A Birthday and an Anniversary
Warning: This is a love letter to you
Today I turned 67.
I will now share a list of 67 things I’ve learned about life.
Kidding, kidding. I’m either a slow learner or a thoughtless one, for there is no no way I have 67 pearls of wisdom for you. I have three life lessons for you, maybe. We’ll see how this goes.
Last Wednesday I looked in the mirror and thought, I look older than my mother ever did. Made sense, I quickly realized. I’ve lived five years longer than Mom.
I’ve written before about how it felt to become the age of my mother at her death, and readers’ responses were full of their own stories about this milestone. We count the days to that birthday, and brace for impact. Not the best way to celebrate the chance to keep going, perhaps, but reflecting on our good fortune can help reset our compass. What shall we do with this gift of more time? No matter how challenging the moment, I must try never to wish away my days.
Today is also the first anniversary of Hopefully Yours on Substack. I was so nervous when I started writing here. I’d never been on my own, unaffiliated with a news organization. What if no one cared to read me without the bells and whistles of a newsroom operation? I had to find out. For most of my career, my work has been published behind a paywall, and I was so tired of writing only for those who could afford to read it. I was ready to give it a go.
Dear readers, you have certainly surprised me. I am grateful for all of you who have subscribed, paid and unpaid. Paid subscribers have made it possible for me to keep writing here, and I want to mention all the kind messages that have arrived with those subscriptions. I am sorry I cannot respond to all of them, but I do want you to know I read every single one. This is true of all the post in comments threads, too.
You can’t know the boost you have given me on many a long day. This has been one of the most surprising parts of Substack, learning about why you want to support writers. I often talk about your generosity of spirit in speeches to other writers and artists. The creative process is often a lonely one. Thank you for making it seem less so.
Some of you have reached out to apologize for your inability to pay for a subscription. Please, no apology necessary. I would never judge you for this. As I have written before, I remember a time in my adult life when $5 a month was five dollars too far. I remember how that felt, too. I’m glad you’re here. I always welcome your thoughts, which is why I keep the comments section open to everyone. I cherish this community we are building here.
In the week leading up to my birthday, I thought about all that I am grateful for. The list reflects the bustle of my monkey mind, where thoughts flit from branch to branch in a very tall tree. A few of them slow down long enough to stop and poke at me.
I am especially grateful for my memories, and my ability to recall them. One of my best friends is caring for a husband in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. She is building new memories with him, and for him, for as long as she can. I am stockpiling these memories of her working so hard to help him preserve his dignity and keep him safe. My list is for those moments in the future when she wonders aloud if she did enough.
“Yes,” I will tell my beloved friend. “You surely did. And it was everything.”
In this campaign year, I am grateful for the occasional slow morning instead of racing out the door, and any time we carve out to be with family. Also on my list: Evenings when Sherrod makes it home in time for dinner. Unexpected texts of friendship, love and support. My 8-year-old Jeep that almost never fails me. Our front porch, with its pots of Starry Night petunias on the railing and the weathered rocker that waits for me. I’m grateful for all rockers, really. I’d rather be moving, even as I sit.
I am grateful for the garden of potted flowers on our deck that is in desperate need of painting. Sometimes, when I’m on the road and checking rain forecasts on my phone, I chastise myself for spending so much time and money on all these flowers that will die with the first frost. But then I come home and I’m thrilled again by their beauty and my ability to keep them alive. A decade ago, I didn’t think I had this in me.
That sign in the first photo of this column hangs in a restaurant I visited in February. We were celebrating a friend’s birthday, and as we were leaving, I stopped to stare at it. To me, the message—This Must Be The Place--feels like another version of Wherever You Go, There You Are, which is the title of a book by Jon Kabat-Zinn that was always on my bedside table during my single-mother days.
This passage, in the book’s 1994 introduction, still encourages me:
“At the end of a long life dedicated to teaching mindfulness, the Buddha, who probably had his share of followers who were hoping he might make it easier for them to find their own paths, summed it up for his disciples this way: ‘Be a light unto yourself.’
“Of course, the universe is always available to collaborate in illuminating the actuality of things. You need to be a light unto yourself. But you are also not alone, even if you sometimes feel that way. Like all life, you are an intimate part of larger and larger circles of belonging.”
For me, one of those circles is here, with all of you.
About those life lessons: I have only one, since I am skipping over, for now, what I have learned about Satan’s playground, otherwise known as undergarments called body shapers.
My only advice: Say “I love you” every chance you get.
I used to be skimpy with this, as if some monumental test had to be met before I was allowed to call it love. I don’t feel that way anymore. For what is love, if not that force of joy that swells inside of us whenever we think of someone or hear their voice? How else to explain that sudden lift we feel whenever we are in their orbit?
I’m carried away now. I say “I love you” to people who’ve never heard it from me before, sometimes with humorous results. Laughter is love, too! I say it to friends and family, and sometimes to neighbors. I say it to my dogs, because if anyone deserves to hear of my devotion it is those two characters who thrill at the sight of me regardless of how briefly we are separated. When I’m finished writing this, I will open the door to my study and be greeted by the canine version of a marching band.
For years, I have read the Barbara Cooney’s book, Miss Rumphius, to generations of children in my life. It is the story of an adventurous woman who, in her advanced years, started tossing lupine seeds to bring more color into the world. The blue, purple, and rose-colored flowers bloomed everywhere, from fields and hillsides to schoolyards and hollows.
“You must do something to make the world more beautiful,” she told her great-niece.
For years, I have read that book and asked my children and now our grandchildren, “What will you do to make the world more beautiful?” At 67, it seems I may have found my answer.
I am planting my own seeds, one “I love you” at a time. In this wild and unpredictable world, maybe this is the place for me.
You are sowing hope all around in a time when we desperately need it. I am thankful that you were born!
Being “completely out of control with flowers” seems like a perfect state of being.