Raining today

A little bit of the ole drear today. A day of rain, flood warnings in New Hampshire later in the afternoon. The big maple out my back window has been mostly stripped of its foliage. And that's how it will remain until May. Wow. The last remaining leaves fall like yellow tears. They held on for a long time, for a last bit of glory, but that's all she wrote, folks. Going out with a grand splash of color, in one's finest clothes. It seems like a big thank you to LIFE. Nature's fireworks display. Didn't William Blake die singing and applauding and laughing in bed? Yes, yes, yes. Saying YES to it all.

I was just back in Indiana visiting family and friends, a good visit, a bit wearing, as all family visits are, at least for me. On my last day I had one of those obligatory relative dinners, we went to Bob Evans - I deferred to their restaurant choice - and they had chicken fried steak buried in milk gravy with some deceased carrots on the side. I had a dead salad. Nothing against Bob Evans personally, but I don't think there wasn't an ounce of nutrition on the horizon. I was holding the place of "good cheer" at the table just to counterbalance a drear that they carried with them. It was raining that day too, but there was a continuum of drear they had with them that would've clouded a sunny day. It had heft and weight and tradition behind it. Most of the conversation was about how lousy life was. That growing old is for shit, that it's all down hill, that it's pain and aches and ... you get the picture. I held back the urge to say "if you say so" and just listened, nodding, trying my best not to judge as I watched spoonfuls of dead flour and milk shoveled mechanically into sullen mouths. But I thought it. If you say so. Words are powerful. They imprison. They manifest. We're so powerful, we humans, and what we say, we are; we define ourselves whether negative or positive. I've imprisoned myself many times, I'm sure I still do unwittingly, though I HOPE I can recognize and interupt it with a little more celerity than I have in the past. There've been times it's taken me 20 years to realize that what I've been saying blithely for years has formed a belief system on which so many other beliefs have been founded. Humbling to recognize it ONCE MORE, accept it, and start dismantling it all. Trips home are like hauntings. They're like the Ghost of Christmas yet to come pointing his boney finger from underneath that Ingmar Bergman death robe as if to say "You too can become this. You came from this. It's in your blood, it's in your bones, it has a pull, a power. There's work to be done or you too can become this! Beware!!"

And it's so easy to judge!! It's easy. IT'S EASY!!! It's easy getting angry. It's hard NOT being impatient. Visits are a workout. And I may be right in all my pronouncements about "them", but so what? So what? Maybe what they are, what they eat, what they say is the best they can do. This is them at their best. This is it. I shared that thought with Richard at one of the airports as I was heading home and he shouted the phrase I'd thought, but didn't allow myself to say. "It's NOT ENOUGH!!!!" We laughed. Oh it was good to laugh. It echoed through the corridors of the Detroit Airport where I was making a late connection back to Burlington. And it was raining out on the tarmack and also on the roads Richard was driving down on the other end of the line.

It was good getting on the plane for home. My spirit shifted just being on a plane I knew was either filled with Vermonters or people being pulled there for some reason. I could breathe more fully. I was going home. The plane landed at 11 pm and I had an hour and a half drive ahead of me. I had viewed that as an inconvenience, but once on the road, I welcomed it. I found a whole new reserve of energy and delight. It was a blast. I got a good cup of coffee from a Mobil station coffee urn - surprise, surprise for a self-proclaimed coffee snob. The road was wet, but there was no rain. And the moon, buried just behind the grey black clouds, gave out an eerie, wondrous sheen. I listened to the first part of Simon Russell Beale's production of "Hamlet" on the cd player, a fitting choice on such a blow about ghostly night in the wee hours and then I slapped on a language tape and practiced a little Italian. Lots of fun.

I just thought that drive home is emblematic of, let's say Reason 50 of why I love living in Vermont: a new perspective on aging. Granted I'm a young pup in the arena of aging, I'm just at the thresh hold, but I like looking at it as a drive home through a dark, late drive I had expected to be one way, but turns out to be something completely and surprisingly and unexpectedly rich and fun. Vermont's helped me re-examine any pronouncements I may have made about growing old, negative or positive, and to question them, to see where I stand now, and see how that serves me or not. I intend the rest of my life to be the 2nd Act of a really well constructed play, where the first act has set-up and planted the seeds in preparation of what's to come. And that doesn't have to be a rock em, sock em, WOW show, a big Billy Rose finish - though it would be fine if that's what happens - but to more fully appreciate everything about it. To celebrate it, give thanks for every bit of it, highs and lows. At least that's my intention. And I'm surrounded by plenty of models and teachers here that live life with a great deal of grace and humour and activity. There's a steadier, more grounded vitality, they're in it for the long haul.

I'll take that.

So bring on the rain.