Garden Party

Dear Former Self,

Last year during another training for work in Oklahoma City, I dreamed I was here, dreaming.  It was very odd, waking up and trying to separate things.  I felt hungry and I sat on the side of the bed thinking, where should I go?  A diner, for two over easy?  A bakery, for a blueberry muffin? That hotel had a small restaurant attached, for breakfast only,  'The Good Morning Cafe," it was called.  I'm not sure if that is a good idea.  Some things wonderfully named have terrible-tasting food.

But I did go, and I sat at the counter and after I ordered my veggie omelet I read a local newspaper.  There was a photograph on the front page of a group of people sitting around a picnic table, all of them as older.  It would be the sixtieth reunion of one of the local high schools, Classen High.  I thought probably this small crowd was there to see who was still alive.  But when I looked closer at the faces, I didn't see any mournful dissatisfaction.  I saw that they were looking at each other in a way that bypassed all those years.  The football player was still seeing the pink-cheeked girl in the pleated skirt, and vice versa...

I don't know what it is about me when I am out and about, but people tell me things it seems they won't always trust with other strangers.  i remember a man whose wife died a gruesome death telling me that he was amazed by people who were amazed that he could take care of her at the end, that he could keep her at home and offer ice chips to cracked lips that no longer said anything comprehensible, that he could uncomplainingly change sheets a few times a day because they had been soiled for this awful reason or that.  "But I saw her the way she used to be," he told me.  "I mean, through the way that she was now.  Through it and including it, actually, it was all always her."  And I remember thinking, that was a lucky woman.  Never mind that she died a horrible death -- we all are faced with that possibility.  What mattered was that at the end, someone who loved her sat by her saying, I see you.

I noticed this morning the veins on my hands don't look they way they used to.  And the first thought that came to me was, should I do something about this?  What do they do about this, vein stripping, is that what it is?  This came to me automatically, even after what I believe I've started to learn.   But it's so silly.  So tiresome, that kind of thinking, and so self-defeating.  If I get a face lift, the skin on my neck will still sag, and soften.  If I get my eyes done, my joints will still ache.  Life has its way, and it seems to me now that the object might only be to learn how to be graceful, to understand the value of a deep kind of acceptance. There are those who have catastrophic events happen in their lives when they are young.  Early on, we lose so much.  But for the rest of you guys, those of you who have had the luxury of being called normal, there is only the slow loss of what we see as our prime.  First the half-glasses, then the hair growing where it shouldn't, then the memory that walks half a step away from you, the way you cannot quite find the word, it goes racing by you like a fast bird in flight.  "Don't get old," my father's mother told me, old herself.  She meant that I should spare myself this most personal of griefs.  But why not get old, when what it means is more time with all that is here? Why not relish retirement when it means an alarm clock does not wake you anymore?  You can take the morning light as an offering, lie still for awhile with a square patch of sun lying across your chest.  The day is blank and up to you.  You can twist yourself in your sheets for the pleasure of the pull, knowing it will not make you late for anything.  You can dress in jeans and roll down a hill, terrified all over again, though for different reasons having to do with old bones.  You leave the high place, tumble toward the bottom.  Beneath you, the grass flattens, acknowledging your presence, then rises up again, as though you were never there.  You see this, now; and it seems to me that if you want to, you can understand the rightness of it.  What I mean is, when you learn to turn from the mirror, when you look up from your hands, you have a chance to see a garden truly, because you are not in your own way.  I saw this because I read a poem by a farmer to his wife where he talked about that, you see, and it made me realize I would love to circle a garden with the right person, someone who wanted to enjoy it with me, both of us seeing the same thing at the same time.  I remember a man I once knew who, and even though we had just met, he gave me a bite of his sandwich and said, "I hope you taste it the same as me."  I thought it was thrilling that he said that.  (I thought it was sexual, too, so I told myself I could never see him again because I couldn't afford that kind of giving myself over like that when it wasn't a mutual sacrifice.)  I know that feeling, though, and I had wanted him to see out of my eyes so many times after that... And more than ever toward the end.

I have been wanting to be without anxiety before I really start "living" my life.  But I think I am waiting for something that will never come.  I mean that all relationships are fraught with anxiety, even the one we have with ourselves.  We live on a planet that never stops turning and we are witness to the theater of the seasons.  How can we expect a relationship to not change?  And change makes us anxious, it just does -- and given the opportunity, we will nearly all of us sit in the same chair, every time.  It is a tender thing, the way we always seek reassurance, the way we are never too old to reach for the outstretched hand.

I know there's a chance someone will be angry at me.  Outraged, even, and wanting to sit in a borrowed den and sulk as soon as he sees me.  But there's also a chance he will be glad I left, and glad I returned. There's a chance he will come to the driveway to meet me before I've gotten fully out of the car, and open my door for me and offer to carry in my heaviest bag.  I confess I hope for that.  I have imagined it, as I have imagined such a man as this sitting at the kitchen table drinking straight black coffee because it's the only thing there, and putting down the newspaper, to remember me.  Yes.  I am starting to believe I am worthy of such devotion.  I am starting to believe I am genuinely worthy of someone's time, and not just silly scraps of it, either.  

However it is that he feels, the captain of my heart must know that I am coming home to him.  I won't plan on stopping for anything but sleep, bathrooms, and meals.  I imagine that when I find this man, I will be trying to quick get away at first, because again, anxiety sets us deep within our own faulty blueprints.  But then again, if he's The One, then I will not be able to wait to get back to him.  Isn't that how mutuality in a relationship works, anyway?  An equal commitment of time and helpful tasks and a level of attentiveness on both accounts?  

So here I come again, Self, changed a bit, it's true.  I am Elizabeth Ann, woman and child.  I am every age I ever was and I always will be, and I am finding that out now.  In two days, I will be coming home again and I want nothing more than to try and remember everything I have learned on this very personal journey of pleasure and business altogether and up until this point.  It is all significant, everything.  Too, it is all relevant.  I am so eager to see myself peaceful and relaxed and happy again, Self.  I am happy at the prospect of moving on out and away from situations and people which do not spark joy or love me back or reciprocate in the manner in which I need for them to so that I can ensure my own happiness and satisfaction and so that I can, in turn, give it right back.  Perhaps we will all see each other and very honestly be able to take it from there.

With Love,
​My Former Self, and self-proclaimed Renaissance Woman of Sorts

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