Archives for posts with tag: 62

Steps on a Path

June 11, 2025 //
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I’m thinking about the year that is ending today. My birthday is tomorrow. My birthday last year is barely an afterthought or footnote in my memory, and I have to look up photos by date and old writing to recapture of sense of that day. It wasn’t as important-seeming as the imminent arrival of the Anxious Adventurer, or my Traveling Partner’s scheduled surgery and day-to-day care needs. At the end of May, I’d gone camping for a few days. In July, I made a change from painting in acrylic to painting in pastels. June? June is largely missing from my recollection. I think I was mostly just glad to have survived another year.

Pictures tell a tale of living life along familiar pathways: walks on favorite trails, getting storage ready to accomodate the Anxious Adventurer, and time spent on watches and my Traveling Partner’s watchmaking tools, a coffee at a little cafe in the Pearl District. All of it felt like either a distraction from, or preparation for, my Traveling Partner’s surgery, scheduled for August. It was a weird time, and my birthday wasn’t really a particularly “big deal”, all things considered. I was definitely okay with things just being okay.

Strangely, the more I search my emails and photos for pictures to do with my actual birthday last year, the clearer it becomes that I don’t have any. lol I appear to have (perhaps) gotten a new phone around this time last year? Possibly a new watch, although it’s not clear quite when that happened – perhaps in May. lol The photo history on my phone just stops some days after my birthday, and there is nothing older there. The photos in my cloud storage skip the entire week of my birthday. lol I was clearly putting my mind and my time on other things. I sigh to myself and let it go. It’s barely even a minor aggravation, just a bit puzzling considering how commonly I snap a picture of this or that moment. The year, taken as a whole, was a busy rollercoaster ride of emotions and trying circumstances, but there were many joyful moments and things I recall quite fondly in a life well-lived, generally speaking. I’m okay with that. More than okay with it, I just lack the right words.

…In spite of the chaos in the world, and the train wreck that is American government presently, I am happy to be alive, and faced with another birthday…

…62 years…

For sure this journey has not been all cake and ice cream. I’d laugh, but frankly trauma isn’t all that funny. I’m glad I have survived all that I have, and have had so many opportunities to begin again, to do more better, and to walk this path toward becoming the person I most want to be. I’ve grown a lot. I’ve learned a lot. I’m proud of the woman in the mirror; she’s been through some shit, and she’s seen some things, and still she persists in walking her path. I’d be impressed, too, but… (and?) I do know how very human I actually am, and how hard I really have to work, and how often it isn’t quite enough. My results vary and I need more practice. That’s just real.

So… today is the last day of being 61. It wasn’t exactly a milestone year of any kind, but it was the year during which I had to learn caregiving for real (and omg do I ever suck at that – it’s very difficult), and I am pretty glad to see this particular year coming to an end. Recent months have been pretty splendid, and I’ve loved feeling my relationship with my Traveling Partner deepen and grow and become something quite wonderful, like falling in love all over again. It’s good seeing him making real progress toward regaining his skills and mobility, and freeing himself from being dependent on caregiving. I’m eager to discover what 62 holds for me – and for us, as a new year together begins.

I sip my coffee looking out at the blue summer sky. There was a fat luminous full moon hanging low over the horizon as I left the house this morning, but it is long gone now. It’s a new day, and it’s time to begin again.

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Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Love, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being

62 Eh?

May 22, 2025 //
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My birthday is coming up, just weeks away. 21 days actually. Huh. Not a major milestone sort of birthday, other than being one I couldn’t see reaching from the vantage point of my 20’s. I struggled to put items on a wishlist to make things easy on my Traveling Partner. There’s not much that I want in life that I don’t have, and my needs are fairly simple. (There are plenty of ludicrous extravagences that I don’t have, but few of those hold even passing appeal.)

…62 doesn’t “feel old”, and doesn’t necessarily feel like a moment worth a notable celebration…

I walked the local trail this morning, grateful to be walking. It’s a gray rainy Pacific Northwest Spring morning. My ears are ringing, my tinnitus is bad enough to be a distraction this morning. My back aches with arthritis pain, but my legs aren’t so sore and I definitely feel an improvement in freedom of movement since starting on the elliptical machine every day at home. (Hell of a good find at an affordable price, and I’m grateful for the timing that brought my Traveling Partner’s eyes to that ad for a used elliptical machine!) Incremental change, one step at a time. Due to pain, my walking pace rarely gets my heart rate up, and the elliptical machine has already proven its worth for cardio benefits.

The meadow grasses and weeds are lush and green along the edge of the vineyard. The hills on the horizon are shades of blue gray, with white patches near the tops that are either snow or clouds clinging to the hillsides. It’s barely raining at all, not even a drizzle just occasional fine misty droplets I see on my glasses but don’t feel on my face. I breathe, exhale, and relax. Long Memorial Day weekend ahead. I sigh contentedly. This is a nice moment right here. I make a point of enjoying it.

I think about my birthday again, doing a mental inventory of things I like and enjoy generally that I might want more of… I chuckle to myself. I have what I need and it’s enough. Fucking hell that’s got to make gift giving a bit complicated for the giver! Fortunately, I’m also pretty easy to please, delighted by the thought of being held in sufficiently high regard to be the recipient of a gift in the first place.

A small brown bird is scuffling through the bits of leaf matter and the weeds near my feet, unconcerned with my presence. The raindrops on my face are more obvious now. I sigh again, aware that the clock is ticking (metaphorically) and get to my feet to head back to the car; it’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, joy, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Practices, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being

Green On Gray

May 15, 2025 //
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Cloudy morning. The deep dark green of the oaks dressed in Spring foliage dominate the view as I set off down the trail this morning. My head is full of vaguely grim musings, like “how many more sunrises?” And whether or not human life is sustainable on this planet at all, or how many idiots it takes to destroy democracy as astonished others watch it fall? My head aches. I woke with the headache and my tinnitus loud in my ears. I walk anyway.

Oaks along a well-maintained local trail, on s gray Spring morning.

It’s a workday. For some reason I feel cross and moody every time I think about my upcoming birthday. I don’t know what to do about my moody bullshit, but I guess I know more or less where it comes from. Change. I feel childish and stupidly emotional over it. Change is, and there are much more serious things going on in the world to be moody about than the details vexing me now. I’m just still dealing with it, I guess.

In spite of making tremendous progress recovering from his injury and the surgery that followed, my Traveling Partner, my beloved, is still healing, adapting, and working to recover skills and mobility that were lost or impaired. (We made dinner together last night and it was wonderful to see him back in the kitchen, cooking!) I’m incredibly impressed and proud of him for the sheer will and commitment he’s shown. I know how hard it is; I’ve been there (though I was in my 20’s when I broke my back, and that’s a very different age to deal with such a thing). So I want to be clear about my angsty nonsense; it’s not about him, or in fact about the current circumstances. Not really.

Love matters most.

I catch myself thinking about my 60th birthday. We’d just gotten the Ridgeline, and we were happily purposeful and excited, and eagerly exploring the local wilds together. The physical intimacy in our relationship was connected, deep, and joyful, and we “had the house to ourselves”. Him getting hurt wasn’t even on our radar. A year later, my birthday was mostly caregiving and preparing for his surgery with him, and doing the needful to help the Anxious Adventurer relocate to move in and give us a hand with all that, whatever he could while also building a life here for himself and working. Then another 6 months or so of crazy intense caregiving that exhausted me and pushed me to limits I didn’t know I have, before my beloved really started to “be himself” again. I’m not complaining. I’m just saying that these are the circumstances and changes that brought me to this weird and moody place, facing a birthday I mostly wouldn’t care much about under other circumstances. 62? Not even a milestone (and I don’t “feel old”, generally speaking, in spite of chronic pain). I just have feelings. Very human. I don’t know what to do with or about this particular birthday. I simultaneously ache with poignant feelings of loss and strange regrets, and also don’t give a fuck and want to put it behind me.

I have planned taking the week after my birthday off work, but I have no actual plans. It’s just all really weird and the emotions have piled on, and I’m having trouble sorting myself out. It’s annoying.

“Emotion and Reason” 18″ x 24″ acrylic w/ceramic and glow details, 2012

I breathe, exhale, and relax. There’s so much to appreciate and to be grateful for. I focus on that as I sit at my halfway point, writing and reflecting. Things could be much worse. Change is, and this too will pass. I can count on that. lol I will find small joys to help me past blue moments. The clock will tick on, regardless. A week off spent sleeping in, painting, and puttering in my garden, reading books, and walking local trails, is time well-spent and needs no elaborate planning at all. It’s even enough, truly. Ah, but I do have these feelings, and the way out is reliably through – so I give myself room to experience and process my emotions, without taking them personally. Just feeling the feelings and reflecting on those. They’ll pass. They’re only emotions after all, not truths, not requirements, just their own sort of experience. I give myself a break and let them come and go like gray clouds on a Spring morning; yes, they appear to cover the entire sky, but they will move on, and there is blue sky beyond.

… Clouds make a nice metaphor for emotions…

I smile to myself. I’m okay for most values of “okay”, and this is a good life. I am indeed fortunate. Emotions are so very human. I sigh and chuckle to myself as I get to my feet and stretch. This path won’t walk itself. There are practices to practice and the clock ticks on. It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, grief, health, Healthy Living, loneliness, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being