chinese proverb

The weekend is winding down, as a matter of fact; this blog entry will be the last cognitive task I will perform until Monday morning. The week end was a good one but I find myself being robbed of time – I cannot seem to accomplish as much in a day as I once did and it is such an unpleasant realization – this is not what I imagined, this getting older stuff. I have had to lower the bar just a bit on what I hope to do during the day. I suppose this will become a normal setting for me soon but for now, it is a funny feeling. To counter this bit of less endurance I am going to rev up my plan to simplify and try to get rid of some of these shackles that I acquired in my youth. I am appalled at the amount of stuff I have – ashamed really, these things are nothing but anchors in my life – things to see about, things to rob me of time and money that I have to spend maintaining worthless pieces of inorganic material. I don’t care much for TV but I like to drink a cup of coffee and watch House Hunters International in the afternoon – enjoying glimpses of faraway places and cultures. I am always taken with the amount of small spaces international buyers are okay with and, in contrast, the enormous amount of space Americans “need”. We are leaving such big footprints and as I’ve said before, I played that game in my youth and I am so regretful. I regret it on all levels – the most being the example I have given my kids. Lucky for me, however, it seems they are, for the most part, not overly concerned with materialism, they are much smarter than me  – anyway, there is a Chinese proverb about planting a tree, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”  I missed the first train but I’m jumping on board now.

just an image from long ago  that makes me happy







b u

p s

now

It’s so wonderful now, now that it doesn’t matter if the paint is peeling or the whatumacallit is broken or if it is rusty or squeaky or missing or crooked; it only matters that it is there and that I have time and energy to clean it. To tidy it up. I have given up trying to replace things that are old and used; I now enjoy them. I have released this wasteful preoccupation of my youth where I thought the surface of things, literally, were important enough to have (steal) my time and my money. I love this place I am in now, it is so much more comforting and pleasurable and it is as it should be. The patina should wear off of the tables just as I lose the color in my hair and the arbor should lean just a bit from bundles of wisteria that were once there just I lean ever so slightly from the weight of motherhood and 56 years of life. It is how it all happens, time and wear, bending, breaking, but with it emerges a deeper splendor, one that is so much easier to be with than the beauty of youth, not as exciting perhaps, but far less anxious and demanding. I like it here.

 I think about my grandmother and how she lived in a tiny two bedroom house with one bathroom and a wringer washer where she raised 5 children and then my mother who had a three bedroom house with two bathrooms and an electric washer and dryer and only 3 children. I remember how my grandmother, her mother, would fuss about having so much when she would come to visit – so many clothes, so many things. I have more than my mother and having more means having less (time). My grandmother had time to sit on the porch every afternoon to visit with whoever walked by or stopped in; my mother had coffee nearly every weekday afternoon with her best friend, Flo. I, rarely do either of those things – too much stuff. Okay, I have to stop, I am depressing myself. I will work on this; I am determined to spend this chapter of my life beneath the surface.

Their They’re There

It’s not that hard

b u

p s