Becoming 58 is serendipitous.
The past two years has been absorbed in a nebulous and ever-changing world surrounding Covid and checkpoints of “new normal.”
Not only has THE world changed but MY world has changed as well.
I have watched as my neighborhood has literally turned over. Families with offspring the age of my eldest first saw them all come home and live with them as adults during the lockdown days.
As the adult children left and moved on to their “new normal,” the parents of the adult children left also.
People walking their dogs in front of my house are strangers and what were once familiar faces are making new friends in their retirement communities.
There are dogs everywhere. And kids. Lots and lots of kids with their little bikes and scooters darting into the road and filling the air with their laughter and squeals.
I took my own dogs for a walk recently (yes plural as we also got a pandemic puppy.)
I uncharacteristically stopped and chatted with a few of the OG’s. One was my youngest daughter’s preschool teacher. She has two granddaughters who straddle my daughter in age.
We have not really talked since they were all in elementary school. We caught up on things like graduation and college choices and the perils of teenage driving.
It was surreal.
Like life just happened – a lot of life – in a blink of an eye.
Relationships are also different.
The pandemic changed relationships. It exposed them for what they are. Differences and similarities rose to the surface and magnified.
People we interacted with “out of obligation” fell away because we were no longer obligated to mingle.
Relationships we truly valued became more precious and sometimes we had to accept differences we did not know we had.
We had to work harder to stay in touch and that also exposed who was willing to put forth the effort and who was not.
Connecting in general changed drastically. The virtual world exploded. I watched as the contact tracing initiative I joined with so many other displaced workers started from grass roots using personal emails and phones to a network of 7,000 connected with TEAMS, Webex, Amazon Connect, and DOH email addresses.
We are just now turning out the lights with a staff of 200 statewide workers. I am among 17 School Specialists to continue serving the school community.
Technology like the Portal. Zoom, and virtual learning became part of everyday life and the only “safe” way to live for a while.
Experiencing the polar opposite of “touching” and learning how to reach beyond what has been a lifelong paradigm of communication and connecting has been an outcome for everyone living through the pandemic.
The pandemic- imposed paradigm shift caused me to reflect on the choices I’ve made in my life. I am at the beginning of the age where friends pass on and elder family members begin the process of handing torches to the next generation.
I suddenly am being looked upon as the next matriarch. The baton has not been passed yet the hand off is becoming apparent.
I feel the same on the inside as I did as a child, adolescent, young adult, and adult. The voice of “me” is the same yet to others I appear to have grown, aged, and taken on symbolisms I can only surmise.
I don’t know who I am from the outside.
Aging does remove barriers and filters – resulting in a conflict of pros and cons. “Spending enough time in the saddle” also allows patterns to emerge and awareness to be cemented.
I’ve decided a good life is one lived without regret.
My father repeatedly told me he would not have lived his life any different.
That infers he lived a good life.
I don’t think I would have lived mine much different either. I have consciously chosen time over money, a few friends over many acquaintances, and being available to my family as a first priority.
Different choices could have provided me and my family with more or less money, opportunity, or experiences but I will never know those outcomes as I haven’t lived them.
I know I have fewer regrets than non-regrets and my life experiences have been spurred on by an internal drive for self-healing and self-realization coupled with connecting the dots for future generations and following the trails left by previous generations.
I know I never want to waste time and energy producing anything I will shred in future days nor do I wish to silence words of importance or actions bearing meaning.
I have found that looking for joy is more fulfilling than living in drama and small things like the sun on my back, fresh air in my lungs, and the perfect sunset can make my being smile.
I am proud of my children and grateful for my husband.
I am living without chains and feel free to invent my future.
Perhaps I am not regret-less, but I am regret-free.
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