THE TIME OF MY LIFE

            Today is a “Robe Day” for me…

no need to go outside for anything,

 so I’m staying in my robe, and loving it. 

Every day swishes by with sweetness:

“But at my back I always hear

 Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;”

            I always remembered 

that line

 from Andrew Marvell’s poem,

 “To His Coy Mistress”, 

wherein he was, well, seducing her!  

I was a twenty-something, 

studying English poetry, 

and while the phrases resonated, 

they didn’t reach down into my core, 

my heart and soul.

            I had to be this age, this appalling age of 76, 

to understand the sound 

of that chariot in my ear.

But I can also take some consolation

 in Marvell’s closing stanza:

"Let us roll all our strength and all 

Our sweetness up into one ball,

.......... 

Thus, though we cannot make our sun 

Stand still, yet we will make him run."

            I don’t take those closing lines

 to mean that I should mindlessly rush

 through my remaining days.

 I like to feel that they mean 

we will blaze through our race with the sun, 

keeping that sun hopping, 

as we “tear our pleasures”. 

Funny how these words

 popped up in my subconscious, 

and how their context, 

my “advanced” age, 

enhances their meaning.

            Most studies declare

 that the happiest part of our lives 

is usually our last years.

 Despite the encroaching physical insults 

rendered by age

 (arthritis, canes, incontinence, blah, blah, blah.), 

our mental state 

remains serene and blooming. 

More than at any other time in my life, 

I am really at peace. 

I don’t experience the explosive love

 I felt for my infant and toddler children….

that was a joy never to be equaled. 

But I no longer chase after that joy

(I couldn't run or chase 

on these aging legs anyway)

           But  I WILL “make much of my time”,

 as another poet, Robert Herrick, 

blatantly seduced poetically in

 “To Virgins, To Make Much of Time”

He proudly advertises his lechery in the title:

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

   Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today

   Tomorrow will be dying. 

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,

    The higher he’s a-getting,

The sooner will his race be run,

   And nearer he’s to setting. 

............

  Then be not coy, but use your time,

   And while ye may, go marry;

 For having lost but once your prime,

   You may forever tarry.”

            Oh, those leering 17^th Century British poets—

what sly cunning charmers they were!

            They were the proponents of the

 “Carpe diem” philosophy, 

to “Seize the day” 

(THIS day, this young day, 

when all the world 

is fresh and bright and possible).  

How interesting to me now 

that I still remember these poems so well, 

            William Wordsworth

 also struck me with these words:

“Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind;

            So, THAT can be my comfort and my strength:  

“What remains behind.”???

 That is indeed 

why 

this time of life is sweet

….and bittersweet…

We can look back on a life

 full of everything….

and still savor not just

 these memories, 

but the flavor and joy

 that still lingers in our heart.

     

Huh....

 I do believe that I AM 

having “the time of my life” 

right now!

A SCHEME REVISITED

         If my life becomes “stagnant”, I may get an inkling to freshen it up.  Perhaps the grandest scheme and dream upon which I embarked was our move to New Mexico after my husband retired in 1994.  Our youngest son, Jeff, had graduated high school, and I (erroneously) decided that all our children were now securely “in place” with their lives.

        So we could therefore drastically change our lives, and their lives would fall happily into place.....

....NOT.....

                                     

         Even now, almost twenty-four years later, I am still sorting out the reasons I so wanted this move, a decision that I came to regret within the first year after we moved.

         Milder weather was one factor….we had experienced some typically cold and snowy Midwest winters, and I was usually crazed by February with all the ice and cold and cloudy days.

         A chance for a “fresh” start with a pretty newly built home, in a place that we didn’t know at all….I suppose even that had its appeal.  I had tired of all the social situations where I had “forced” my husband to attend, which he increasingly merely tolerated in his typical stoic fashion.  Of course, this fresh start meant that all my family and friends were no longer a few miles away from me….since I never stopped loving all those same social situations which he dreaded!

         So we moved, with two out of our three young adult children moving with us, to start college at the University of New Mexico near our pretty new home in a suburb of Albuquerque.   Within one year, our youngest son Jeff had to move back to the Chicago area, because he missed his friends.  Our daughter Niki was still fine in New Mexico, because she (like her Dad) really welcomed the complete change.

         Our oldest son Matt came to grieve our move, but never could articulate this grief, except to painfully avoid talking to me for some time after the move.  He had stayed behind, making his way through his college days in the Chicago area, eventually moving in with my widowed mother…as did my youngest Jeff!

         I began visiting my “sweet home Chicago” within six months of our move; by two years out, I knew that I regretted the decision.  What surprised me, besides missing my access to a bounty of family and friends, was being "attached" to Chicago.  I grew up there, and it was an anchor which I just took for granted....until it was replaced by (nice-enough but unremarkable) city like Albuquerque (I mean, who can even spell it?).

         I really never developed any special friendships in New Mexico, despite the part-time jobs which Dave and I took up.  Neighbor attachments also eluded me.   I see now that my lifelong friends in the Chicago area, were often school chums, and in a few cases, work chums….as well as my beloved siblings and their families.  And I had so many years of closeness with them, which was always just, well, THERE 

         One of my friends who had to relocate early in her marriage (and never moved back) had warned me that you can never replace your oldest dearest friends....at best, you will substitute newer, but different ones. Now I know what she meant! 

         My “baby” sister married, and then became pregnant while I was away---and that sealed it for me.  I HAD to be with her when she had her baby, which was three years after our move.

         One year later, and four years after our move, we returned to the Chicago area.  And we were once again saddled with a mortgage, which we had escaped when we purchased our pretty Southwestern home.  Mortgages would continue to weigh me down, up to the last mortgage too many, in 2009, when I was widowed and retired myself…..and had to “walk out” of my condo home because I could not get the too-high mortgage refinanced.  

         My husband would have stayed contentedly in New Mexico.  He never required close friends; I suppose he thought that my “friendship” was enough.  

         But I moved back, and they followed.  And I am all these years later, indeed an amazing twenty years later, still sorting out this huge decision and all the false dreams upon which I based this decision.

         I regret mostly the loss of money which we could have giving our children to help them with college funds.  They all had to take out student loans because we were too “selfish” to stay put and help them out.  I will NEVER stop regretting this sternest repercussion resulting from our move.

         My husband David loved his retirement life in New Mexico—his part-time job was at a model railroad store in Albuquerque.  He had adored model trains throughout his life, and always had a detailed layout wherever we lived.  When we moved back to the Midwest, he “exploited” his other expertise when he went to work for Ace Hardware part-time.  He was the handiest of handy men, and so was also perfect for that job too.  He never complained to me about our about-face moving back.  It was not in him to complain or delve into his psyche, or confide those feelings he MUST  have had about all this moving about. 

I’ll never know—I couldn’t ask him and he couldn’t tell me.

THE NEW SMOKING

 Sooooo....if sitting is the new smoking, 

then I'm sitting about three packs a day!

Who knew, that in the days

 of my glorious retirement,

that I should be moving around!

You must know that sitting

has always been my favorite mode

of non-exercise.

When other, more crazily active kids,

were climbing trees—

I was sitting under those same trees

reading a book.

My rigorous Catholic education,

seemed to require

that I participate in the occasional sport,

like basketball (I did poorly)

while wearing hideous gym outfits—

ugly skirted affairs,

so ladylike in action shots

like these:

Too bad that this yearbook photo
 was not in color--then you could enjoy 

this stylish outfit
 in HIDEOUS MAROON,

worn with dubious style by
the Siena High School class of 59. 

.....But I digress.....

I’m trying to analyze my lifelong dislike

For activity, as in sports or tree-climbing.

I did the typical childhood biking

 and roller skating

 and swimming.....

up to a certain point.

In my youth and later young adulthood,

jogging and walking for health

had not yet been revered

and touted as it is now.

But that’s not my excuse for all this

smoking/sitting I’m doing now.

I do have arthritis issues,

which I advertise by walking with a cane.

(Actually, people hold doors for me

all the time because of that

handy little cane!).

Mainly, I enjoy my sitting/smoking vice

because my adored hobbies now are:
*BEING ANYWHERE WITH MY GRANDKIDS
(WATCHING THEM AT SPORTS, RECITALS,
PLAYING UNO AND BOARD GAMES)
*BEING WITH MY KIDS AND FRIENDS 

*READING

*BEING ON MY LAPTOP

*EMAILING

*WATCHING DVDS OR TV SHOWS

*EATING
*DRINKING 
(COFFEE IN THE AM/
WINE IN THE PM)

*TALKING ON THE PHONE

*PLAYING SCRABBLE ON MY SMARTPHONE

*VISITING FAVORITE PEOPLE AT LUNCH

*DRIVING TO SEE THESE FAVORITE PEOPLE.....

And, coincidentally,

ALL THESE ACTIVITIES

 ARE BEST PERFORMED

WHILE SITTING.

(Ahem), excuse me,

it’s time to light up again!