Pat Bean's blog

Aging My Way

I didn’t have time to think, to mull things over and come to conclusions about what was going on in my life, until I was almost 40.  It startled me at that point to realize  I really didn’t know who the entity occupying my body was.

I had five kids by the time I was 25, at 27, I became a working mom, and at some point after that, a single mom with the sole responsibility of keeping the wolf from blowing down the door.

I’m not complaining as I loved both my kids and my job, and had – and still have – a happy heart that was able to enjoy life’s special moments as they happened. I just didn’t have time to contemplate how it all fit into my life.

And so it continued even after I retired. I sold my home, bought a RV, and drove around the country for nine years. I spent that time simply enjoying the beauty and specialness of all that I was seeing – and even wrote a book about it.  

But now, at 86, with a body slowed after years of doing, my brain has plenty of time to think, to connect the dots my life has created. It’s something that often keeps me lying awake until the early hours of the morning. What with all the changes that have happened, and which continue happening daily, it’s not an easy task.

I think about how the world I grew up in is crumbling about me. I think about my grandchildren and great-grandchildren and hope they are making more sense of the world than I’m currently doing – and whether they will grow up to be independent adults who will be kind and care for the people around them as well as the planet we live on. Afterall, that’s all I really wanted for my own children.

I think about what I am going to cook for dinner. I think about the cost of veterinarian care because of how much I love my dog. I worry that I might lose the cottonwood tree in my yard because its roots are doing a number on my fence and the sidewalk on the other side of the fence. I love that cottonwood.

And so, the night passes until finally around 2 a.m. even my brain must shut down.

I’m beginning to come to the conclusion that this thinking stuff is overrated. Maybe I was lucky to have so much going on in my life that I didn’t have time to do too much of it. I certainly slept better.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion Scamp. She is an avid reader whose mind is always asking questions (many of which are unanswerable), an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for Story Circle Network’s Journal, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.