A time of change ensues. I am taking a vacation – an unheard-of thing! When I drive, it is to Go Somewhere: Arrive With Purpose. A vacation is an odd thought, a thread unspooling to a time free from commitment.

Driving for hours has been usually to change living localities. I’ve taken off cross-country more than once, my car loaded so much it’s a challenge to see from the rearview mirror. A pleasure trip has not entered my purview for an extremity of time & I cannot call one to mind right now. Vacations were always unaffordable & impractical. Jobs didn’t allow for distanced outings, spending time elsewhere, finding restaurants & bathrooms. My destination always top of mind, my going somewhere has purpose & I don’t dawdle. I am almost frightened with the thought of uncommitted driving.

I think of myself as grown-up; but strangeness & novelty still take getting used to. Um, isn’t that oxymoronic? I find it intense to “change my mind” & grasp onto just going somewhere. Of course I have a destination in mind. My trip is two-part as I prefer driving 4-5 hours a day & not the full distance there in one go. So planning for stops enters. Of course I can bring along my own foodstuffs & stick to the highway as I’m wont to do. This time I think I am ready to perhaps leave the road to explore.

Who is this me? I’m ready to befriend her & let her take the lead. I need to free that inner child who hopped onto her bike & just rode around.

I’m reading The Lioness of Boston, by Emily Franklin. The heroine has just served bananas at table. No one knows how to eat them tho they understand they cannot eat the tough skin. They slice the fruit into coins & use forks to separate the inner flesh. Grandmother mischievously breaks hers in half & peels it, eating with her hands. Who am I? Lady of the house or grandma?

When I return from this trip it will be to a fast-changing situation: my manager has resigned from the office. Unlike some other places I’ve worked years ago, I cannot take on her duties to keep the place running. It’s up to the President of the Board to hire someone licensed / authorized to keep things running. I am an assistant in an HOA. I am concerned with the everyday of who signs the paycheck, personally, since I can only do my little duties of issuing parking, preparing applications, answering the phone & such. Paychecks are beyond my pay grade.

I am due to figure out preparing bananas.

Road-tripping will be a grand intro as I’ll already be out of the box, so to speak.

There’s been no ripples in my pond for some while & I’m at a loss whether to don Wellies or Nikes, or just dig out the bathing suit.

Wish me well, dear readers. I know I’ve got this & I have some alternatives to access as needed. Obviously the singularity of change is the first go-to from which issue so many more.

Prying myself out of the Henry Chair is Job One.

You’re not, though. I miss you. You were the only parent I had & I sure didn’t like that much when I lived in your home, but ‘only’ suffices that sentence. I remember so little: I recall so much.

I wanted a mom who held me & coddled me a bit – one who knew about hugs & how good they felt to a little kid. One who was focused on my dreams instead of her duties. One who wasn’t a bit like you – my stern disciplinarian, my comptroller, my uber-mom of legend. Breadwinner, emotional shredder, mover & shaker of all…

You were dealt a raw deal, Mom. Daddy cheated, or so the tale is told. You had to live with awful in-laws who thought criticism rhymed with breathing. You were never good enough for my ne’er do well dad & I’ll just bet he made off with your heart in a hurry & kept it in his footlocker for a longish time. You were as wronged as any country song & as put-upon by a disapproving family as ever a one was.

I really don’t know the details & my imagination isn’t up to the skill it would take to even make these up. I only know you did your your best by all of us as one by one we also beat you up in the unseemly skirmishes of kid vs. parent. In our imaginations we vanquished you to neverland while our reality included completing that chores list every day.

I know you found your treasures at work where accomplishing tasks excellently was the least of it. I know I wouldn’t be who I am if the course of events hadn’t followed exactly what you wrought them to be.

I made my own mother-mistakes & I doubt anyone finds the way easy as it was set down by family. I spent far more time seeking than finding, that’s for sure.

I hope you forgive me, too. It took a seance to hear you say, “I didn’t know what to do with you!” And that’s ok since I didn’t know what to do with me either.

There’s an old one on the books says “they did the best they could with what they had” & there’s a reason cliche’s ring true. Somewhere a cosmic throat-clearing is taking place. Somewhere we’re going to meet for percolator coffee & snowy pizzelles, & laugh our asses off at what we did.

Set the date, Mom, & I’ll be there to set the table!

So, I heard an acquaintance now has a gentleman friend. Hell, what are boyfriends even called at our age? There should be a designation, some kind of species nomenclature, a Latin genus or specie name… ‘Widower’? That implies a lot, but so does ‘lover’, ‘boyfriend’, ‘gentleman caller’ – Or maybe I should just say, ‘She met a guy.’

I puzzle on this, as I do on many things. I often end these puzzlings with musing “but no one’s interested in me”, when the apt truth is I live like a hermit crab & sociability has become harder to prise into. If someone presented as being interested in me, would I even know how to react?

Somehow I doubt I am that original individual who can figure out the male/female conundrum – I’m as fixated in my ways as any oppositely sexed individual. Which name is unfortunate, implying oppositional or uncomplementary to. In heaven’s name, why would I want to be THAT to a companion on my life path? Opposition implies a clash & non-agreement & tension lining the fringes.

I have known relationships of legend, where male/female remained united for years. But only by reputation after all, not by experience. I have frequently said my car loans lasted longer than my marriages.

Perhaps one answer to that query “why not me?” is that pesky word “never.” As in never met the guy, never thought enough of belonging with someone else, etc. I could go on but everyone over 6-1/2 already knows the drill.

I have many attractions to engage another. These have been thorougly reviewed in the 375 other posts on this blog.

I don’t dare say what I’m saying here, but the truth is so darn changeable. I have trouble getting hold of only one capital T truth before it morphs in shape & meaning. Truth exists in one hundred states besides air, water, solid. Somewhere I crossed over from the ifs, the maybes & the coulds into the nevers without really meaning to. It became a continental drift which has taken me decades to recognize, let alone plan on reordering.

In this moment, this iteration of me, I’m unsure how a change becomes a focus or even a consideration as it’s not been in the “I’ll think about it tomorrow” bag under the bed I dream upon.

I do love romance, thoughtfulness, caring relationships. I mist up at couples holding hands, especially when their other hand is clutching a cane. I thrill at the “falling-in [L-word] part, awakening to potential & joining & finding that piece of puzzle which I thought to be only my shadow.

It remains an unexplored universe for me & I don’t consider time travel too outre’. I like my self pretty much now; it’s taken a long time to do so.

There may come another who will love me & invite/allow me to love back as best I can. Wouldn’t that be a joy & such fun & a blessing in manifestation!?

I have no idea how to prepare for such an event, however. Or how to accept it, or how to make room for this possibility. But love wouldn’t concerned with my dancing around on the topic, right?

If circumstance brings about this benediction, I accept the blessing & keep the balance. So much of my life has been a surprise party, what’s one more guest at the table? One more candle on the cake?

I am happiest when I am in heaven.

Fortunately, I am a woman of simple tastes

So this is easily achieved:

A place to be unbound in thought

Tho thought be all routine – do this, do that.

My heaven has a little job that earns me what I need to pay my way

In this material world.

It has friends who remember me once in awhile

Who share a call or a note.

Heaven is a place where debts are small, rewards are great:

Where mystery can remain unknown & evil cannot conquer.

My heart knows peace here.

My life means a world, my word a life.

My place is a corner to sit in, a   book with real pages,

Coffee & pasta with my own sauce.

Every moment I greet with a breath

Is heaven.

May it always be so.

Let’s get with the Program, boys n’ girls,

let’s move this show along the road

shovel up the shit we left behind,

pretty it for the next ones a-coming,

let’s re-mind ourselves of how we were sold it would be

bring forth the betterment of mankind

reach into the back of the pantry, moving all the unused illusions

to the heap in the dumpster.

Life is so much more than what we make it

miracles are always the most ordinary of all that is

regardless of the fuss we like to make ’em…

It’s really hard not to smack back

but if you know who you are & what,

the need to do so dissapates a lot

Just get up, shake it off, brush off your lapels

pick up the flag

signal the start-up music

listen for your cue

march forward

don’t look back – history ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Did I really mean this life?

broken … but they all say that’s how the light gets in

so I don’t really mind at this age, this stage.

I wandered as if in God’s Maze

my life unfolded like a treasure map

one state after another

of mind, of heart, of locale.

Each a singularity of itself.

I had a purpose once,

I think.

It decentralized as I began finding meaning all over

in the darndest places.

Could I combine the moments,

like some hybridized montage where I’m a central character

I would take the love of the men I shared mine with,

the jobs where I shone, accomplished,

the mornings mirrors were kind, jeans fit, my cheeks had color

I would take the triumphs & tuck them into my bag,

slinging them over my shoulder to ponder later.

I know I’d be kinder, sing more, take less umbrage

but these go without saying. Wouldn’t we all rewrite a life

leaving out anger & sorrow? Just for the hell of it?

I learned from it all but these moments now,

ah! this now is like no other

this walk finds me resting more in the scenery

observing with old eyes all that I see around me new.

There seem no shiny destinations

when each day has a fold of glitter to shower over me.

I never got the pony, or the little red wagon

Or the kind of love I could understand before I

declared it over & done & begone.

I fled so many lives – relationships as well as timelines.

I skittered across the universe, a pinball played by the hand of God

Pinging each bumper, racking up points like a pro

Winning Him prizes, the kinds found in CrackerJack boxes…

Now I feel around in the drawers, pawing old glories, faded triumphs

Brought into the folds I peeled off to get to the meat of the matter.

Now I get to the place where everyday is so routine I must love it so much

that I know it by heart.

No matter where I journey in dreams, I wake in the same body

the same bed, readily living

the same day

Ready to bring it to life once again, to make it a li’l bit different.

There will be one so perfect it will signal an ending

A rightness to wander off from all I know

Into the palace of wherever it is Next to Be.

For me.