I had forgotten even existed. It was like looking through a long tunnel into the past to a time when the future looked hopeful. That feeling that there are possibilities for living the way I dream of touched me for a few seconds as I was reaching for my coffee this morning. For one moment in time I remembered life the way it used to be before divorce and internet and scams.

That simple feeling of being free from any desperate condition seems to have passed. Now our country is always under the threat of electing another petty dictator, we are repealing humane laws in favor of retribution, the very air we breathe is being eroded by people who profit from misusing our natural resources.

Of course once anything starts, it is always the beginning of the end, but the end feels more imminent now. My own if not the world's.

Out of the darkness

Imagine being on vacation in a barren land where people take being stalked by lion prides and tigers and even leopards in stride. The only protection is faith that standing still will keep them from attacking me and I am definitely afraid. Then going inside to discover only a stout wooden gate is keeping the beasts out of the room when a toddler unhooks the gate and it begins to open. I can see a lion is nosing the other side, waiting to get in.

Imagine a kindly woman getting me an interview with a professor who is supposed to help me get my affairs in order, but upon arriving at the building I realize I've lost my ID and can't remember the man's name! I stand in one line after another to talk to someone about it, but the lines keep closing and the crowd around me begins to close in.

 These are both just samples of the dreams I've been having and the over-riding feeling during them is one of absolute exhaustion. All I want to do is close my eyes and sleep. While all the while I am already asleep and dreaming. You might think I was depressed. 

This was my frame of mind, this morning. I almost decided not to watch the Episcopal church service I have been tuning into on Sunday mornings lately. But I did. 

And it was as if it were there expressly for me. It was the story of Elijah, in the cave, hearing God in the silence, being told to leave the cave and get to work, because life is filled with difficulties but it goes on. I cannot just lie down and go to sleep -- forever. There is something for me to do. 

My faith is tenuous. In everything. An example is when I play the piano. Once I realize I am playing a piece and doing okay, I immediately begin making mistakes. 

That same wavering affects everything I do. The cave feels safe and comforting. Like Elijah I feel ready to die, but it seems I am being called out.

Why

 

I've always wondered why so many women have someone in their life and I don't. I used to think it was because there was something wrong with me. I'm not so sure anymore. And yet . . .

I dated several different people during high school and several others during college. I was married for most of my young adult life and dated some in the period after my divorce, so I guess there are men who are interested enough to ask me out more than once.

The problem seems to be that as much as I would love to be part of a twosome, with someone to come home to, I have limits. 

I look at the couples in my particular world and I would not trade places with any of them. I simply do not feel that connection I need to commit myself to most people. And the few I do, don't seem to want to commit to me for one reason or another.

It is better to be single than in an unbalanced, unhealthy relationship. Loneliness is better than heartbreak and unhappiness. It's not happiness, but it's not misery either. 

I would love to meet that one person who loves me deeply and passionately that I can love back in the same way, but time is running out and I'm not willing to settle.

Mourning

  

Mourning is such a strange process. 

I thought I figured out how it worked and how difficult it was when my mother died so many years ago. I've lost people since then, but this year presented a new challenge. This year I lost myself.

The person who navigated years of problems and came through them all okay in the end, disappeared in a haze of naive longing. 

Like a modern day fairy tale I was offered everything my heart desired. All I had to do was have faith and give up all my security. I did that! Little by little I broke all my hard and fast rules for survival. I ignored all the people whose advice didn't encourage me to do this. I was brave beyond belief.

And I was wrong.

The beast who lived on top of the mountain did not turn into a prince in disguise. He simply revealed a face that terrified me and then - ZAP - all the lovely promises and fulfilled wishes disappeared leaving behind a lonely shell of a woman. An empty shell waiting to be filled with something.

Anything! The person she had called herself for seventy years no longer existed. Everything that defined her had been sullied and torn down. Destroyed. And she was so far gone she didn't even know it.

Until today when I began to realize I am just now coming out of mourning a little bit. Time. It always takes time for things to grow, to heal, to become something new, especially when it must do this from the ashes. No one ever explains how the Phoenix does this; how difficult it is; how almost impossible it can be.

No one can do it for me and most people cannot even really help me. It takes someone with the patience of Job to drop bread crumbs in front of me and hope I notice them. My Muse has taken on that overwhelming task with unbelievable care.

Today I think I have taken one tiny step into the light of recovery.

Self worth

 

By the time I get everything figured out I'm gonna be on my way to something new.

Today it dawned on me that people who don't love, or at least like, themselves make poor partners in any situation. If someone does not like themself they are always looking for affirmations. They really care what others think. They are more focused on themselves than me and I am guilty of this too. If I am more worried about looking foolish, or wrong, or bad, I may not make the best choices about how I treat others.

On the other hand, when I am confident and happy with myself, I can focus on being a good role model and caretaker of someone else. I won't be afraid to make the hard or unpopular decision. 

I know this because I have spent a lot of time around people who really didn't love themselves, or found themselves striving to be something they weren't. The fallout from them gave me many false impressions and negative feelings about myself. 

I tried not to pass those on to my children, but it is difficult to be on all the time, especially while living out your own life. The fact that I think I did a reasonably good job with my kids makes me feel better about who I am now. I love it when I see them reacting to their world in positive, kind ways. They are good people, strong people who have a sense of what they are really worth. 

That is a comfort to me on days like this when I am doubting my own worth.

Other worlds

 

Sometimes my dreams feel more like memories than dreams, but I'm sure I remember my life pretty much completely since I was less than two years old. My memories come with specific images and sometimes feelings and words.

So where do the dreams come from? Some of them, like the one last night also have very specific feelings and thoughts. I know I've been there before and experienced these same things. Only in real life I have not. At least not in this life.

In the dream I have a family, a husband and son and a little girl. My son is an infant, but my daughter is older, maybe eight or nine. We live in a two story house with a basement and it is winter time. Our house is heated with some kind of oil burning furnace on the main floor that I am worried about causing a fire, but my husband assures me it is safe.

Our house is painted a dark color, dark green I think with black trim and my husband leaves on a sled to go ice fishing. I don't want him to go, but he has to, or we won't eat. I wait for him to come home.  I am filled with trepidation and don't know why. I see some men coming to our door and I don't want to answer the door. If I don't answer the door my beautiful love will still be alive.

I know that isn't true, but I can't make myself answer the door.

And then I wake up. And I ache for that man in my dream. He died so young. 

And then I wake up more and begin my day, feeling a sort of emptiness for someone who was probably only in my imagination.

The fragrance of forgiveness

 

I spent many years in a relationship that tested every aspect of who I am and I am sorry to say I did not fair well under those conditions.  Partly because it also affected my children, but also just because I was not evolved enough to really understand.

It is hard to step above my own insecurities when someone hurts me or people I love. Hurt comes in so many forms and they all evoke feelings and feelings are the most insidious things to deal with. Feelings begin growing the minute someone is born and, depending on how we are taught to deal with them, continue to grow and become more complicated every year. 

Forgiveness is not some warm fuzzy feeling that negates all the pain, but in a way it may be as close as I'll ever get to that. Forgiveness is letting go of what happened, allowing myself to move along knowing I can't change the past, do not have to repeat it, or like it, but I do have to find other things that are more important than getting even, or suffering eternally over something that is in the past.

Someone once said that forgiveness is the fragrance a flower gives off when someone steps on it. I think I understand that.

Transfiguration

 

On this Sunday, the story of the Transfiguration has stirred many thoughts for me, trying to connect with it in some way that is personally meaningful. Strictly speaking I think it speaks to the fact that people have always needed to see something to believe it. And even after seeing, people are often not convinced.

It is hard to accept things that are not concrete and personal. Hearsay is like a giant game of telephone, played out over the centuries with everyone adding their two cents worth. We want to attribute fantastical things to dreams or maybe even some kind of group hypnosis. Believing in some scientific reality seems necessary, but none of this is the point.

Faith is personal. If I believe something then you are unlikely to convince me otherwise. If I only want to believe, then it is a tenuous thing no matter what is said, or shown to me. 

In my own life there is an unseen face with a voice whose identity I sometimes doubt and sometimes revere. Not a god by any means except that in a way we are all a manifestation of God. I want to believe I know who this person is, but my faith can waver. And yet, this manifestation keeps me grounded and alive and trying to do better all the time.

Maybe that is all that is really necessary in this world.

Just because

I seldom allow myself the freedom to be just me in all my grandiose, silly, overly passionate ways. I'd be too embarrassed and worried about what people would think or say, but tonight I am free.

Tonight I let myself put on the earphones and pound my keyboard as if I were Lizt himself. My Hungarian Rhapsody rhapsodized me! Claire de Lune would have made Debussy swoon! It was a grand recital in the world's most private concert hall. My bedroom where the acoustics matched Schroeder's in every way.

Since I was the only one in attendance the critics were ecstatic. 

I allowed myself one more indulgence that I never ever allow, for a million reasons. I allowed the love of my life to be there in all his glory. Listening with the ears of someone drenched in kindness and a smile that lights up everything around him wherever he may be. Someone whose actual presence will never grace these rooms, but fills my heart daily.

Tonight my dreams surrounded me and I allowed myself to be drenched in joy. Just me. Just for a while. Just because.

Happiness

Happiness is having a purpose in life, I've decided.

A grand purpose would be nice, but I don't seem to have cultivated that. My life is probably always going to be a hundred little purposes and the danger there is not believing they are worthwhile. Being a mother was the grandest one I've ever been and, having done a pretty good job at it, I've pretty much worked myself right out of a need for that now. My kids love me, but they don't need me to take care of them anymore.

I try to be kind to the random people who want to chat on Instagram and it's amazing how many there are. Sometimes I feel like a sage and sometimes I just feel old and out of touch. The conversations can be fun and stimulating though. The hardest part often being that when they discover my age, they have a difficult time letting go of their idea of a stereotyped woman in her seventies. They are thinking old, fragile, white haired, sweet and docilely boring. I need to negate those ideas immediately!

I'm not cute. I'm not fourteen and wanting to take hip hop classes. My intellect has not gone back to my childhood, but a part of me never left either. I'm pretty much the same woman I was in my fifties and sixties.  I think we under estimate how long it takes a human being to mature. I'm not sure we're really ready to be picked for fifty years or so.

I think I can be happy as long as I make the world better in some small way for at least one human being every day. That doesn't seem unrealistic in this world where I run into people walking, shopping, on the Internet, and socializing. I just need to remember that when I flash a genuine smile at someone and they give me a genuine smile back -- that's a very good thing.

Reality

 

There are things I can change and things that just are what they are. On a good day I am okay with all of it, but on other days I can feel wistful.

I do miss being young and fresh faced. Not that I look bad for someone my age, I just don't look thirty anymore. Because I am not.

I am in those hazy golden years where I still have the health and stamina to do pretty much whatever I want, except look good in a bathing suit. Reality is cruel.

My mind still works just like it always did. I still have the same likes and dislikes. I still feel the whole range of feelings I've always felt. It's possible I feel a lot less of those negative feelings that I felt as a younger person, but everything else has intensified.

I love more, am in awe more, feel passionately about things more. It's as if I know life is running out and I need to just suck the marrow right out of the bones. This world is an amazing place and the people in my life are more than amazing. So while some things do make me sad and that sadness, like the joy, is intensified, it is still pretty wonderful.

If life is what you make it, and I want to believe that is true, I want to make this life good as I can.