I was in Marblehead, Massachusetts this Sunday for a bridal shower intended to honor the lovely young woman chosen by my beautiful son to be his life partner. My daughter and I stopped first at their tiny-but-lovely condo just off Salem Common to drop off Tashi, the pup who loves Josh and was invited to spend the afternoon of the shower with him and his father as they wired a row of track lights to the kitchen ceiling.

There was a kind of happy chaos in this small (700 square feet) space, peopled by Josh’s father, step-mother, mother and sister … as well as Sophie the cautious cat and Tashi the exuberant pup. Tashi and Sophie were circling each other in a dance each was trying to define. Tashi wanted to play, and Sophie wanted nothing more than to be left alone by this strange mop-like creature. No hissing as the last time they met, and only a small pleading whine from the pup. But, still: it was chaos.

Into this chaos, the cell phone rang and my son went off into another room to hear the call. I watched in some confusion as he came back into the kitchen and — without a word — took out the ironing board and iron, set them up in the middle of all the people, animals and electrical equipment, and went in search of something. Still not telling anyone what he was doing, he came out of the bedroom a minute later with a badly wrinkled pashmina shawl.

He brought it to me and quietly asked, “Mom, what kind of material would you say this is?” I made a wild guess, and he went to the iron, set it appropriately and began to iron the shawl — perfectly, I might add — for his sweetheart to wear to her bridal shower. When he was done, he folded it carefully and placed it out of reach of the still-wild puppy.

Now this is an image to warm a modern mother’s heart: her son ironing his soon-to-be-wife’s shawl. Good going, Josh! But that isn’t what struck me most in this quiet moment that almost no one noticed but me. It was the spirit of his attention to detail, the way he wanted everything to be just right for her on this day-of-days. It was the kindness that doesn’t announce itself, ask for help, or expect appreciation. He just did it because he loves her.

Such a simple act of emotional and spiritual generosity. What a great heart this young man has! And what a pleasure to be his mom on the day they begin the first of many celebrations of their new life together. In this singular moment, I saw reflected back to me the thousands of hours when a mother (any parent, really) infuses love into the heart of a child so that child, when grown, has a full heart to give when a mate calls for help. I also saw the uniqueness of “Josh,” a man who is fortuitously my son, with all the strengths culled from his own life lessons. When called, he answers. Always has. That part belongs to him and has nothing to do with how much he was loved, which was (and is) hugely.

The day was gorgeous, the boats in full sail across Marblehead Neck, the flowers and food lovely, the people fun and funny. It could not have been a more wonderful party. Josh arrived later and even opened a few gifts himself, but the real gift of the day was mine: the sight of my boy, now a man beginning a happy new phase of his life with Lexi, standing at that ironing board, quietly making the day a good one for his beloved.

That attention to detail, that kindness, that graciousness is sometimes all we need to grease the wheels of our more difficult, stressful or painful times. Perhaps the best way to invite such a gift of love is to offer it generously, with no expectation of return on our investment. I have no doubt there are many times when Lexi shows up for Josh when he needs help in his turn.

This will be a good marriage, of that I’m sure. And my certainty comes because of the moment Lexi stepped into the party wrapped in her beautiful pashmina shawl.

Post from: BoomerCafe ... it's your place

Because I’m now living what I’ve come to call a bi-furcated life, I missed The Big One, the late April 2007 storm that slammed into coastal Maine, downed power lines to hundreds of thousands of people, and took down trees and tree limbs that have survived more ferocious storms than this. It ate away feet of beach sand, sucked it right back into the ocean depths, and toppled houses into the briny sea. I sat it all out, watching from afar, in sunny Sarasota where, that same day, the worst weather we had was a few hours of downpour and some tornado warnings. I’ll be on my way north again when hurricane season begins here.

This is an odd, and oddly satisfying, way to live. The best of it is that most days, I wake up to sunshine and blooming hibiscus trees. As a person whose deep old soul is nourished by what E.E. Cummings called “the greenly things,” I am in love with nature, although as I grow older my love takes its best cues from a temperate climate.

In Florida, I have a garden from January to April, when in Maine my garden still is in deep hibernation. In Florida, I spent the last several weekends painting my new garden bench a deep marine blue and found myself thinking that “Painting the Garden Bench” would make a wonderful title for a poem. In Maine, I would have been warding off the cold raw weather by gritting my teeth and reading garden catalogs. Flowers would be just photographs. Here, flowers are alive, bright and cheerful. I love the moment when I walk into my writing room in the early morning — just after taking the pup for her morning constitutional where she joyfully leaps and spins and twirls to greet every moving animal or human body — to see the one sparkle of dew on a red hibiscus blossom just feet away from where I sit to write.

The hardest part of this not-too-hard-to-take life is that now I am saying my goodbyes to the friends I have grown to love here, people who come from all parts of the country and have a remarkable array of talents honed in the school of life. They are fascinating, funny, gifted people I’d love to pop into the back of my red VW Beetle and take north with me to meet my fascinating, funny, gifted friends and family there.

I can’t do that. They have their own lives and journeys to make. So I say goodbye every spring not knowing what the next six months will hold, and whether we’ll all be here again next year when the weather up north develops that certain bone chill in the air that won’t go away and whispers, “Go south!”

In many ways, this bi-furcated life is a great blessing, and I am deeply grateful to have the latitude to make it work. In others, it’s hard on the heart: this busness of living and loving in two places, yet never the twain shall meet. How can it be that Deborah might never meet Linda, or Marvin will never know Robert, or Bob won’t be at my son’s wedding in August?

Confusing, this.

And I pack today, getting the car and the pup ready for my daughter’s arrival and our long drive back to New England, with an array of mixed feelings. I look at the hibiscus, once more twinkling with morning dew, and already feel its absence. Yet I hear from Sarah that the Star Magnolia we planted at her Flower Power Shower last summer is just about to burst into bloom, and I (who picked it out) want to be there for the luscious grand opening.

Some say we can have it all. Some that we can have it all, but not all at once or all the time. I don’t know where I stand on this. I simply know that I love many people and many different places, and with each, my spirit is deeply nourished. That I have to say goodbye to some in order to have others, is … well … a part of life I don’t like very much. At least, I get to say goodbye in ways that do my heart good. So many people have their loved ones parted from them with no warning. I have had months to savor the pleasures of them and hours to linger over our gratitudes and leavetakings. That must be enough.

More time is what I surrender in order to have the rich colors, textures, and diversity of people to love. But with more flexibility now in this post-working boomer life, I can.

Post from: BoomerCafe ... it's your place

Recently, I was lucky enough to attend a conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, which featured Angeles Arrien, a cross-cultural anthropologist who spoke eloquently, humorously, knowledgably, and sensitively about what we who have entered it — translation: Boomers — euphemistically call “The Second Half of Life.” One friend who was there with me tagged this “Second ½.”

But it doesn’t matter what we call it: it’s more than a little gripping to those of us who have reached the top of the mountain and have begun the descent to the other side. The clock, in other words, is ticking, and we had better be involved in life’s true work, which is cultivating the inner life, formulating the wisdom we have accrued through our life experiences, and leaving that wisdom in some form as a living legacy for those who follow the path we mark with our efforts.

The baby boomers of whom I am among the first wave stand on the threshold of becoming the next elders of our culture. Are we prepared to inherit such a role, and the responsibilities that go with it? Where do we find our models, those who have preceded us through the wilderness of conscious aging, and left a compass to guide us wisely?

One of the things Angeles Arrien said in kicking off this event, as she screwed her expressive rubber face into a scowl at her audience in the pretense of scrutiny, was this: “If we have reached the age of fifty and are not yet modeling wisdom for the generations behind us, we are behaving in a less than becoming manner!” As an opener, it certainly got our attention; the audience howled with laughter and simultaneously groaned with distress as we recognized ourselves in that truth.

We spent the next three days exploring what it means to become keepers of wisdom in the second half of life. All of us went through our personal rigors as we dove into the hidden corners of our own souls to see where we have left our “business” neglected or untended. Though she did not say this, Angeles would agree that every gardener knows when it is time to cut the garden back and put it to bed for the winter, when it is time for the garden to be quiet and prepare for the burst of life ahead in the spring. That is the inner work of the second half of life: preparing the garden within the soul for the final splendor of its life work.

Most of us are not paying attention though. We are too busy with … what? Those things we call the activities of daily living?? Paying the bills, reaching the top of the success ladder (the mythologist Joseph Campbell always said, “There can be nothing worse than climbing the ladder of success only to discover you placed it against the wrong house!”), planning for retirement or the time when we can finally “slow down.”

And in the process, who or what do we fail to notice, experience, appreciate, and value?

We are quickly moving toward the season of the year and the season of our lives when we are called to stand still, to notice the beauty of life, to rain extravagant love on those who daily and faithfully love us. This understanding or approach to the right use of our singular lives is an elemental characteristic of one who is in the process of becoming incrementally wise. Life teaches us this.

Are we pushing away the beauty of life in our failure to see the grasshopper that crosses our path, the moose that lumbers into our neighborhood, the sparkle of Venus sitting on the slender hip of the moon? My brother wrote me the other day that he happened to be in the right place at the right time to get a glimpse of a last migrating monarch butterfly, backlit by the sun, radiant in its passing. “Will I ever see such a sight again?” he wondered, sharing his awe. Lucky that he saw it this one time, this precious moment noticing beauty on its way through his life.

And what about the love we push away, and for what reasons? Lauren, the little girl who lives next door to me, appears at the most unexpected (and occasionally inconvenient) times for what we call “a visit.” I’m often in the middle of writing or finishing some task only adults find important and consider just for a moment that I won’t answer when she pounds at my door and calls my name. This is love calling and in my foolishness, I consider not answering the call. Fortunately, my soul is wiser than my mind, and I put away whatever task I’m doing to spend time with a child who loves to love me.

How many times do we push away the ones who love to love us? This is the work of the second half of life: this reckoning with ourselves and the unpleasant truths we might find lurking in the recesses of our spirits. If we have reached the age of fifty, are creeping up on it, or have passed it without awareness, we will inevitably hear the siren call of the wild spirit to come to attention.

So we want to be wise, eh? We want to be respected in our years as elders? Then we better get going, friends, to embrace the beauty and finitude of life and of those who love us. Push none of them away. Take them, instead, into our hearts, and be glad for them. They are our true wealth, our only blessings worth counting.

May our days be filled with the gracious and humble appreciation of everything and everyone that truly matters and makes our beautiful life worth the journey.

Post from: BoomerCafe ... it's your place