Looking Back - Part 2

Earlier this week I posted a piece about my life simply because I had stumbled across something I had written several years ago and viewing it from where I am now, I found it rather interesting and decided to share it. The response to that post has greatly surprised me and what surprised me even more were the number of people who urged me to write more. Well, I’ll never write another book. To begin with I mostly wrote mysteries that I used as my escape when things got bad – well, look at it this way – you can kill off the “bad guys” in a book and never have to worry about going to jail! Be that as it may, I wrote eight of them, never made much of an effort at getting them published, past a few inquiries. I didn’t write to get published, but just because I loved to write, it was a fun way to have an adventure etc. etc. etc. But over the past ten years I’ve had good reasons to reflect on my life – then and now. And now I have a place to share those thoughts, reflections, memories, lessons learned with people that I’ve come to care for so very much. Again, I would like to thank you all for your warm and generous comments.

So, that being said I will post a “Looking Back” piece once or twice a week and I hope that all of you who have responded so warmly, so generously, will enjoy what I have to say/write and that perhaps you will find an answer or two for yourself or just something worth reflecting on. I'm not posting in any particular order, you can read one here and there or follow along week to week.

Reflections

How softly the days come and go now, so much easier to see the possibilities as light filters softly through the lace curtains I once felt were too prosaic, too frilly, too soft for me, that busy working woman, with responsibilities and always on the go -- or so it seemed at the time. Now lace suits me quite well and through them I can view my life as a mosaic, filled with light and shadows, like the patterns the late afternoon sun sketches on the walls. I wonder, not for the first time, why youth is wasted on the young? Worrying about a date for Saturday night, a new zit, trips to the mall. Bits and pieces scattered, lost like scattered beads from a broken necklace. Then one day there is the need, the urge to gather them, restring them. The result is not what I thought it would be so many years ago, but a new collage, a new, sparkling, different gem, or maybe I was just determined to recapture the glow -- the joy, the beauty that somehow had evaded me since I had retired. Well, whatever, it’s mine now.



The Journey Begins

Several years ago when I was living in Portland, OR I heard about a poetry writing class that was being held near where I lived. Poetry wasn't anything I had tried to write before and I wasn't sure I had any talent whatsoever for writing it, but I decided it sounded interesting and signed up to attend. It was a six week class, we had an excellent teacher and I really enjoyed it -- don't know that I'm particularly talented as a poet, but it was fun. I hoped perhaps there would be a follow-up course.

Several weeks after the course was over I received a notice that there would be a life writing class and my former teacher urged me to give it a try. I did and made a good friend there. It was she who urged me to start a blog. I wasn't too keen on the idea at first, but after I returned to Seattle, I was cleaning some stuff off my computer and ran across the lessons from both the poetry and the life writing classes. After reading them again a few days later, I decided they might be a good place to start with a blog. I realize now that I was looking for the person, the "me" that I thought I had lost somewhere along the way.

Re-reading both the poetry and the life writing lessons made me take another look at not only the hurtful things that I had tried to forget over the years -- those things that have a way of haunting you no matter how hard you try to put them away, but a look at the fun things as well. They brought some tears, some laughter, but above all, the realization of what a truly wonderful life I've had. Hurts? yes, of course, but successes as well and certainly not the least of those are my four children.

So, who knows where all this "stuff" comes from or why we hang on to it, try to bury it or sometimes even try to re-live it. The good and the bad all are part of who we are, so maybe at this stage of the game it's time to make peace with it, celebrate it, make the most of it, because that "stuff" is what has made us who we are, not only older, wiser but in a lot of cases, more fun, more free, more loving, more forgiving, more understanding. In other words all of it can or has made us the person we are today. So celebrate her/him and I lift my glass of wine to all of you this evening.