…noteworthy

This is the greatest gift: to choose a life one can admire oneself for living. — Mary Gordon, The Company of Women.

Have you chosen a life that you can admire yourself for living? Do you even have the sense that you’ve chosen your life at all? I keep thinking about that now that I have reached 72, and some months beyond, where “the days dwindle down to a precious view.” Well, hopefully not the days, but the years are dwindling down certainly, and some days do go more quickly than I can keep up with. In terms of years, I’ve been thinking that I could have 20 more at the most. That feels okay with me. My youngest grandchild will be 20; my oldest 32. That’s seems good. I will have seen them launched into their lives. I imagine my own children stepping back in their own lives to evaluate what’s next for the ways that they each have chosen. And if we live these years in the best possible ways for our relationships, our goodbyes will be the very best that can be when it’s time for them to let me, their mother, go.

I will have to admit right here, though, that I had considered having 20 years left a few years back when a friend suggested that he was planning to be around until he was 86. And then he’d be gone, he said, pass on over to another world, dead to this life. At the time, my first thought was that was too soon. But then the sound of 20 years as the number started to seem all right, and I played with that thought awhile. I mean, there’s a lot to cover in 20 years. And then I had another birthday. I was shocked when I realized that the number of years left in my life would no longer be 20 at all, but now would be 19 years. I’d be counting down on the years left of my life from there on out! I had never considered time in that way, and I had a strong resistance to that process, leaving it all alone for a while. Except now, of course, I’m not 66 anymore, or even 67, but 72. Now does seems to be the right time for considering having maybe 20 years remaining in this life. And with my next birthday, I’ll count down one more. From here, it sounds about right.

So once more, I’m back to this current now, and for me, with maybe twenty remaining years. How do I choose a life in this current now, this exact day, hour, moment, and in these remaining years that I can admire myself for living? Definitely, I know it starts with the actual current now, how I am living this day, this hour. I feel good writing, and can admire myself or at least appreciate and encourage myself for this focus now in these minutes. And a little further than these minutes, my husband and I will be leaving for DC on Tuesday to spend two weeks with our three-month-old granddaughter and her parents. That feels good, too. I could even choose to not take this trip for granted, but instead admire or at least acknowledge myself for planning this with my daughter and in my own life in order to make it happen. It occurs to me that choosing a life one can admire oneself for living, first might involve being willing to admire, or at least first acknowledge and even appreciate the small choices that we make, as well as how we follow-through on those choices. Sometimes if we look at too big a picture, it seems we haven’t done enough and we judge ourselves as not enough. (For me anyway, that kind of judgement of myself is not encouraging at all!) But coming in closer, if we allow them, some choices do shine.

In this current now, outside the windows near the computer, Confederate jasmine is in full bloom all along the fence of the side yard. I love it. I look out the window by the computer each morning and admire it, love it, revel in it. When I can, I notice the sun shifting on it through the morning hours and enjoy the difference in the brightness and shadow. This huge blooming vine is immensely, abundantly beautiful, and the blooms show up every year for about a month or so to delight me. My part of that, besides the planting of the small vines I did about 20 years ago, is now to allow myself to enjoy them when they are here. Somewhere in my mid-30s almost 40 years ago, was when I first started to slow myself down in the moments to see what was around me to see, and feel and enjoy. I admire, and certainly appreciate, that young woman who made that decision. She helped give me these moments welcoming the jasmine, and I appreciate that I have chosen a life in which these moments are important.

And in the bigger picture, I am looking at the words I write and where they go. The jasmine is noteworthy to me. It carries meaning for me of the abundance of beauty that simply shows up around me. I keep the beauty of it with me to revisit and appreciate again. I can only hope that what I write about it now in this moment is part of the flow of these days and years, and then as you are reading my words in your current moment, you will find them or the sense of them, worthy of note in some way for you.

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