This Life of Mine

The Last Breakfast. The Last Sunset. The Last Frog-choral Midnight Concert. The Last Dinner with Friends. The Last Patch of Starry Quietude before heading south toward family and the past. 

“You could have stayed there forever, a small child in a corner, on the last raft of hay, dazzled by so much space that seemed empty, but wasn’t,” writes Mary Oliver in her poem, “Flare”. 

She says it so well. 

The home I grew up in on Spreckles Lane, the two-wheeler romps, the blue-lit silver Christmas tree-illuminated living room Mom and Dad danced to the polka beat of Myron Floren and the Lawrence Welk Band; my British parents laughing, forever in love, spinning, twirling, the memories, still alive and as vivid as if I were still six years old. Which I am, multiplied by a lot of decades.

My Angel Cove Cottage By-the-Sea, my maroon heartbeat and heartbreak that embraced my nuclear family until the day I drove away two years ago this coming August is still me. 

The two careers I worked so hard at, journalism and teaching, neglecting family and personal time for the sake of others, are still me. 

Beloved family members, our sweet pups, cats, fish, rabbits, and fowl, gone. Still part of me.

In a couple of hours, this three-week Spring Fling Camping Trip will be taped into my bulging scrapbook. Leaving, saying goodbye, always—always—leaves me melancholy. 

“Nothing lasts. 

There is a graveyard where everything I am talking about is,

now.

I stood there once, on the green grass, scattering flowers.” 

What is to be made of all this change and sequence and Life’s non-sequiturs? Grandchildren transforming into teenagers, an approaching 50-year high school reunion, the shutting down of favorite haunts—bookstores, a winery, a funky shop that once sold my favorite Bonnie Doon lavender essential oil, an out-of-the-blue knee injury, weight super-glued to my belly, grey, then azure blue, coastal skies, flashbacks and flashbacks and flashbacks of times and people that both crushed and opened my soul, a bird dancing between the sun and clouds, gobbling gnats then sea plane-landing on my plastic camp rug, waiting for treats and a friendly chat.

“Hey, little buddy, how’s it going?” I ask, as Ms. Bird hops closer. “Brave little gal.”

Be careful, you say, ”Didn’t you hear? Some kind of bird virus is on the rise.” 

“I had no idea.” I’ve been out of touch, no reception. 

It’s all ridiculously confusing and sad and uplifting and gratifying and peaceful and glaring and subtle and obnoxiously, deliciously, loud. 

This life of mine. 

This last half hour of yesterday. To be aware, this time, is about to end.

Next time, it will be different. I guess that’s what gets to me. The leaves, the grass, the air, the people, won’t be the same as they are now, this most excellent, sun-drenched day. I guess I agree with “Yellowstone’s” Governor John Dutton on this one: At what cost is “progress” if moving forward means destruction, stepping on someone else’s rights, imagination, creativity, shutting down conversation, compromise, our wounded environment? I can’t see myself eagerly awaiting, much less applauding, what’s next. It makes me want to shut down, run away, be grateful that I’m no longer in the fray. 

By fray, I’m referring to several things: In a month, when summer hits, these campgrounds, this land, will be trampled on and littered with trash. It won’t be fresh, new, people-less as it is now. Then there’s my English Language Arts colleagues back at the middle school I used to teach at; the school district is imposing an overwhelmingly rejected robotic, scripted curriculum. That, along with a schedule change the staff has voted repeatedly against, is the kind of fray that makes me want to roll up my sleeves and fight back. But I’ve been retired three years this June, retired to The Next Chapter. It’s no longer my fight, yet it’s hard not to care and want to make things better for those who work so hard to educate children.

But who am I? Yesterday’s news. 

“Nothing is so delicate or so finely hinged as the wings

of the green moth

against the lantern

against its heat

against the beak of the crow

in the early morning.

Yet the moth has trim and feistiness, and not a drop 

        of self-pity.

Not in this world.”

When I return, when I move on, when I get on the teeth-grinding 405 Freeway jammed with buzzing crows and hawks and hummingbirds, I will turn on Enya’s Greatest Hits and think of the stars and the surf that cleansed my spirit, grateful that I’ve been baptized and forgiven. Renewed, until I’m renewed once more.

“Let grief be your sister, she will whether or no.

Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also,

    like the diligent leaves.

A lifetime isn’t long enough for the beauty of this world

and the responsibilities of your life. 

Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away.

Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.”

Time to pack up, get in the van, pour a second cup of coffee, and crank up the tunes. Another exuberant adventure awaits. 

“In the glare of your mind, be modest. 

And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.

Live with the beetle, and the wind.”

This crazy, ever-leaving, ever-discovering, ever unfolding trip is, indeed, a trip, or as my ex-husband used to say, “A trip down Whittier Boulevard.”