Success

 

There is a natural order to everything.

Before there is success there must be attempts. It is not possible to win a race you never start.

Everybody fails sometimes, even many times.

Failure is a given.

Especially the person who never tries. 

If it is important enough to you, you keep trying. Try different ways, at different times, with different things and the  possibility of success becomes greater and greater.

Of course there are things that are impossible. You cannot turn a dog into a zebra, but eventually you will figure out something better to do. Then you do that.

And that is success!

Heaven

 

I have often wondered if the Christian idea of heaven were true, would that mean I am going to spend all eternity with the man I married?

That idea does not sound like heaven to me. 

We spent nearly thirty years trying to live together with very distinct differences of opinion that caused great anguish for both of us. I can't imagine that being heaven.

Last night I had a dream. In the dream my husband and I were separated and living in different parts of a large place. I had crammed all my things into a long corridor in between his place and my daughter's. 

In the nature of dreams, lots of events occurred that had nothing to do with him, but eventually I was so exhausted we met in the space next to my room.

He stood there tall and strong and I let myself fall against his chest, My ear to his heart found comfort and total peace. We decided to get back together.

Of course this man was nothing like my real husband in anything but name. He was taller, kinder, more empathetic and exactly the kind of person I could easily love. 

Maybe that is what heaven does?

Morphs the monsters in our lives into our dream person?

Somehow . . .

Rat mazes

 

As I wander crazed and lonely 

through the dark hours of the night

I ponder deeply on the causes

of my fate and personal plight.

Simply showering in my tub

billowing curtains hug me tight

I need weights to make this doable

but the prospects are not bright.

Magnets from the fridge are handy

But their strength becomes a fright

Now the magnets hug each other

Stuck together what a sight!

I turn to Amazon, who else?

Pricey magnets a delight

Now at least I shower better

In the rat maze of the night.

Miracles

 

Miracles are convoluted things. Beyond the understanding of mere mortals.

Born of light, bursting with power, not bound by time or place, they might as easily be missed as marveled over.

It requires an understanding of indiscernible things to perceive a miracle, let alone understand it.

We want miracles to be glorious showy things, granting us our deepest wishes or validating some religious concept, and if it were up to fairy godmothers and good witches that might be the case. But those are mythical creatures and miracles are a force of nature! Maybe greater than nature!

The simple miracle of existence is beyond our true grasp. Imagine how much more complex the finer tuned ones are.

And still, the world is full of miracles.

Time to re-root

 

I used to love to grow flowers and plants.

My gardens were full of bulbs, seeds, and bushes that bloomed at different times of the year, but indoors I liked to experiment.

I discovered that if I broke off a piece of my favorite coleus it would almost instantly send out new roots into a glass of water, creating a brand new plant. Later I could take that plant and do whatever I wanted with it.

I think my life has been a lot like those shoots.

I do something with my whole heart, put my entire being into it and when it is over, or fails, I take that piece of me that is left and try to re-root it somewhere else.

It would be easy to give up, to say I have failed at those things I loved in the past, but I don't think that is really true. I just took them as far as I could and then had to yield to fate or whatever when it was time.

I am once more sending out roots in a new place, a new way, a new life and even though I am nearly three quarters of a century in age, I don't believe it is too late.

A beautiful life

 

Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the love and joy I feel when it comes to my children and grandchildren.

You might find that odd since I almost never see them in person at all. They live all across the country, from coast to coast, as far from me as it is possible to be.

And yet they fill my heart with the bits and pieces of their lives that they share with me.

My eldest is getting married next June and she just bought her dress. I was able to see this via video calls.

My older son just performed on guitar with my granddaughter with both of them singing, "Alleluia" and it was heartrendingly beautiful.

My youngest calls me nearly every day on his way home from work and we share our day, our dreams, our lives.

These are the moments that define a beautiful life.

Simplicity

The simple pleasures of not using up the gas in my car, or spending money on anything cannot be expressed in plain words.

Fully experiencing them requires eating eggs for the next two days thanks to a mistake by the water company who billed me twice and having to double up on the rent for one week then pay a deposit and this month's rent on top of that. Add the new bill for internet in my new apartment and life is rich.

But poor.

Thanks to all these fortuitous events I am not required to grocery shop or go anywhere until Wednesday when social security once more fills my coffers.

September will feel as if I have won the lottery!

Beautiful concept

 

Looking for love was something we were brought up to do. My generation often went to college to get that infamous MRS. 

The world was full of movies on love. West Side Story, Romeo and Juliet, My Fair Lady, Camelot, the list goes on and on, but real love isn't that cut and dried. 

Romance is easy. A girl can fall into romance so easily. She can write her own love story and fill in the details.

But it takes two for true love and I don't think I ever met the man who was meant to be my true love, my now and forever love, the one and only person willing to know me and share himself, who was worth walking through fire.

I know the love I have for my children and I have never experienced anything remotely close to that with another adult human being.

I think that kind of adult love is very rare, and I realize it is something that grows out of time, but I doubt if it is something I will ever know in this life.

Still, it is a beautiful concept.

Little steps

 

The last two years were a whirlwind of deceit. Exciting, romantic and ultimately devastating. It ended in financial ruin, a job that I loved, but that nearly killed me, and ultimately this move,

Waiting to find out if I could make the move was probably one of the most stressful periods of my life, but I am here now.

In the beginning all I could do was sit in my big chair with my feet up and try to take care of myself. Fixing food was a challenge. Showering was difficult. Anything else was almost unthinkable. Just getting to and from the bathroom was painful.

Every day now, I find myself doing more and more of those simple things I once took for granted.  Preparing food, standing up to shower, taking my trash down the hall to the chute, painting, making a birthday card for my niece and nephew, the things that add quality to my life.

It will be three weeks tomorrow since I got the keys to what may be the best move I've ever made.

God circle

 

I dreamed that my sister opened a tread on our staircase and we discovered the God circle.

It was a circle of old gods forty feet high, carved from sandstone.

The feet had narrow ankles and very wide toes that spread out across the base until they touched each other, almost like duck feet. The legs were simply a pillar and the top was carved to look like a shirt.

On the very top were smiling heads. One was John Ritter. Another was Woody Harrelson. Neither of those actors has any meaning to me that I can think of. I couldn't see the other heads, but there were at least six more.

My sister and I were trying to sleep on a fold out couch near a window in a trailer. We could hear a raging storm outside and feel the cool air from the open window blowing on us. The overwhelming feeling was one of fear. Where were our brothers, Tom and Henry? Where had Mom taken them?

In my waking life, both my mother and Tom have passed on, but Henry is alive and very successfully living a few miles away from me.

It seemed vitally important, in the dream, that I had discovered the God circle and that I remember what it looked like, but I have no idea why.

Why?

 

Sometimes the right words pop up at just the right time.

Because you are alive

Anything is possible.

Thich Nhat Hahn

This is the reason to keep on trying to eat right, drink enough water, move around more. Hope is an amazing gift.

Otherwise I tend to lean towards: I am already pretty old and my kidneys are pretty bad, so why try? Why bother to buy new clothes? Why think about redecorating? Why bother to fit in?

I've already made some progress.

Last week I grocery shopped and had to come home and go to bed sick.

Today I just had to rest a bit.

They said my brother would die before he was three years old. He lived to be sixty five!

That's why.

La dolce vita

 Isn't that what we all want in the end?

A beautiful sweet life where we can explore our most cherished dreams.

As long as there is breath there is life and every little second counts.

I have found a place I can afford to live more than decently and now I am figuring out how to settle in.

There are so many things to do when moving.

I have changed my address, registered to vote, figured out how to do my laundry here, even met a couple of people in the elevator and at a potluck. I have tried the local grocery stores and figured out things only older people need to figure out.

Now I need to regain some strength in my back and the journey continues.

Pedigrees of the past

 

We are all the product of our past, our family, the circumstances that generated our personalities.

The stories we heard growing up about our magnificent ancestors, the Indian princess, the student of Paderewski, the first woman doctor in Germany, the swashbuckling pirate? Those are the tales that families used to pass down. They were the pedigrees of the past.

The alcoholic father, the enabling mother, the compulsive obsessive grandmother? These are the things no one ever wants to mention, but they shaped us just as surely as those other glorious stories spun by hopeful people on hot summer nights.

Ultimately, it is not the stories we heard, or even the ones we tell that shape our lives.

It is our own determination, our own perseverance, our own grit and love and sweat and tears, that brought us to this place we are at today.

We have learned which family members are there standing behind and beside us and we are standing shoulder to shoulder with them too. 

These are the building blocks of success. The stories are just food for thought, something to feed our imaginations and add a little spice to the things that truly sustain us.