But today, it is.

Moss hangs from a sea of aged oak trees, dancing in the wind outside my friends’ forest-shrouded home in Atascadero, California. I’m residing here for a weekish, babysitting their two precious mini dachshunds as their mum and dad vacation in Kauai. Their original dog sitter had to cancel due to a medical emergency and I, luster of puppy-hugs, was more than happy to pinch hit. 

My friends’ official Happy Place is birthday-partied with room after room of stories collected over a lifetime of antiquing, garage-sale-ing and specialty website-shopping. Everywhere you turn, be it a wall of glistening Pryex or throne of globes or 1960s-era toy kitchen appliances or cupboards of colorful dishes or shelves of faded and vibrant photos of family members here and afar, reside tales of meaning and origin. My friends’ passion for collecting reminds me of my other friends who live in Fullerton, afficionados of Americana treasures and museum-quality baseball memorabilia. Both long-wedded couples have a keen eye for spotting the unusual and are particularly gifted at displaying their treasures in ways that honor history and their personalities. 

Dachies Rosie, Olive, and my guest-self, are chillin’ on the shaded deck, listening to the chimes and spa music I have playing in the kitchen next to my traveling lavender aromatherapy mister. Like the lizards scurrying along the planks, we’re also doing our best to absorb patches of sun on this rather chilly, 61-degree day. Such a vastly different setting from where I was a week ago—Epcot, Orlando, 96 degrees with 90% humidity. This time last week, my brother had yet to fall and was little-boyishly scooting from land to land, somehow ignoring his chronic back and shoulder pain. I don’t know how he does it, but I guess, in this way, he’s much like our dad; he doesn’t want to get cheated out of the Next Adventure. 

Man, I think, if he can do it, so can I. No excuses. And thus, my first visit to Florida and my brief residency here at my friends’ cozy Central Coast retreat. 

While you can, while you can, do it while you can. The Wise tell me this all the time. The fatalistic notion is daunting, that one day I’m cursed to be sick and/or disabled. I understand that the body changes as we age. But is physical and mental decline a certainty? What if I’m an exception? What if I manage to avoid the decline? Keep my back straight? Gaze at the stars with light and an impish grin? Continue to be the person I am right now? Beneath the wrinkles and other signs of aging, remain six years old times six decades plus eight?  

“They” must know something I don’t. So I abide by their mantra: Live BIG before the unexpected happens. 

Which brings me, crazily, to Real Estate, a topic chronically on my mind thanks to pesky Redfin updates. Should I or shouldn’t I? Invest? Continue to flutter? Ownership—at my age—is silly, yet reasonable. Yet, even thinking about going to an Open House and securing a Realtor—then spending BIG money—gets me nervous, like it’s not the right time or I literally have NO TIME. From now until December, I’ll be on the road. And yet, and yet, and yet, being here at my friends’ home, embraced by a life’s worth of souvenirs, feels comforting, secure.

Such an interesting phase I’m in, feeling temporary and permanent at the same time. Attached. Detached.

The wind just stopped. It’s river cruise-still as a blue jay lands on the balcony rail and the fattest squirrel I’ve ever seen leaps from limb to limb. Such a marvel. All of it. When you stop. Listen. Scan the wooded horizon, feel the chill as your body and mind adapt to this new, familiar place where you, just a month ago, shared a margarita with your friend, who’s now in Hawaii sipping an Aloha-inspired boozy drink with her family as she sheds the responsibilities of day-to-day life. 

Texts, updates, reminders, new car deals, TV “news”, grocery prices, holiday-inflated gas prices, politics, and all the stuff that strips our thoughts and days of this—BLISS—the word etched on a ceramic mug my friend gifted me during our last visit, are bliss-wasters. “You’re living it,” she reminded me, “your bliss.”

“Oh, yeh,” I responded, having never—as in ever—linked this state of being with my life.

A five-hour drive away from my sister and cousin’s two-year Remodel Hell and Memorial Weekend challenge—The Unloading of The Pods—feels so strange. I was supposed to be there to help, instead I’m here, writing, creating art, listening to music, dancing, reading, playing with pups, eating healthy foods, taking a just-because nap, going for a walk, watching the rest of “The Bear”, cleaning out my van in preparation for June’s camping trip with the g-boys, having a second cup of coffee—in all ways, relaxing, floating. Bliss.

Mary Oliver, my go-to poet, summarized my frame of mind in her poem “On Death”:

“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. 

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”

Grateful. Loving Life—-all of it: The questions. The puzzles. The stuff. The no stuff. The tasks. Docking, setting up camp. Saying goodbye, hello. The darkness and the light. The lazy, misty mornings and the predicted sunny skies later this week. It’s not always going to be like this. I get it.

But today, it is.