Chasing the Years

At the pyramids with Jud, enjoying 70 years and eons more. 

I look at my youthful self, and marvel at the vitality.  I look at myself now, and wonder about mortality.  The pyramids loom on the desert horizon. We come full circle in more ways than one. Life goes on, and we go with it.  

Another birthday rolls around, the inexorable march of time.  Most of the time, I feel like I'm chasing my years, not the other way around.  Oh sure, there are days the years chase me.  I hunker down and let it happen. Afterall, I have the full force of 75 years behind me.  In front of me, who knows? What does it matter? In front of me, I have learned, is the best place to be, mindful.  I am surrounded by family, friends, bustling activities, new things to learn. 
  
Age has not diminished my interests or my outrage at injustice.  I rant with my brother in heaven, and my sister in Florida.   My mind overflows with memories. The computer is full. A click here, a click there, and I'm a young girl in Rochester, a mom at the beach in Nantucket, a worker bee, a grandmother, a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine.  Sometimes I alight on a sense of loss or pain, but then, a field of daisies is a click away.  Mary Oliver comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, "Let it Be."  

"That's John Lennon, mom, you're thinking of the Beatles." 

Oh, right! A needed reminder. The memories flow together sometimes. But, look! I see a robin. My first sighting.  A sign of spring.  Soon I'll be digging in my garden, listening to the birds, watching small green buds pushing up the brown earth.  

Mindful by Mary Oliver 
Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me,
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It is what I was born for--
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful
the very extravagant--
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab, 

the daily presentations. 
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these--
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

Meeting friends on the Street in Starobelsk, 2011.