The other night I dreamt I was talking with some guy about my marathon history. As we talked, he started jogging, and I went right along, feeling free and light as I ran along the trail behind him. I'm not sure where in my waking world I feel free and light, as I fret about our pending roof replacement and a busy summer schedule, but it was a lovely image. I'm not likely to take up running again - walking is just fine these days - but a pleasant reminder of how it feels to be unencumbered by my mostly self-imposed tasks.
The 70th birthday dance party and lawn games event was a success, with 38 attendees at the peak. Several of us live in the vicinity, though we had friends from New York, Phoenix, Seattle and the Oregon Coast who made the trek. Several folks thanked me for pulling it together. It was actually a joint effort, but I will say that besides getting sober, AA has taught me how to throw a party! (As I told a nervous friend once, all you really need to do for a house party is make a lot of coffee and put out extra toilet paper, because once the guests start arriving, no one will notice whether the floor is clean or not.)
What seeing old friends and strangers (we were a high school class of 500) made me realize is that there is value, to me, of connections over time. There is also the deepening understanding that, at age 70, it is more and more likely that I won't go everywhere I'd ever wanted and I won't do everything I'd thought important. I won't hike all the trails, visit all the oceans, wander all the faraway marketplaces. So, reining in fantasies of elder Pippi Longstocking adventures, where do I want to point my energies? What might I feel sad about at the end that I didn't get around to? It's my reminder to self that "later is now." What little (or big) projects, or books or various mementos, etc. am I "saving for later," (a reference to my Depression Era mother if there ever was one). We had our carpets cleaned last week, which necessitated moving stuff off the rugs - dear God I almost wanted to cry with the sheer volume. Time to re-employ the Marie Kondo Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Am I using this? Does seeing it spark joy? No? Then why, oh why is it taking up precious space, not to mention, gathering dust? (And I'm not alone - the carpet fellow said many customers tell him they make a trip to the donation box after the cleaning.)
The same question applies to characteristics and my fretting about "defects", though at this age, much of who I am is pretty entrenched. And...I am better at the pause than I was a few years ago and way less invested in what others think of me. Those are reminders that I'm not done yet, with still room to grow. Maybe not in leaps and bounds, but as we've long heard, slow growth is good growth.
I'd worked on the dance party playlist for months, adding and removing songs, dancing in my living room to test out a beat - all good fun. Good fun, and on the day before the event, when reviewing the songs one more time, I started to cry from the tidal wave of memories: the dance at the YMCA in 1969, earlier dances in 8th grade, the song that caused our hearts to flutter with hope that the certain boy would ask us to slow dance, the 45rpm that my cousins and I played over and over and over again in their bedroom, singing along to romantic lyrics that only partly made sense to us at 15. I am a melancholic sort - a friend and I once chuckled at our nostalgia for long ago AA meetings, so it's not limited to my youth. Today I know that all those memories are part of who I am, and I have so much more compassion for my emotional immaturity. As I said to a fellow 12-Stepper at the party, who apologized for his sarcastic barbs of 50 years ago, how else could we have been? It felt like a lot of us with WWII era dads who didn't have the language to process their experiences, raised ourselves, up in the park, hanging out with other children of alcoholics. As my first sponsor used to say, we did the best with what we knew at the time. I can still occasionally fall into self-judgement for not knowing something I would have no way of knowing, those old tapes of "I should know better" and "It's not OK to ask questions" rising to the surface. But these days, those episodes are brief, and I more readily recognize them for the false beliefs that they are.
I recognize, more and more as time goes on, that aging, or rather acceptance of the changes aging brings, is a process. At 60 it was still in the future, out there somewhere with "old" being at least five years hence. Last week, while out listening to free music in the park, friends and I noted a group of elder women, one with a cane. We teased, "There we are in a few years," with one of us saying, "I sure hope so!" As recovery has shown me, I need do nothing alone, and if I can keep a sense of humor and travel the route with friends, the ride will be smoother.
Do you have a "bucket list?" Are there things you might feel sad about at the end if you don't get to them? How do you balance daily living priorities with hopes and dreams? As you look around your living space, do your belongings bring a sense of pleasure or frustration, or both? How do you make peace with what is today, in the here and now?
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The NOW WHAT workbook is 78 pages of topics and processing questions, great for solo exploration or in a small group. Go to the WEB VERSION of this blog page for the link on ordering (PDF for those outside the U.S., or hard copy mailed to you). Contact me at SoberLongTime@soberlongtime.com or shadowsandveins@gmail.com with questions. And a reminder that the workbook, is available at the Portland Area Intergroup at 825 NE 20th. for local folks.
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