35

This is the poem I want to live by from now on.

When Death Comes, Mary Oliver

 

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

 

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox;

 

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

 

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

 

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

 

and I think of each life as a flower, as common 

as a field daisy, and as singular,

 

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth

tending as all music does, toward silence,

 

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

 

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

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was a 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.

Checking the Next Box

This coming Sunday, the 17th, I will turn 35.  This means on every survey, magazine quiz, legal document, and medical form for the next nine years, I have to check the 35-44 box.

19-25? Fine.  No qualms about that.  26-34 was cool, too.  I didn't mind being anywhere in that sucker, but this new one...well...it's a lot to take in, that nine year span.  It's going to include 40, and I have to tell you that 40 sounds like an unreal number, something that doesn't make any sense, isn't possible.

Inside, in my little pink heart I feel about 17.  I still laugh at all the things that made me laugh then (Weird Science, Growing Pains, my parents), I still love a lot of the same music (The Smiths, James Taylor, Ani DiFranco), I still read and am blown away by the same books (Skinny Legs & All, Catcher in the Rye, the poetry of Allen Ginsberg), and I am still stunned to silence by the same miracles of nature (sunrise, late blooming flowers, starry night skies).

It is absolutely shocking to think that soon, I'm going to boxed in by a whole other set of expectations, ones that traditionally mean I should be more grown up, less engaged, more settled, less full of wonder.  I am the oldest I have ever been--obviously--but each day I feel more alive, more engaged, more sure of who I am and what I want from the world.

So, here's to checking the next box, to embracing the next phase of life, to believing that getting older means getting better.

34

Today I am 34.  This has been my most difficult birthday, not because I'm getting older but because of recent changes that had to happen so the people involved can find out what they need and who they are.  But, while they are necessary changes, they have also been incredibly painful.


Someone asked recently whether I have regrets and if I would change anything.  Despite the agony of the last few months--and the particular hell of the last few days--I wouldn't.  The idea of regret has always suggested, to me, that the person who has them doesn't want to be exactly who she is.  So, if changing something from my past changes who I am today, I'll pass.


I am not perfect, no one is, but I usually like myself.  I have doubts like everyone else, but I know who I am because of what I have been through, and I am proud of that.   This picture was taken today before friends took me out to dinner and the woman in it knows who she is.  I wouldn't trade that for anything.


It would be easier to live head down, mouth shut, pretending everything is okay.  But I can't do that.  I believe in telling the truth, even when it means letting people I love go, hoping they find happiness, even if that happiness may have nothing to do with me.  


T.S. Eliot wrote "What we call the beginning is often the end.  And to make an end is to make a beginning.  The end is where we start from."


My prayer for this year is that I am strong enough to believe more in the beginning than the end.