July 16, 2025
This past Monday was our 53rd wedding
anniversary. We dated for a year before we tied the knot. Hard to believe we’ve
been together that long. It’s become a bit of a challenge for me, recalling the
all the details of that long-ago Friday. Our ceremony was held in the evening,
at the church where I used to attend as a child when my father was alive.
The older you get, you not only lose a few memories,
but you can also lose some of your time-perspective. A statement given with
absolute conviction, like, say, “we had that repair done five years ago,”
surrenders to the actual truth that it was more than ten years ago.
No wonder some younger folks hold onto an image of
elderly persons as being “confused”. It’s a sad truth, of course. Except when
it’s funny.
I have a word of advice for those of my readers not yet
there on the cusp of being elderly. Hang onto your sense of humor. You really
will need it in the decades to come.
And one more suggestion, if I may. If you could plan
to have a time-definite when you reduce the number of causes you’re willing to
go to the mat for, that would be a help, too.
When we’re in our prime, we tend to be a bit full of
ourselves. It’s a facet of human nature. We can feel varying degrees of pride
that we’re “masters of our fate and captains of our souls”. But as we age, we
begin to understand the truth. When we came into this life, we were masters of nothing.
And as we become elderly, what mastery we think we have achieved in life begins,
little by little, to eke away.
There are a lot of lessons I’ve learned over the
years, and some of them, I am sorry to say, took too damn long for me to really
learn. Some are still in progress. I suppose that’s why we humans, as opposed
to dogs or cats tend to have somewhat longer lifespans, decades more, even. So
that we have plenty of time to learn the lessons life has in store for us.
It’s mid July, and I must say that our gardens are
looking quite healthy. The combination of heat and rain has done a good job so
far. Many of our bean plants have budded, and we have some small green tomatoes
already on the vine, and busy growing. I’ll venture out with my phone to take
pictures as soon as the humidity drops a bit.
Did I mention that the street on which our house is
located is about to be under construction? The main job the crews will be
performing includes work to be done on the water and sewer systems. In the
process, we will lose the sidewalk on this side of the street. We’ll have a
curb, instead, which isn’t a bad thing—but I can’t tell you if, when all is
said and done, the parking for our street, which for the last few years has
been on this side only of the road, will remain as is or not. I guess we’ll
just have to wait and see.
Impending construction means impending noise. They’re supposed to take only 12 weeks, but
really, why do they say that? Have you ever known a construction project to
begin and end when “they” say it will? Me, neither.
I’ve already begun the long process of getting into
the habit of parking my car in my newly returned driveway. While the street is
being worked on, cars may not be parked there. But the noise is not something I
can prepare for. I might be able to come up with a work-around, but it’s
doubtful. I suspect that my brain will not be able to differentiate between the
noise of construction and the noise of music from headphones, where my creative
activity is concerned. My brain seems to spasm with whatever loud sounds—read
barking dogs—that arise as I ply my trade at the keyboard.
Again, that’s just one more thing to file into the
column of “wait and see”.
As I said, there are a lot of life’s lessons I took
too long to learn, and some I’ve yet to absorb. But one I think I’ve pretty
well nailed is this: I no longer sweat the small stuff. Yes, the causes I’m
willing to go to the mat for really are few in number. And yes, sometimes that
fact can annoy those nearest and dearest to me, but that’s all right, too.
Because I’m also in possession of an awesome sense of
humor, and very good at laughing at myself, and the farce that day-to-day life
can sometimes be.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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