Faster every year

Shopping on Wednesdays is slower. It is senior citizen day. It seems I am recognized as a fellow traveler. This is a good thing.

The woman

In the motorized cart

Told me

My birthday is in two days.

I will be 79.

It’s hard to grow old

Oh…

But you must know this too.

I said

I do

But I also know it’s important

To claim every year.

Yes

She said

They go so fast now.

Yes

I said

Faster every year.

Different ways

I have written about green before. I just listened to On Being, an interview with Jean Vanier. A friend from school, a missionary who served in Guatemala, is now considering Tanzania as her next mission field. My daughter has the whole world at her feet, in her hands. They all feel green with growth. I admit to feeling green... in other ways.

I find myself envious:

Green with the experiences

Green with the opportunities

My friends face:

Mission fields beyond my capacities

Except for the experience

Of prayer,

The opportunity

To stand on the sidelines,

Cheer the possibilities,

Witness the realities

Of wider life

Beyond my own.

After all,

Isn’t this

What it’s all about?

There are different ways

To be green.

I tell myself

I proclaim

There are different ways

To be green

Birthday nap

Today is my beloved's birthday, nigh on our daughter's high school graduation, nigh on my unscheduled seizure activity.  This is the year we are officially past anything that resembles middle age.

He takes his birthday nap,

The cat ensconced.

This is the year

The concept of middle age

Flies out the window,

Creeps out the door.

This is the year we launch

Our daughter.

This is the year

We realize we don’t live to be

One hundred twenty.

This is the year

We realize

Just so much

Will fit

And no more

Except there is always room

For a birthday nap

And a cat.

The woman, now in blue

I watch the woman, now in blue, across the way.  She is kin to me.
Thank you, May, for the invitation to join the KNOW group at church.

The woman

Now in blue

Has massed the ducks.

Her offering of corn

Is stored in the garage.

She moves more slowly

This year.

I was invited to join

The senior women*s group at church

Yesterday.

It is a supreme compliment.

Maybe soon

I will mass the ducks

Like the woman

Now in blue

Across the way.

Maybe soon

I will gather up the cardinals,

The squirrels

Like maybe St. Francis did

When he got older,

Beckoned the animals

To come to him.

I*m sure his garage was full of corn

Like the woman

Now in blue.

New territory: dream at fifty

Sometimes dreams are worth revisiting, maybe especially a few years on.  Now I am fifty-seven.  I remember nothing from the list I made in the dream ... only that I could fill it halfway, so I somehow wasn*t done.  I have the rest of that newsprint to fill before I*m done.  I take comfort in my package of markers, with all the colors of the rainbow.  I regularly tell people that there is a richness to being in one*s fifties, a richness I could not have predicted, a richness worth many orange Dreamsicle cakes.  It is new territory indeed.

When I turned fifty,

The hundred year old woman

In my parish was soon to die.

Another woman in the parish

Made me an orange Dreamsicle cake

In honor of my passing

Into new territory.

I shared a piece

With the hundred year old woman

In honor of her passing

Into new territory.

That week I dreamed I entered

A huge courthouse,

Gray and stone and somewhat dim.

Many of us waited there.

While we waited we were each given

A Large piece of newsprint,

Our own box of colored markers.

We were told to list our accomplishments

Before we left by the door

On the other side of the building.

I began but only filled the page

Halfway.

I left the newsprint

Where it was.

I kept the markers,

and exited the building

The way I came.

I went back out

Into the sunlight.

Older eyes

It seems I will never get an exact diagnosis, and I figure I really don*t need one.  When my eyes are blurry, I don*t drive.  When they are clear, I do.  The blurriness comes and goes with bright light, the barometer, hydration, sleepiness, and stress, to name a few things.  I pay better attention these days, cut myself some slack, and know better and better what is important.  Older eyes, that*s it.  Doctors don*t have everything figured out.

The specialists never did figure out

Why my eyes go blurry

From time to time.

The retina guy

Said it must be the optic nerve.

The optic nerve guy

Said it was the retina.

The neurologist says

It is migrainous activity.

I have decided

The correct diagnosis is

Older eyes.

Now I focus on different things.

Bright light makes me squint.

I cannot read and lead worship

At the same time.

Certain things

Are more clear

Than they have ever been.

Older eyes

Help me claim back

What has been mine

From the beginning.

The youngest of the oldest generation

 I grew up in Minneapolis.  Now my son lives here. I learned to drive in Lakewood Cemetery.  My daughter drove most of the way north from Chicago.  She is learning to drive in different places.

It*s not the same place I left.
Of course it never is.
The last time we buried
The end of the generation above.
I am the youngest of the oldest generation
Now..
We all learned to drive
In Lakewood Cemetery.
Little traffic.
No small children to dart out
make us practice our braking,
Only uphill and downhill parking,
Curve after curve after curve.
Still
It"s not the same place I left
Or even returned to
Ever.
It never is.
Three years ago
We buried the last.
Now I am the youngest
Of the oldest generation.
My daughter practices her driving
On freeways,
In construction zones,
Me in the back seat:
The youngest
of the oldest generation.

I love metaphors

I just finished Richard Rohr*s Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life.  I think I will read it again.  It is difficult to describe.  Probably not a book to discuss one evening in a book group.  It helped me name a number of things I have been experiencing, including the lack of a need to box and label things to keep them in order.  I was delighted to hear my daughter declare a love for metaphors this week.  Another connection.

I love metaphors,

She says,

Fifteen and learning

There is more than one way

To describe anything.

I am in the second half of life

As we know it.

I love metaphors as well.

The book on the second half of life

Speaks of rafts and shores,

Finally landing in a place

And staying there.

Me?

I am a desert island

No raft adrift on an endless ocean

Seeking shore.

It is an endless ocean but I

I am somehow not adrift.

I do not need to travel anywhere.

I discover where I am.

I know shore connects to shore

Under the water.

I know shore connects to shore

With the water itself.

Sometimes new land emerges in a place

Never imagined

Underground oceanic volcanoes

I have never seen,

Seismic activity on the Richter scale

If I measure.

New unclaimed land.

I am connected there as well.

With my daughter

I love metaphors

We discover there is more than one way

To name anything

And everything.