Prayer

Oh Great Mother, tell me about Death.

What do you want to know, my daughter?

Do I have to die?

Shouldn't you be asking, Do I have to live?

But, Dear Mother, I love Life beyond words and this is why I don't want to die.

You know Death is only part of the Cycle of Life. The earth has given so much to us and we must give ourselves back to the earth.

Yes, I've heard it all before. What if there really is nothing beyond this realm? What if this is it?

Then, there is nothing.

But I'm afraid.

There is nothing to fear. You will simply come home to me.

But I'm having trouble believing in you. Believing you will be there for me.

I am here.

Are you?

Do you not feel me cradling your heart? Do you not see my breath whirling through the cedars? Do you not hear the voices of comfort I surround you with each day?

Yes, Great Mother. But isn't this merely the heart beating, the wind blowing, the birds singing?

I am here because you notice me.

But you haven't finished telling me about Death. I don't think I will ever be ready to die.

When the time comes you will be ready.

Are you sure?

I am sure

. And will you notice me, be ready for me?

I will, my dear daughter.

© 2012

From My Journal: Out of the Closet

I am afraid to write. For sometimes I am afraid to put into words the banality of my days. How I look in the mirror each morning and wonder if this is the day I will finally be beautiful. How so like my mother I am: scanning my closet, putting together an outfit that is color coordinated, brushing and brushing my hair, outlining my eyes, erasing dark, under-eye circles. The pruning and preening, the putting together is an act I go through to tell myself I am here and the day has begun. But who will see me? Who cares how I appear?

We camouflage ourselves from “outside life.” We try to live in order to forget about death. Dan's Aunt Dot died last week at 97. She was fairly healthy up to her early nineties. Then she moved near her daughter but not with her daughter. And I wonder why. Her last weeks were anxious and at times delirious. It is these downhill weeks that are discussed rather than the whole of the years before. Aging is scary. No one wants to get old. Dan's mother tells us, “Please shoot me if I get like Dot.” But Dot led an amazingly active life until her aging caught up with her. I don't want to lose my mind. I say I want to be aware and yet I can understand the need to escape the inevitable end.

I love when poets, artists, philosophers tell us to tune into and appreciate what we have now. Do I have all I need where I am at this ticking away moment? In the present I have no need for worry and anxiety because the unknown future is a ways out in front of me. In the present I have my mind, my dear husband, my friends, my garden, my home. In the present I can write and read, sing and walk whenever I want. So yes, I do have everything I need. With each passing day I am getting older, but with each passing day I am learning to accept my aging.

The mirror lies. Why I trust this mirror to reflect my true story is puzzling. I notice my face appears younger, the happier I feel. Cats constantly groom themselves. Birds pluck and preen their feathers. Gorillas groom each other. I have wanted for so long to go beyond the vanity and ego of appearance. We want to be seen and yet, most people see only themselves. I think my desire goes beyond the superficial. But in America we revere the surface. I want to be acknowledged and understood; I want to be appreciated. But isn't this true for most of us?

I watch young teen boys attending our alternative neighborhood high school skateboarding and smoking near my house. They want to be cool. One kid smokes, pauses, straightens his backpack, smokes. He waits. He wants to be later to school than the rest. We time our daily activities to coincide with what's in fashion. Being hip, however, is taking away our authenticity.

My dear husband tells me I am thoroughly authentic. He says I can't help but be myself. This need to be honest and open has gotten me in plenty of trouble. My outsider status is a badge worn proudly but can be a scarlet O. For I have trouble being honest with myself. The mirror's truth is I do want to be an insider. Do I want recognized fame and fortune? Perhaps, just a little.

I am running around the circle of present time. My aging face and body is here to stay. I don't want to be sculpted anew. I don't want my face to be lifted. I don't want my beautiful silver hair to return to black. I have been afraid to die and I know I am afraid to get old. I truly don't want more wrinkles, but I don't want to deny who I am either. Am I stupid or brave to go against make-up and fashion? I remember trying make-up in junior high. I didn't have the skill or patience then. I discovered in my sixties that outlining my eyes gives me a brighter appearance and so I have given in. But my lips are too narrow for lipstick and though continually searching for the right haircut for thinning hair, my silver white hair has grown on me.

Ingrained in our American culture is that we women are never satisfied with how we look. Not even the most beautiful feels comfortable in her skin. I have asked many gorgeous women if they know they are beautiful and most do not. If only they knew how lucky they are. Or is it lucky? We can never understand someone else from the outside and getting to the inside can be a challenge. I talk freely about beauty and aging. I talk freely about my death and aging fears. And this is what I believe is needed: a voice given, honest words written about each stage of this living progression. I want aging women to not always be staring into their closets. I want them to come out.

© 2012

My Mother's Angels

As my mother entered her mid-eighties, she began feeling more dependent and anxious. She occasionally had trouble falling asleep at night, and worried she would miss taking her daily medications at the appropriate times. My sister lived nearby, and fielded many a late night telephone call. I unfortunately lived several states away. Between us we sisters decided to give my mother a regular, evening bedtime call. I offered to call Mom four times a week. While the intent of these calls was to try to give peace to my mother, it turned out that these calls strengthened the calm, loving bond growing between my mother and me during her last years.

We began with a long, drawn out, almost comic “good evening.” I could feel my mother smile as our phone ritual commenced. At first I asked about her day, but this often led to her ailment complaints or to describing the misbehaviors of other residents, i.e., daring to sit where my mother always sat in the dining room. I started twisting this question around so as to have my mother tell me about two positive happenings and I would do the same. Weather was always a favorite topic, with her Arizona sun being too strong and my Oregon sun too scarce. Slowly, though, as I listened to my mother's concerns about meeting her schedule or having energy to exercise, I sensed what my mother needed was not a physical make-over but a spiritual lift.

My angel meditations started quite unconsciously. Instead of simply wishing my mother a good night's rest, I remembered the sleep meditations I used to do for my daughter when she was young. These meditations involved fantasy dream gardens, moon light and special stars. For my sometimes lonely mother I sensed she would love a nightly companion like a comforting, gently rocking earth mother. For my traditional mother I knew giving her her own special angels would be the best bedtime gift.

At the end of each call our routine became for me to gather my mother's angels around her bed.

“What do these angels look like,” asked my mom.”

“They're colorfully dressed in blues and greens with shimmering silver wings.”

“What about purple? I love purple.”

“You're right, Mom. Some of the angels have purple and pink flowing gowns.”

These angels would then protectively flutter their wings above my mother's bed and sing her a soothing lullaby. My mother's angels always promised her a restful slumber and wonderful dreams. Later the angels accompanied my mother during her days, giving her a contented, compassionate glow to her daily experiences. After several months of our nightly ritual, I noticed a decided lifting of my mother's emotional mood. She now easily found several positive events to relate about her day. The love between us increased as our “I love yous” became more soulful and deep.

To aid in my mother's meditations, I sent a sweet angel sculpture for her night stand. For her 90th birthday I knew a necklace with a silver angel charm would be just the thing. My mother gushed with praise and gratitude when the necklace arrived: “Oh, Vicki, it's so beautiful, it's so perfect. It's my favorite necklace.”

My mother wore her special angel necklace every day until she passed. As I sat by my dying mother's bed, I sang her favorite Broadway show tunes and shared with her that the angels were present surrounding her bed one last time. And I swear I could actually feel the presence of these comforting souls with me there in the room.

The angel necklace became my treasured remembrance of our loving last years' conversations. I have it hanging on a favorite picture of my younger, smiling mother.

© 2012

Google Earth

At times I consider myself a technophobe, steering clear of Internet surfing, tweeting, LOL cat videos and overly humorous or dramatic tragic stories. This is not to say I don't fall for the occasional sentimental heart tugger or sarcastic political commentary sent to me by husband, friends or daughter. My daughter admires her father for finding the most amazing factoids on the Net and being ahead of her with his pop cultural knowledge. This bond is not my bond, though I admit I envy their weird, nerdy communication. How grateful I am to have my family bale me out of my frequent blogging, e-mail, research and writing faux pas.

All of the above is not to say I am not fascinated with the possibilities the Internet presents. One day my husband, who loves geography and maps, was fooling around with“Google Earth. ” This is a site whose goal is to literally picture on the Net every residence in the United States. If we type in our address we can see our street, our block, our neighborhood, our city as if from up in the sky and we can then zoom in and observe our actual house and driveway with parked car, garden and avenue. My mouth dropped open as I asked Dan if he would zoom in on an old friend's house in another state. Soon there was her home with a dirt garden and several tarps covering her roof. This is a dear childhood friend whom I worry about, who, years ago, returned to living in her mother's 40s bungalow in the same small town we grew up in. She has no phone, and no longer replies to my letters. Like her mother, she has become an eccentric hermit.

The wonders of this Google Earth technology got me to thinking about its symbology. I have felt lately as if the whole of my past never even happened. Like Google Earth, when I zoom in on my childhood home, I wonder if I ever lived and grew up there. For the first eighteen years of my existence I resided on that corner, played in the neighborhood, walked ten blocks to the elementary school, attended the one and only junior high school and high school in my town. Currently in my sixties, my faded memories of these times give me the belief that another person had that childhood. It is as if I am looking through a telescope at the girl and the young adolescent I once was.

As a young woman I had dreams; I had ambitions that allowed me to be the first in my family to graduate from college, and took me several times to Europe to live, study and teach. But this era of my twenties seems also like zooming out with the browser from my childhood home to these other lands. I am the observer, standing faraway. Did I really study and live in Germany? Did I really return to teach English in a Mittelschule? I keep zooming skyward above the years of romance and marriage and birth, raising a child to adulthood and teaching, writing, slowly coming to the present.

Where am I and who am I in this moment of time? Where are my dreams and ambitions? Is this distant zoom-out effect a natural part of aging? I used to love creating photo albums, keeping souvenirs, ruminating over cherished crafted items from my beloved daughter. I've grieved more for the empty nest phase of my life than for any other stage. This grieving has taught me how the past can cause pain at its remembrance because whatever we have experienced cannot be revisited. Like Google Earth, I can zoom in on and away from the past, but I cannot hold this past in my present hands. With what Internet speed can we view all the way from the smallest flower to the wide expanse of the Milky Way; and similarly, I continue to marvel at how quickly I have reached the sixth decade of my living.

I never at the time thought I was in any particular phase or a stage: I was an adolescent or a young single adult woman forever. I was a teacher, a wife and a mother forever. But now it's as if these eras were filed and forgotten, and here I am. This part of my life, however, seems different. For like the zooming of Google Earth, I see all the other parts of my life behind me and as never before I know there will be an end. I have no idea about the number of earth years I'll be given. Will I be able to create a 60s segment with new dreams and ambitions I can look back on in my 70s and a 70s segment I can look back upon in my 80s?

Death played little part in my early and middle history. Now it rides on my shoulder wherever I go. And I continue to struggle with being just as daring and just as adventurous now as I was in my past. There are creaks and chinks in the armor, but my vibrant energy and spirit remain. I don't want to set myself aside from the societal mainstream because I have attained a certain amount of years. I want to create and give what and where I can. And so I shall... to the finite reaches of my personal outer space!

© 2012

Days Dog Gone

What happens to time? A minute can last forever if we are waiting for it to pass. A week can jet by where we wonder what we did. Being in my sixties I've been trying with fear, desperation, and,ultimately, futility, to lasso and account for each of my days. The hour glass is running out, I tell myself, as my anxiety levels rise. This isn't the healthiest way to live, and what I often end up doing is wasting even more of my precious hours escaping with trivial pursuits.

But let's back up. Time appears to run in circles and I know I am circling around what I'm trying to talk about. It all started with my dog, Lacey. She's getting old, nearly fourteen and a half in people years. We got her when my daughter was eight because when she was little and begged us for a dog we thought becoming eight years old sounded like it was in some distant land. We also thought in time she might forget her wish. But time is tricky. It's the outside, long shot, racing from the starting gate and rounding the track faster than anyone imagined. Eight came and the dog question was still strongly there and Lacey almost magically appeared to us.

Lacey has been a saint of a dog. She bonded more with my husband than my daughter or myself, even though he was the one who least wanted her. During my daughter's childhood she became the family member who led us on hikes, protected us from harm, and made sure both outdoors and at home we were all accounted for. The grown up daughter is on her own path now, and the continuing-to-grow-up parents are trying to create a new path without her, but with the old ties of a dog and several remaining cats.

I'm circling around to days spent and a dog aging. I'm sixty-four and though I've had a hard time with this empty nest phase, there's now a huge part of me that wants to be free to roam, free to create, free to tuck my days into my back pocket to do with as I wish. My sixties have begun to feel like my twenties when I sought out traveling and intellectual adventures, choosing to study and eventually to live abroad. But this time I want to do many of my undertakings with my husband. And I want to be ready for spur of the moment, day and weekend getaways.

Lacey goes through her ups and downs, just as aging people do. She's been fairly healthy for her age. But she has had trouble walking, trouble doing her business in the back garden rather than in the house, trouble with nervous comings and goings and early morning barking. I've woken up ready to have a creative day and before I can even adjust to the light, there's a mess to clean up. Or I've stayed up late and the dog wants to wake up super early. Sometimes Lacey needs help to stand up on all fours and my husband and I both gladly try to assist her. We have mostly been rewarded with relief, but we have also been rewarded with growls and snarls.

I know I'm sounding like a whiny ingrate. I know the value of a dog's loyalty and companionship. And Lacey gets gold stars all around. It's difficult because though we constantly talk with her, she doesn't necessarily understand why she can't be the younger, agile animal she once was. My husband tells me I am very caring and patient with Lacey. But I know this isn't continually so. Inside I've raged about my days being dictated by dog care...as I'm picking up back yard or indoor poop or because of these frequent accidents, letting Lacey outside as often as her heart desires. I kept thinking my dog days were holding me back, keeping me city bound and unable to risk breaking my staid, routine mold of living. My young old age is flying by, I'd tell my husband, and we can't take off on a moment's notice.

We've had dog/house sitters, but this requires planning. I suppose what I'm after is the less planned days of a youth gone by. I'm like my dog. I simply don't comprehend or believe in my aging process. But wait. I had a sudden revelation. This goes back to a minute seeming like an hour and a twenty-four hour period seeming like a minute. My dear Lacey is smarter than I give her credit for. I've written about my slower walks with my dog and this is where the revelation began. Lacey can't go far and she loves to meander and stop a thousand times on each block. Naturally I was frustrated at first. But then a light glowed. Lacey was telling me to slow down, smell the roses, be present to each sidewalk crack, each green leaf, each part of my day.

A dog knows time is dictated by the mind. And for a dog, his or her mind only works moment to moment. Lacey doesn't understand past or future. If she is mad at me one day, she has forgotten about it the next. Dogs forgive and forget. My mind makes me anxious about my slipping away days. I can lasso these days by erasing the rage, erasing the frustrations, erasing the burdens. What I realize is that dear Lacey isn't holding me back from my desires and hopes, I am. We humans are a dumb species as compared to the other parts of the animal kingdom.

Days lengthen when I patiently and lovingly take care of my duties while also putting in time for self-expression, self-love and family/friend communications. Worry, with its unmindful mutterings, filter the sands quicker through the hour glass. I know these things. I've known these things. To travel abroad is a legitimate dream; to live spontaneously in whatever time and place I happen to be is a legitimate possibility. More extensive travel doesn't fit with my current circumstances: an aging dog is actually at the bottom of my list; my daughter may only be living in Portland for the next three years; my husband's retirement will be official in two years; I will have finally worked out the emotional kinks of the empty nest phase and my relationship to time will become creative, flowing. So thank you Lacey, I need these dog gone days!

© 2011

From My Journal: Weeding

June 8, 2011: Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night or before dawn and can't go back to sleep. My brain buzzes with philosophical and spiritual queries. What makes up a life? With death knocking at the door how does one know one is truly living? Does it matter what we do as long as we do good works? Does anyone notice what we do? And need we care whether people notice us or not? I watch people living their lives and most people don't wrack their souls for meaning. The day comes, the routines fill the hours and the night finds us in bed once again. I've written about this before: the wanting to be noticed, the wanting to have a purpose, the beauty and extraordinary found in the plain and the ordinary. I'm trying to listen to my heart to tell me what to do, but sometimes the heart isn't speaking loud enough.

As I took Lacey for a neighborhood walk yesterday afternoon, I thought about my childhood neighbor. My sister Donna's best friend was Denise who lived with her mother, her grandmother and grandfather, her brother and her step father. Denise lived directly behind us on the corner of her street. After her husband, Denise's grandfather, died and as the full-figured grandmother aged, she could be seen most mornings in her nightgown bent over weeding her front garden. She wore absolutely no make-up and often no shoes; her graying, windblown hair was uncombed and her thin nightgown showed off her wrinkles and flabby muscles. I use to wonder why she was weeding in her night clothes and I use to wonder at her focused contentment doing such a mundane task. As an ever curious adolescent, I did notice her and as an aging adult I do remember her.

This grandmother's garden was never beautiful but rather plain despite each morning's work. But whatever drew her to her garden, drew her to her reason for living. I understand this neighbor now. I understand this morning ritual; I understand the weeding, for I love to garden and I love to weed. What this neighbor probably was discovering and what I am realizing is that as we age we love feeling the earth's soil beneath our feet, we love watching plants grow, we love watching life happening before our very eyes.

If truth be told I am happiest in my garden. Hours pass unawares. Philosophical queries no longer matter. I am in the moment. I am crouched down clearing a space between my pea plants and I am following the curves of the leaves, the slender stretching of the stems, the white flowers transforming themselves into dangling eatable pods. I do love beauty and so I work to make my garden beautiful. I have raised beds where my front lawn used to be and I consider my flower and vegetable garden a gift to our neighborhood... for people walk by and give comments of notice and gratitude.

How I wish planting, weeding, cultivating were enough for me. But though the brain is calmed and even stops while my feet are grounded, it starts back up again soon after. The grandmother instinctively knew she wanted to return to the source, just as I know I want to feel earth's presence before I leave her. That's why I now see the blueness of the blue jay, the black dots of the ladybug and the slime trails of the snails. But just as I am seeing these details of being, I admit too want my giving and my gifts to be seen.

* * * *

I keep writing even though currently I am not sure what I need to write about. My lack of sleep tells me there are further worlds and words to explore, further stories to compose. Yesterday was Louise Erdrich's birthday, a favorite author of mine. Part Native American and part German, she leans towards her Ojibwa background and tells earth bound, complicated tales about ordinary people. Her writing mesmerizes me. She also owns a Native bookstore, Birchbark Books, in her home state of Minnesota. For years I have scanned her website and for years I have yearned to own a pair of the silver feathered earrings she wears and sells at this bookstore. Josef Reiter, a Native jeweler, made these earrings especially for her and she calls them her lucky earrings, wearing them constantly.

Yesterday, forgetting it was her birthday, I scanned the Birchbark website which I haven't done in an extremely long time. I saw mention of the earrings once again and on a whim I e-mailed about the possibility of ordering a pair. I was caught by surprise at the fast reply to this e-mail, noting that they did have one pair in stock and I could order by mail if I called the bookstore. I believe in spiritual alignment and so I called and ordered this longed for jewelry. I am such a simpleton because I rationally know no earrings can be lucky unless we think them so or give them such meaning. And this is my answer: meaning is given not found. Purpose is what we decide it is going to be. I bought the earrings because I have wanted them for years and have decided lately not to deny my desires. For me the silver feathers are to be a symbol of taking myself more lightly and I am sure they were custom-made with care and love. That I ordered them on Ms. Erdrich's birthday is an unintended blessing.

What I want to weed out of my life is this tendency I have to envy other's lives. How I wish I could be the prolific writer Louise Erdrich is. Where do her stories and discipline come from? I see beauty and tragedy in her words just as I see beauty and sad eyes in her book jacket pictures. Why do some people appear to have extraordinary lives and why does my life at times seem so damn limited and simple? I have been told it is our choice how our lives unfold. Whether we choose our childhoods or our parents or the place we are born, we can choose our reactions, our thoughts and our emotions. Our foundation story may be given to us, but I want to believe we can change the storyline as we gain in years and awareness.

I have in part given myself such a narrow storyline. At least this is how it feels in my sixties. I wouldn't redo my living and traveling abroad and I wouldn't redo my love of both German, English and women's literature; and I wouldn't redo meeting Dan or becoming a mother or working with young people as well as the teaching of my community education women's studies classes. I think I would redo my education to go beyond teaching to become a child psychologist or even to study writing. But I've told myself time and time again that studying a craft can be impossible. Yet, I see writers who have published and have degrees in creative writing and often become teachers of writing while they write. This guessing game about what I might have done only serves to show me I would have lived my life as I have lived it. I gave my full heart to each stage and so I am asking myself why can't I give my full heart now to what is in front of me?

To accept my accomplishments for what they are, to accept my ordinary and at times extraordinary experiences, to accept me for being me. This is what I have been and seem to always be struggling with. I have to keep weeding, I have to keep feeling the dirt beneath my feet and I have to keep having faith that my words will come and my words will flow and I will write what I am gifted and meant to write.

(c) 2011

From My Journal: The Leaning Tree

We are in Ashland, sitting on a bench on the edge of what we fondly call the upper duck pond. This morning after a scrumptious breakfast at the Greenleaf Restaurant, we hiked all the way through the lush winding trails of Lithia Park to the reservoir at the top. We have always wanted to make it to the reservoir and so we have. Funny, how we so often tell ourselves we want to do this or that and then years later we finally do what we say. Lithia is my all time favorite park. It is full of memories of Dan and I attending our friends' wedding in a canopy of trees, of us and smaller Aspen wading in the rock strewn, bubbling creek, climbing the monkey bars, picnicking on the manicured lawns. Maybe we put off climbing to the top because now we want to carve out new pathways for ourselves as a couple or because we never thought with a little daughter to go so far.

How far have we come? It seems like a hop, skip and a jump. We return alone to Ashland yearly for our wedding anniversary. I say alone because I associate Ashland with family and with Aspen's Godparents, Sue and Mark, who once lived here. I miss family and I miss the Godparents. But slowly this is becoming our place, Dan and my place, for culture, for romance, for good food and wine. And for Lithia Park. There used to be swans on the lower duck pond. Swans mate for life and these swans appeared to be a contented couple. I could sit for hours watching them preen, swim and reach their graceful necks towards the sun. They had each other and this always seemed to be enough. Dan and I enter our sixties together and every single day I am in awe and gratitude that I have this precious life mate. There are presently no swans and lore has it that one or the other met a tragic end.

I miss the swans and what I am beginning to realize is that though I loved parenting above all else, I have missed the closeness of Dan. Not that we weren't close as mother and father but our gaze was directed outward at our beloved child and not towards each other. We still stare fondly at our amazing adult daughter, but now we have time to stare back at each other and know we have a fortunate companionship. Where would I be without Dan's humor, our bantering, our serious philosophical revelations, his gourmet cooking? Where would I be without his patience and compassion, for I can be a mental and emotional basket full?

I have this tendency to over think every stage of my living. Thus words and writing are my huge life lines. There is so much to understand, so much to figure out. From early childhood on, I've been a curious, insatiably verbal human being. My dad, his mother and his sister, were the same way. The Kochs love to tell stories and we have this ability to turn anything into a riveting tale. We also have this tendency to veer far off and away from the topic at hand. But to me this is being creative, taking the unexplored side trails which eventually do link up with the main pathway.

My topic lately has been getting older. And for some reason I was feeling older in Ashland. I looked in the mirror and my wrinkles seemed deeper and I was having a bad hair weekend. Then Friday night we decided to attend the Cabaret down the street. Like going to the reservoir, we had talked about attending this musical, mystery performance for years. We sat up in the balcony with a glass of wine before the show. There was this huge crystal chandelier above us and inlaid carved edging all around. The colorful, vaudevillian-like stage threw us back to a bye-gone era. And bye-gone was where we seemed to be. The house was full of silver-haired patrons. I saw one or two young people but that was it. Everyone was eating pre-show fancy steak dinners accompanied by bottles of wine. OK, this makes me feel old, I thought. When I am among all senior citizens then the senior citizen bull's eye hits home. My God, help me! I am one of them!

The mirror and the cabaret got my cozy weekend off to a false start. I was wallowing in pitiful old age remorse and I was swimming in superficial seas. Why couldn't I be beautiful? Why couldn't I look younger? Is this the end? Will everyone see me as just another old lady? My aging vision had everything to do with outward appearance and very little to do with my authentic inner self. I realize most American media points to youth and beauty. But do I need to be swayed by most media? It has been and still is difficult to grow up female. We aren't suppose to show gray. We aren't suppose to show wrinkles. If we prefer to gracefully and naturally grow old, we are taken out of the main stream and put into the back room. But here I was sitting in a room full of gray and everyone was laughing and no one cared what anyone looked like.

Dan and I are sitting on a bench on the edge of the upper duck pond. It is Sunday morning after our hike up to the reservoir. I am scanning the pond, intently watching the mating ducks, the turtles sunning themselves on the boulder, the varied waving-in-the wind species of trees. Then I notice across the waters one lone, tall and skinny, nearly branchless pine tree. This tree is leaning like an acute angle over the pond. I must write about this tree, I thought. “Won't they cut that tree before it falls?” I ask Dan. “It will be OK,” says Dan, “I'm sure they regularly check the trees.” The wind blows and I watch the tree sway. It may be an older tree, I reflect, but it continues to enjoy the breeze and the birds resting on its few remaining limbs.

I want to be able to lean and to be fully living. It has taken me the weekend, but the mirror does not tell the whole story. The young Vicki and the older Vicki look out through my sparkly, deep blue eyes. Why can't I learn to lean into rather than away from my growing older? I am who I am despite my years. Why do I worry so? I feel enormous gratitude for my health and my vigorous energy and I want to continue to feel gratitude for the gift of each day I am given. I am not ready to be cut down. Like this beautiful leaning tree there's strength and purpose remaining.

(c) 2011