Elderwomen Musings

There you are poking about in the woods and looking for new bloomings, holding the camera in one hand and swishing away the deer flies and mosquitoes with the other.

There is a flash of dancing black and yellow among the thimble berry blooms, and you scamper through the thorns toward it, convinced that this is one of the beautiful native swallowtails.  The butterfly is somewhat agitated and perches here and there, but never for long, and it does not spread its wings for a classic butterfly photo.  So be it.

When you return home and download the day’s images into the computer, you realize that this sighting was something very special indeed.  Your magnificent visitor was a Giant Swallowtail, and they don’t live this far north.  Wonder of wonders, you were there in the woods to see it.

These are David’s boots.  They’re a size 15 and belong to a 6’ 5” gentle giant of a man.  His crew calls him Sasquatch. David is the foreman at our building site and the guy who keeps me from total despair on a daily basis.  Each time I’ve requested a construction change, David has responded “it’s no big deal.”  I know it is a big deal because this is a metal home and change involves cutting and welding huge pieces of steel.  Once when I asked David if something was doable, he said that anything was doable but “it might look like a turd in a punch bowl.”  There are days when I feel like this entire home-building project is “a turd in a punch bowl,” but at least the metaphor makes me smile and fits nicely with what has become my most recent bumper sticker: Life happens!

It seems like this kind of endeavor, this crazy house-building project properly belonged in our youth.  But sometimes it’s important, and even necessary, to live life backwards a bit so that it’s possible to move forward again.  And when you’re pushing into the seventh decade of your life, direction probably matters less than the desire to simply keep moving and be adventurous about it; to continue to meet the Davids of the world and to know that your life is richer for such encounters.

Frustration and fatigue have come for a visit and filled my shoes with lead. Just two weeks ago, spirit light, I skimmed across the surface of my world, like the water bugs across my tiny pond. I was full of hope and determination to accept all that came my way.

And then, what came was a mistake on my construction project: a kitchen sink and tile counter-top installed; a mistake discovered; and all had to be dismantled and demolished. How quickly did this water bug lose her equanimity!

So, this week I move slowly, heavy-footed, and know that sometimes life demands this slower pace.

This afternoon, it is this fence at my current home that gives me hope. It was ten years ago I built it—one post, one horizontal piece, one slat of wood at a time. Life, I remind myself, must often proceed this way.

So, I say hello to the orange daylilies that have traveled with me from home to home. I smile at their crazy, ruffled petals, and know that, just as they come to visit one day at a time, so my frustration and fatigue are only visitors today. Tomorrow or the day after I will once again step lightly, putting one more post, one more plank, into the world of my dreams.