Becoming Old

While driving from St. Pete to Dade City early this morning in a driving rain I realized that my shoulders were hurting from the strain of trying to see in the dark, navigating carefully on the slick interstate. I thought of the last decade of my life and how many life-changing events there have been in the last ten years.

On my sixtieth birthday our whole family gathered for a wonderful frolic in south England in a rented manor house. This was a few months before 9/11, and it was a wonderful and carefree two weeks. Since then, we have had national upheavals of a major kind, and family changes: a divorce, two marriages, three more grandchildren born, another split, many changes. My husband and I retired from many years of work and we saw our fortunes diminish in the recession. We rejoiced in the election of Obama and believed that change was coming.

I am gleeful with my life in retirement! I have the time to pursue my artistic bent. I work all the time making quilts, painting, making pottery and writing. My memoir about my thirty-five years of teaching was recently published. I volunteer. I am making a network here in my new community. I am a devoted gardener and have already put in the fall vegetable garden. My husband spends time on the property and makes furniture and volunteers as the chair of The Nature Conservancy in Florida. We work on our land, fixing fences, mowing, removing the soda apples- those invasive plants we have agreed to get rid of since our land is in a conservation trust for Florida.

When we go to the city, where we have a lovely town house, there is nothing to do except water the cacti. When we lived there full time, we were working at our intense jobs, keeping going from day to day. Now, when we infrequently go there it is to see friends, attend board meetings, volunteer at our grandson's school. Our daughter and her son and my sister who live there in St. Pete keep us going each week.

But it is here on the ranch where we live that our hearts are. Quincy, our grandson who visits often, calls it his 'other house', and indeed, he has his own room and toys here. He knows where everything is and he's comfortable with everything. And to me, this is heaven, where I go out each day to look at the birds and the wild flowers and check the level of water in the swamp. And, at night I look at the bats flying and the magnificent stars that keep me humble. Every day is a new adventure and I feel such wonder and thankfulness that I could be here in this peaceable kingdom. I love sharing it with Quincy.

But when we go to our town house in the city, it seems pretty thin soup, though we love to see our friends. Everyone needs to have a purpose. At home here on the ranch we have a purpose of doing the daily ranch chores, making our art, community work, work for Florida. And how long can this last? (I am thinking twenty years.)

So, getting old is not so easy! Your kids never think of you as anything but the energetic people they used to know.

What continues throughout life are the agonizing questions that can have no answer.