Seventh Decade
The sky is soft blue as the
sun lightens to the east. These days, as I begin my 7th decade on
the planet, I have come to enjoy the early mornings – cool, sweet-smelling
summertime mornings. The birds whistling and chirping and singing to each other
and the universe is a daily reaffirmation that Mother Earth and the natural
world abound and abide, without too much regard for the sillyness or stupidity of
humans. The most that I do for them is to provide a shaded eve here or a bushy
shrub there, where they can build their homes and flutter about raising babies.
Short of allowing them to destroy my house, I do oblige.
I am coming to love my
friends more in this time of life. Perhaps that’s because I’ve lost too many of
them, sometimes as the result of tragedy or geography, sometimes negligence,
apathy or meanness. So many of us race through life during the early years -- competing,
working, climbing or falling off career ladders, raising families – when we are
too young to know what we’re doing, how to do it well, and how to avoid
mistakes. We learn those lessons later. And time – the good times and harsh
times -- passes so quickly. I look back often at so many mistakes, some
work-related, some having to do with relationships, things I did or didn’t do,
should have done or should not have done, the coulda-shoulda-woulda things that
can drive you mad or deep into depression or apathy if you let them. But mostly these days I see lost
opportunities.
Friends I might have made.
Colleagues with whom I could have built a connection. Loves I lost or threw
away. Trips I might have taken. Books I never read. Stories I never wrote. The
things I should have taught my children that I didn’t know.
The sense of loss can feel overwhelming
at times, and it seems to me that the only way to remedy the sadness and loss
of those dark memories, the ones that live in a shadow world of sorrow and
grief, is to build new memories, every day. To make new friends, to love better
the ones I have, and perhaps even give some old ones another chance, another
bite at the apple of John. (He’s sweeter now, I think.) To read new books,
write new stories. And to seek – and find, and nourish -- what brings me joy
and fulfillment. At this point, it is mostly about wind and waves, a boat and a
dream.
By grasping and holding those
things, the dreams, the friends and family who love and cherish me, I find I
begin to recoup the enthusiasm for life, for living a good life, that must come
naturally to the young, yet so easily and so often gets beaten out of us as we
grow older.
The sky turns pink now and
the birds have quieted. Cass sleeps with a soft inflow and outflow of breath,
innocent to my monkey mind. My children are down the road, or half a world
away, and I must trust they will be safe and well. Sleep escapes me some days,
but that’s a good excuse to write, to think about new friends, old friends, about
family, life and death, children, our elders and the planet we all live on,
that struggling, surging, shining, shattered Earth to which we, the billions of
her children, are irrelevant.
7.7.2013
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