HOW THEN SHALL I LIVE?

Thoughts at Thanksgiving

I have been aware for ever so long

of my mortality.

I don’t mean lately,

I mean since I was thirty.

Knowing I Shall die,

how then shall I live,

and what will I do

 with my one wild and precious life?

I will take photos from inside my bedroom

and outside

to remember this red dogwood in Autumn

to remember the lavender verbena

I will make an arrangement from

fallen coleus leaves

And be grateful for my life

especially at Thanksgiving

for the friends who support me

who cheer me on.

~ ~ ~ 

And I will be grateful, too, for one special person,

Steve Jobs

for his attention to detail and design

for his incredible life.

He is an inspiration

because owning a MacBook

has made all my talents

come to life.

~~~ 

Lastly,

The Prologue

 to the Memoir I’m writing

speaks to this theme

How Then Shall I Live?

~ ~ ~

"Confessions of a Blue Tomato"

Back in 1946, to me, the American Dream

was about being a hero of some kind.

I was sure, if you were a boy,

 you had to do some kind of feat.

Lindbergh flying across the Atlantic.

Get a Purple Heart.

Work your way up from the mailroom,

climbing some kind of ladder of success.

And if you were a girl . . . well,

I mostly knew what I didn’t want to do,

like be a teacher or nurse or secretary

and what’s left then?

How could you prove your worth?

Silently, I dreamed of being tapped on the shoulder

by a Hollywood Director,

at a lunch counter

in a white angora sweater.

I kept those dreams during my

Betty Crocker Years

~~~

In my mid 30’s I had a great fear,

 that I would be dead at 40.

That fear led to my making changes in my life,

 like getting a divorce.

~~~

As I neared 50

 I believed my life line indicated

 I was going to die at 55.

I was so disturbed by that,

I made changes in my life again.

 This time it led to walking out a corporate door

with no early retirement

no severance package.

I was 52.

I believed I could live off my savings.

~~~

I have come to know

 those fears were coming from my instinctual self,

 from the wise, intuiting woman

 in the knowing cave

  where the bones reside.

I was right to have heeded.

~~~

Gradually I began to relax

 to sense the rest of my life

 on the tip of my tongue, so to speak.

I had a great sense that my life

 had five distinct parts

and that the last part

would be the best,

if only I could manage to get there

 and discover what was around

 that last bend.

This book is that story!

~~~

and this blog is part of that story, too

stay tuned . . .