Elderwomen Musings

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.

This is poison ivy.  I’m learning a lot these days about its myriad appearances on our newly purchased land, knowledge that ranks right up there with what I’m learning about Copperhead snakes and scorpions.  Met a couple more neighbors today and was told that they’ve only killed three Copperheads and a dozen house scorpions in their almost twenty years on the land next door.  But Larry did warn us about driving at night in the bottom land on Hwy 1565.  “Only a matter of time,” he said, “before you hit a deer.  And the heavy rains we’ve been having will bring out the mosquitoes this year something fierce.”  I was relieved to have something new to think about because I’ve been thinking a whole bunch lately about those snakes and scorpions and poison ivy.

A day doesn’t go by that I don’t wonder what craziness has caught hold of us that we are building a home in the country in our 70s.  My husband hasn’t been a country boy since he was 8 years old, and the closest I’ve come to country is small town living on a half-acre lot.  Where we are moving is REAL country!  And then I think about the new people we are meeting every day, people like Larry and Linda.  They opened their gate to us, then their home and their hearts.  They even went over and told the crew working on our house to let them know if they needed anything rather than drive all the way into town.  I’ve never before known my neighbors beyond passing greetings and occasional casual conversations.  I sense that this neighborhood is going to be different.  Maybe the snakes and scorpions and poison ivy will soon just be part of it all, the way it is for Larry and Linda.

Sometimes magic moments are so well disguised as ordinary life that I move right on through them without even noticing.  But occasionally the meaning of such moments breaks through, and I find myself breathing deeply and deliciously of my awareness that I’m alive.  I had one of those awakenings the other day when my husband and I were cutting up some downed trees on our newly acquired land.  I found myself thinking, “I could die right now, and it would be OK.  Life has been good.”  Of course I don’t want to die.  Living is way too good.  But this is the first time I’ve ever been embraced by that kind of simultaneous holding-on-while-letting-go feeling.  Maybe it’s only when feeling really alive that I can begin to understand and accept the meaning of death.  Or maybe it’s just a strange way of mourning our downed trees.