Playing for Time

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Up at 5am on a Saturday because it was time to crawl out, I guess. My brain leads a life that diverges from what shows, and it loves to think in quiet darkness while morning caffeine gradually permeates my person. Kim’s out trekking Mass Street from end to end, so it’s totally silent all up in here and conducive to slipping down rabbit trails.

Fall is memory season, with everything drawn in vivid color so as to really stick good, and events of a lifetime come at us in a rush. We’re simultaneously children, hormonal teens, the exhausted sandwich generation, and plain freaking old, so it all hits different and too fast for a healthy sifting. I end up feeling blindsided every year by the onslaught of memory and emotion, stretching back to my birth into a family clan. If I get to live as long as my grandmothers there’s a book I have to write… after everyone I’ve ever known is… you know, gone… but as the 3rd-oldest grandchild in the dynasty, I thought all of it was forever, and that the love, trust, and sense of belonging would always be there. That’s the child talking… the adult part of me knows nothing is forever. But oh, how we wanted it to be.

Relative to this morning’s musings, I think all death, human and otherwise, should take place in the fall. Winter’s too miserable, summer’s too hot, spring breaks your heart forever… so fall it is, everything finished and neatly tied up before the snow flies.

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I’d never really put this thought into words before, but when I read it, I knew that I knew, and that it was okay.

Therefore…

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There’s no way on this green earth to meet anyone’s standards but your own, so be kind, be goodhearted, and live your life.

Pollyanna says…

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We haven’t seen chaos like this in our lifetimes, making it hard to accept that it’s our turn in the barrel for a while. But history shows that this doesn’t last forever, so we can’t forget how to really live. Happy fall, happy sifting…