Thank You

THANK YOU EVERYONE for your birthday wishes! I am just having a lazy day hanging around and reading a book, with the cats curled around me on the couch. This is a strange time of life. I always had an image of myself as a 23-35 something, and then, as an “old lady” with reading glasses and grandchildren. Now I know I will probably not have kids, so there will be no grandkids. I don’t have a husband or wife either. I have a new career–after rising like a phoenix out of the fires of my crazy 30s. I do what I want when I want. I already have the reading glasses, and constantly lose them. I now see why old ladies have those things around their necks so they won’t lose their specs. I’m probably going to get one too, but mine will be punk rock, made out of safety pins and barbed wire. I have not always been nice to the people in my life, but my crimes have usually been a lack or attention, not ones of intention. I have barged through my life, abandoning people as each new phase of my life concluded, so I have few long-term friends. For anyone whom I have hurt, I apologize. Only now do I see the error of this way of thinking. I attach to places and things more than I do to people. I remember every inch of the house of my childhood, but do not remember the faces of childhood friends. I keep the family heirlooms, like the copper kettle that sat on the hearth of my grandparent’s home in Arizona and had been in the family for a few generations before I got it. I wear my grandmother’s ring and dote on her jewelry. I have many treasures fished out of my other grandmother’s famously full basement. She, like I, have trouble throwing anything away. The ground on which I live, and the buildings in which I have lived, have been the batteries that recharge me when I am tired or upset. I am an introvert, and am perfectly happy with one or two social events per week. I try to go out more so I will “meet someone.” Couples tell me it will just “happen when it happens.” This annoys me. I want, as Leonard Cohen sang, to find someone with whom I can “be alone together.” I have a new house and would love to share it with the right person, if that materializes. If not, so be it. I feel, at this age that, if I died today, I would have no complaint to the powers-that-be. I have already lived a rich and wonderful life. I have never been hungry. I have loving parents and a strong and proud sister. I have my 6-year-old nephew Kyle, who breaks my heart with tenderness when I see him smile. One day I realized that he is very pidgin-toed on his right foot, exactly like I am. So even if I don’t have kids, a bit of my DNA lives on even in him. I have loved some wonderful feline companions. And I have cried like a baby when they have had to leave this world. Their ashes will be buried with my body or ashes–I have yet to determine how I want to leave this mortal coil–by fire, or by being buried again in the Earth that has nurtured this body, and the spirit within, for so many years. I know that more exists in all the universes than anyone can comprehend. I know there is a master plan behind this amazing tapestry of life. We are stardust. I look forward to that day, many millions of years from now, when this universe caves back into the nothingness from which it came. I recall having a lot of discussions about the universe when I was on the drugs that amplify the mind, and the brilliance within. I can remember a few nights smoking sweet weed with one or two of my old college friends and contemplating life, the universe, and everything. I still contemplate today, but weed makes me throw up now for some reason. Maybe it was just supposed to be the drug of first awakening, a “gateway drug” into universal wonder and awe. But my mind plays with these cosmic questions every day, sober or not. When I was a kid, I told me parents I wanted to be one of those people who wrote poetry and sat around in cafes, fomenting revolution and talking philosophy. I remember them saying that they did not think that there actually were any such jobs! Anyway, I thank you all for sharing a part of life’s journey with me, even if it was only for a brief time. Deep understanding and compassion can happen in a heartbeat. Because my life has been so rich and full, I can certainly say, on the day of my birthday, that it is, as our Native American friends are heard to say, “Today is a good day to die.” I want to end this long post with a shout-out to all of my Scripps College sisters, many of whom I will see this weekend at our class reunion. You are all remarkable women. LOL XOXO Jen