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August 11, 2011

     You know, I used to call the Post Office the minute I realized there was no mail In my mailbox.  For there is never a day when I do not receive something.  They were always kind and accommodating and eventually I would get my mail.  My mailbox is hard to find for  newcomers on the route and this dance has been going on for years, especially when Manuel is off.

I realized this happened the other day and I did NOT call the P.O.  I didn't seem to care.  What's so important that I have to fuss so?  I thought about it and said 'Nothing'.  Now that is different.  One could say it is because all my correspondence takes place on the computer now.  But I do not think that is it.

 

I think it has to do with the way I am aging.  I seem very content inside me, when I stop to look and listen.  If I find myself tearing up, it is because I hurt for the children…all the children all over the news, hungry, sick, suffering and for some close to me who I don't seem to be able to do too much for and they need so much.  So that's there.  You shouldn't think that because I am content, there is no pain.  A good life contains all of it and to my mind it is important to allow for all of it.  Feel it.  Acknowledge it.  Learn from it.  Be it.  It is life.

'This is my life' and I don't want to miss any of it.  (I have that in quotes because it is the name of my column in the new

Berkeley community newspaper, "The Berkeley Times".

 

But to get back to the issue at hand.  I am aging in a particular way.  I feel so different than when I was young and busy, busy, busy and so diligent about deadlines for this and that.  With four children, you had to be on top of it, assuming so much responsibility for so much every minute of the day, in order to have any peace inside.  Got that done.  Can check this off.  All are in school healthy.  Everyone of them is practicing their music, doing their homework, seem content…

Now, I don't want to do very much of anything…except sit at my computer and read and respond to my emails, play my solitaire games (which I do believe is helping to keep my mind cooking) and I also love to talk deep talk with my friends, relations and kinder whom I really love.

No more 'get up and go' at all.  I never leave my house alone and when I do it is on someone's arm and usually to shop for groceries or go to an Elders'Guild meeting or special occasion of a blessed family member.

 

I just like to be all alone in the silence or listening to PBS.  I rarely watch.  It accompanies me on the computer in the evening.  I love it!

I stay up very late in the stillness of life.  All is asleep, even the plants.  There is a lovely  hum to the universe at one, two, three in the morning.  I feel blessed.  I seem to let everything go except my personal cleanliness, a certain superficial order in my aerie (where I LIVE…sleep, do telly, the computer and shower) and my kitchen downstairs which I do manage to keep in clean,quiet, pleasing order.

I do not push myself to DO anything, but make my bed every morning.  I do not read my mail unless it is a bill or photos of some of my grandchildren in the act of growing…delightfully.

Nothing.  Not even things I probably should do.   I refuse to go to the MD's.  I'm fine.  Feel healthy and strangely strong and I can hardly lift a thing.  But I have always been so healthy and strong, I am just travelling along on that old feeling.  I just hope I die in my bed and without too much discomfort or todo.  I do take care not to fall.  As my physical therapist son admonishes, "Mom, you do not want to go to the hospital with a broken this or that.  People die there when that happens.  Be very conscious where you put your feet."

And I do.  I was falling there a while back.  I do not think I was conscious of the differences in me.  After that, I THINK when I put one foot in front of the other.  I am careful…full of care.

I shall continue that way.  I do not like to fall at all.  I do not like to hurt myself.

 

There is no more push to do anything.  Really no oughts or shoulds.  I am thinking of getting someone to help me with the few things left I automatically do, sometimes very late, such as my bills.  I used to be so scrupulous and prompt.

Since I do not move anymore hardly, I have little appetite, so do not cook too much and have little to clean up, which I sometimes leave for the morning…Something I never did when I had an army to feed every night.  The dishes got done, or at least all put away in the dishwasher.  I don't even use it anymore except when there are many here for dinner, which is rare these days.

These are not complaints.  Far from it.  I am overjoyed.  I can let it all go.  My ego wasn't all tied up with all the shoulds and oughts I managed to fulfill.   It is over.  I am free to do absolutely nothing and feel no guilt!   Hallelujah!

 

I am growing old differently than my friends.  I bet my ex-husband feels the same way as I do, or at least close.  Not even sure why I say that and will probably never know for we are not In touch, but my children might know and they would discuss it with me.  I keep thinking he was in my life for such a long time and it was such a busy time, what with getting a profession at Cal, adopting four children, his going for his Phd, which he never completed until he married his next wife, which was fine.  I didn't mind at all.  It was his life and as long as he and I were fine in all ways and we were, no problem.

That's another thing, in my dotage, I have a tendency to see things as if I am looking through rose-colored glasses, as they say.  Everything seems to be touched by fairy dust.  It seems to have such a positive spin when I comment on almost everything.  I don't seem to remember any of the down side, like of my marriage.  I ended it just because I didn't want to be married anymore.  And I was right.  I never had a thought about getting married.  It wasn't anything I ever WANTED.  I just wanted to KNOW everything there was to know, in and out of books.  My husband was a lovely man.

Very  unto himself, but strangely, I think that suited me very well.  That is how I could live so long with him.  Ostensibly, I was alone.  He was busy working and studying and away most of the time.  I was with myself and sometimes the children, especially when they were wee, before schools.

 

Now I am really alone and feel I have waited my whole  life for just this.  I can't think of another life…of anything that could make me happier than what I am living in now and have been living in for a few years.  No close ties.  No one around me.  I have space.  I am free.  I am happy.