So you literally pick yourself up off the floor and ice your wounds. The surface ones are ice able, the aftershocks still waiting to be registered. Try, try, try and then try something new. How do you divide attitude going in from reality? Hard lessons are hard learned. How may “against all odds” opportunities are we assigned with our footprints? How many come on one more time, maybe this one you’ll hit out of the gates come your way? Is succumbing to the obvious accepting defeat? What is our need to prove fate wrong? When the transitional times come upon us we reach for the glimmer of perhaps this chance is our “eight card fit.” We theorize as we pack our bags, take out our rabbits foot and car service our way to destiny that this time we got our own backs covered. In aftermath reflection, as the aftershocks offer black and blues, we rein our sensibility in and say I think I will try a different sport. 

As timely as the election results I see the message at my door. The Sturm und Drang- the literal “Storm and Drive” part of life is as powerful as it is destructive. If we take the motivation and eliminate the drama the end result will probably be the same. If we worry when we really have to so much inner turmoil could be eliminated. Whether we are waiting for a medical result, an acceptance letter for a job, an unanswered email, an invitation to a welcomed event-we create messy insides. Anxiety is the threshold of destruction. Facing the music times are reserved for worry. Timing for children is elusive. And I quote- we’ve been waiting forever- I haven’t been here in two years- we never come here anymore- Their reality of waiting is impulsive, non-descript and immediate. And—so it goes when we are anticipatory for a bottom line answer. If we could only actualize a positive outcome in the absence of an answer we could bottle the formula and sell it next to echinacea. Crystal ball aside when we get the good results, the email answered, the invite and the job acceptance we sigh a huge sense of relief. If only we could “take the right actions and let go of the results.”

The protagonist in my story is finally ME- I sigh with relief. I am getting ready to watch another evening of Oscars with my form of tradition. I buy the chips, I watch the red carpet expose, and I let my husband know the predominance of dress color being worn this year. I get excited as the entertainment is reviewed and recognized. I re-live the abundance of time spent watching my year unfold through film. Through maturity and luck I get that I am the star in my picture show. To friends I am both cherished and held dear. To grandchildren I shine as my effortless giving is displayed selflessly. To my husband I am a cacophony of sound. My excitement, my dismay, my devotion, my cooking all roll into my rhythm and song. Back to the show and my message. We marvel at the glamour, we pick on the “green dress look” and we pay attention to details as if we know the people personally. It never grows old. Our evening of binge watching all in one evening. We don’t want to miss a moment. As time goes by that is my nexus of purpose. Living the moments as blocks of time. Recognition for my good is now on focus. We all love being appreciated. We all have clay feet and foibles. As the stars on the screen and now as my star is being cemented in my picture show- I have come to understand that we all have those “green dress moments. as “All that glitters…”

Booming my way into this time in life takes much more effort then I imagined. Acute pleasures become enhanced by insights and diluted by fears. Once I am seated at the table I hope I don’t get that tap on my shoulder to say, “sorry please move to that seat over there.” Much easier to fine tune than to make corrections as time goes by. Disappointments become enlarged and put into the “I should have known better categories.” Prioritizing is great as long as things go along as planned. With a sudden jolt and a shocking disturbance I face a knowing task with a little more difficulty. That aging process makes itself known in unexpected ways. The balance of keeping your chin up when gravity is doing its job is part of the job description. I delight in knowing with perseverance and a fair amount of tweaking my – “there we go moments” are more frequent than not. The music last night at one of my frequent concerts was deliberately slow. It was the Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Gershwin tunes- the 1930’s Great Depression era. The operative word being “Depression.” Not much about this period of my life resembles the presentation of song last eve. Perhaps I go a touch slower without intent. My activities, my verve and my determination to make this period of chance special have not decreased in pace. I delight in the help for my maintenance program. Acupuncture and massage for my body- blended with shared time with people of choice; doing things I so enjoy. I am off and running. No one is gonna stop me now.

Compartmentalize your life. Weave together each arena. Blend the activities, mixing days and nights. Spread your interests around the palette and watch the design of ur life unfold. With so much more clarity a definition appears with Google speed. Older is older. Better? – depends on the day. Each set back takes longer to recover from. However, the resolves are stronger. No looking back as it delays the plunging ahead. Buying the new Tumi Vapor Lite luggage- “traveling light.” Wake up on the right side of the bed-you never know what part of the day will snap into place. Vulnerability and rejection are standard tunes that run through my head. With progress not perfection, I try to fine tune the colors and re-glue the pieces that keep popping up. I then stand away from the board, look at it from a different perspective and realize anyway I see it- Life is a Masterpiece. Here’s to making it another good day! 

The I can’t believes don’t matter anymore. Your actions thundered so loudly I hardly heard your words. Let’s do lunch. I’ll call you when I come home. You must come for dinner. Our drink is long over due. We would love u to see what we did to the house. I promise I will re- schedule. If only I knew you were in town, I had an extra ticket. We really need to sit down and raise a glass.People do what they do and repeat patterns. I slipped out of the “let’s do lunch crowd” quite awhile back. I suppose we have all been on both sides of these one liners with more frequency then we can believe. Do we say things to be kind? Maybe attempt a get together? Perhaps to seek a rapprochement ? Human nature to want to connect and intermingle. Yours, mine and ours. I no longer need my dance card filled. I prefer the quality of time where “the melody lingers on.” In reviewing the activities of any given week, I am thrilled when I walk away with a – “wow I can’t wait to do that again.” Or- that was so much fun- it felt so good. A nice evening the music was terrific my fav. Boy, catching up was great I really missed her. The “love u mores” with the grandkids- nothing quite like those. . Could it be that our memories are cloudy when we put the date down, as we are thrilled when they cancel. The commodity of time cannot be overestimated. When binge watching replaces a dinner out with pleasure, that sends the message loud and clear. I’ll take sound bites, surrounded by activities in common for $100.00 please.

When it glares, rears and stares open the door and let the messenger in. Messages come wrapped in packages ribboned with reality. When you are ready to “get it”- they unwrap themselves. If only time was the voice of reason that spoke up beforehand and decided “when” for us. How many days, months and years ahead of ourselves we could be. The Adage “if only I knew then, what I know now” would not exist. Pipe dreams in my picture show. How much trouble I could have avoided, how many wrong decisions I would not have made. Life on Life’s terms and away we go. Wise/young would be all our choices. Determining our own reality, insuring seamless days and choices well made would be a perfect destiny. Well, it just doesn’t work that way. However, once you get the lessons that were out there, down the path you realize they are not out of reach. Turning the “only ifs”into the “why nots” is a workable deal with fate. When I was younger I never understood the “timing is everything” theory. As my life has played out I get it. Although and just perhaps with older/wisdom , lessons hard learned and disappointments galore we can mix our own cocktail for success. Take what you’ve learned, add a pinch of advice, stir with an ounce of hope, blend in the desire for more and simmer on a low flame. And then– Lady Luck generally woos those who earnestly, enthusiastically, unremittingly woo her. 

When the least likelys become the so much mores . Time in a Bottle as Jim Croce penned- “But there never seems to be enough time/ To do the things you want to do, once you find them / I’ve looked around enough to know / That you’re the one I want to go through time with…”

My niece planned her wedding day with very specific details all her own. With little time, in short order, she piled on the loving job of assembling her wedding day. And so the walk through their path of life commences.

We cried, we kvelled and we pray in our hearts that their beginning, middle and so on unfolds in the casual, detailed, seemingly effortless way this blessed day played out. Nothing more precious to me then seeing your sister’s daughter enter this “very grown-up” phase of life. I watched her enter this world and I now have watched her walk into another room. 

For the very first time,  on this day, she is a Mr. and Mrs.; no longer the baby I held, the little girl I helped with homework or so simply the young lady who gathered degrees to hopefully insure  her success in the work arena. The collection of happy tears I have shed throughout my nieces life are held in a jar, sitting on my mantel of memories, front row center. You have continued to be a sense of joy and have added strength to my weakest days. I have felt your determination, your spirit when I watched you cheer at a football game and serve a meal to the less fortunate. 

You live your life with selfless giving. On this day my “precious child,”- you accepted and reveled in how the giving was now the receiving. Be safe in knowing your husband sees what I knew all along. There is a very short line for the altruistic people who first think of others . You are up there looking at the line that waits behind you. You are the heroine in my long story. I now have a bigger collection of happy tears prominently sitting in the jar on the mantel of my life.

Class clown in high school – Sargent at arms through sorority life-stand up and seated comic in rooms and at tables- good at cajoling an hysterical grandchild back to smiles and giggles -Red Skelton type delivery, as he also cracked up at his own jokes. –Fast forward to signing in at funerals. Wow – feels as if I am in a “Room Without a Window.”I had a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast and woke up “64.” All the adages of how quickly life happens and how to really enjoy the living while you can doesn’t come into play until it one day does. Now I grab the moments when I don’t have to look over my shoulder for the next challenge. There is nothing new about feeling your age until the activities that fall at your doorstep smack of different. With a few more limitations, barely, I plunge ahead, continue my everyday with the same verve and discretion as always. Hopefully we preserve the good times differently. On a good day we take on more, on a great day we feel invincible. The “only ifs” turn into the “do it nows.” I now collect memories- with abundance. More old pictures, tapping into to old friendships and cherishing the times when troubles were fewer and anticipations were filled with less frailty. I look forward to the good stuff coming with more frequency and the times of dismay and disappointment being handled quickly.

And then— I wake up one day and the “The Room without a Window” has a glimmer of light shining thru. I open the proverbial blinds, I air out the cobwebs and I realize there was always a way out of that windowless space.

As I reflect back on this past week there are several events that bring to mind the preciousness of life. Our week started with my husband beginning a siege of headaches. Cluster in nature, horrific in intensity and devastating in emotional grief. He was Strongly medicated and we moved on.We went on to stand with one of my oldest friend as he buried his wife of twenty-five years. She was fine in June of this past year and dead 6 months later. The ravages of a late stage cancer diagnosis. Right after this horrific funeral with hundreds of people listening to outpours of sincerity and love for this woman, who ostensibly, in theory “got hit by a bus;” – we picked up one of our loves-our three year old dream girl granddaughter and played through our day of mourning. Run on sentence, run on life. Once again the ying and the yang. More of the “as time goes by” moments. Boy, you can never overestimate the medicinal value of hugging a grandchild and watching them run into our lives. I mean, oh well, they put back the wind when it is knocked out of us. Moving forward I had a week of annual tests at my doctors. Always adding one more layer of anxiety and thank G-d relief. My husband then had a bad reaction to the medication he was on to help with his headaches and was told to abruptly stop. We are dealing with the lingering aftermath of that glitch. With all of our issues and “such is life” dealings- we hear the news of David Wich, the young man who was tragically struck by the crane amidst the “whirlwind of a snow storm.” A member of the kids congregation. As Rabbi Lookstein said “an absolute angel.” So I wake up early this Sunday morning about to begin a new week- I make the coffee, check to see that my husband is peaceful, hold my breathe and observe as our week unfurls. Hopefully my sister will be by my side as she was this week, my husband will get relief from the Best medicine- grandchildren crossing our threshold and dividing the ying from our yang.