“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” – William Penn
Aging My Way
Emily Carr, a Canadian Artist whose awesome paintings appeal to the tree hugger in me, became a writer in her later years when her health meant she could no longer meander freely in the woods to paint.
Her first book, Klee Wyck, won the Governor General’s Literary Award for non-fiction in 194l. But it’s in the story of her life, which she wrote about in Growing Pains, that I found her words speaking to me.
I’ve been having health problems with asthma off and on for the past four months. It zapped my energy and even had me once going to the emergency room. Finally, after numerous doctor visits, it was discovered I was being wrongly prescribed a prescription that was counteracted by the drug I was taking for my heart.
Thankfully I’m on the mend and my energy, slowed by my age but still hanging on, is coming back. It took all day but I did a deep clean of my apartment yesterday, which hadn’t been done in a while, and then had a good night’s sleep with no coughing.
Hallelujah!
Anyway, as I was recovering, I read these words written by Emily when she was a young art student. It was about “nondescript old women who are found in most studios just killing time.”
I don’t hang around studios, but I often feel that I’m just killing time. It’s mostly because I finally have few must-dos on my daily to-do lists. But Emily’s book shames me as she wrote Growing Pains mostly from a sick bed when she was 70.
Perhaps this 87-year-old should be thankful to have killing time and make better use of it.
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.
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