Just one more day….

It was just the start of Summer. The boys were out of school and we had six weeks of exciting adventures ahead of us. And now it’s back to school and in a month, it will be Fall.

Each season is welcomed, necessary, but it’s hard to say goodbye to the memories and the promise of what was and the yearnings of what you wished it could be. 

Nothing, no one, is perfect, yet we expect them to be so. Our expectations, disappointments, fray the veil of Life until, before you know it, it’s gone. It’s another chapter, turn the page, turn the page, turn the page, until you’ve reached the end of the book and are able 

      to see, 

     to see, 

     to see

what It was all about and finally begin to piece together the plot—the beginning, middle and end, the conflicts, relevance of settings, character development—and compliment the author for being brilliant, one-of-a-kind.

Getting old is such a gift; there’s an inherent perspective, healing and wisdom that goes along with the wrinkles and creaky bones. That ah-ha! realization sinks in that we might not always be right, that our ego and pride can be oppressive deterrents 

     to living fully, 

     to living mindfully,

     to being free. 

So, we let go, 

of possessions, 

of anger, 

of jealousy 

of judgment 

and pray for peace, kindness and understanding for those we know and love, and those who appear to be our enemies. 

Two nights ago, I met a couple from Riverside who moved to Paso Robles and now want to move to Idaho to get away from “the criminals”, the “invaders”. 

“The world is full of bad people. Don’t let them tell you otherwise,” Kirt, a retired paramedic said. He and his wife travel in a desert-dusty, re-purposed Army jeep and never go anywhere without their guns. 

“The only way to combat the enemy is to be stronger than they are,” he said, as his partner nodded in agreement.

Following our conversation and their suggestion to “make it look like you’re not traveling alone as a single woman,” I placed a tough-guy-brown second chair on my Navaho-esque outdoor rug and tried to make my campsite look less girlie. I then hunkered down inside Bonnie Doon, my Gaelic pretty fort, and locked the doors. 

I thought: Maybe I need to buy those camo chairs and American flag I saw at the local outdoors store to indicate I’m not a push over, a potential victim? 

It’s horrible to think I’m supposed to think like this, curtail my conversations, avoid revealing too much, but I was assured by Kirt and Janice that the world is full of horrible people, and I need to protect myself because “it’s only getting worse.”

“Come over for coffee,” they offered, after sharing a story of the night Kirt was chased down by a madman wielding an axe, only to be saved by an armed officer. 

Am I brave to be travelling alone? Foolish? I’ve never once considered my vanlife adventures to be fool hearty. I take precautions. But perhaps, to others, I’m a sitting duck. 

What I know is that life is short and if you spend your life worrying, fretting, thinking of the future instead of living for the present, it’s over before you know it. It’s Summer one day, then you blink your eye and it’s Fall. Your good friend is lunching with you, planning a trip back East to help her elderly mother, enjoying an ice cream cone at the place we always go to in El Segundo, talking about our adult children, grandchildren and then one morning you get a text from her husband that she’s gone. The life you thought you had, planned for your entire life, the love of your life, your best friend, your forever girlfriend, the mother of your kids, is dead following a heroic battle with an evil disease. 

My friend who loved Fall, loved her students and the creativity and potential of public education, left Planet Earth last week. She was only 65, but spent three of those years duking it out with pancreatic cancer. She was a fighter, fierce and passionate who fearlessly stood up and spoke her truth, even at her own expense; she was quiet and reflective, hilarious and fun, regretful, determined, strong, brave, forgiving, and filled with faith up until her last breath as she let go, next to her beloved husband, holding hands until the very end.  

She gave her all to everything she did and every person she knew, including me. On the day before I had a scheduled interview for a high school English teacher position, my friend, who also applied for a different assignment at RUHS but ultimately failed to get the job, knew how scared I was; she knew I didn’t think I was the kind of teacher the high school wanted; I was too old, too fat, too unconventional, and definitely not hip enough. But, what the heck, I was going to try anyway, give it my best shot. You know what my friend, Diane, did? She gave me a blinged-out necklace with a bee charm that said, “Be You”. 

“Don’t be anyone else,” Diane told me, then hugged me with the love of a got-your-back little sister. 

I wore the necklace to the interview, didn’t get the job, but my buddy was there the next morning to console me, “Their loss, our gain.” 

It wasn’t that many summers ago that Diane and I were decorating our adjoining classrooms, hoping our colorful rooms would delight our middle school students. Our bubbling, bountiful classrooms certainly delighted us, after all, they would be our homes for the next 9.5 months. Diane and I always had Big Plans. “This is going to be the best year ever,” we’d say as we swapped Visual and Performing Arts lessons and ideas. 

How can Summer almost be over? How can my friend and teacher colleague, a loyal confidant, defender of fellow educators, an out-of-the-box thinker, be gone? 

Summer. Fall. Winter. Spring. The seasons are getting shorter and the lessons abound: Live with no regrets. Leave it all on the field. If you need to change plans, change them. Turn around and start again. Go forward, if that makes sense.

      Make it right. 

      Make it just. 

     Jump in the damn cold ocean and swim, or not. 

     Just sit there. Think. Don’t think. Be kind to yourself and others. And above all, love, fiercely, passionately, like my dear friend who’s no doubt tap dancing in heaven wearing her comfortable Keen sandals, a flowy, polka dot skirt and those shiny pink nails with those blingy toe rings. Or maybe, just maybe, she’s incarnated into that sweet little orange butterfly that just landed on my Little Mermaid Croc, reminding me

      to pay attention, 

      to be more thoughtful,

to be more mindful, 

      to notice the signs, 

      the gifts, 

      the love. 

We scatter like flowers in a wedding procession, only to discover, often when it’s too late, how much we miss the beating heat of Summer; if only, we had one more day.