The Art of Age

I was walking down a busy street in Buenos Aires and happened across some sort of open-door art studio/ art class. This older woman was so occupied with what she doing that she was the only one who didn't look up when I started taking pictures. She was in that wonderful space we lose ourselves in when we are being creative, when the work we are doing matters more than anything: the street noise, others in the room or intrusive cameras.

It's a space I've always loved to enter. But it seems to me that over the years of working and parenting I've lost some of that deep concentration I knew as a child creating new worlds. When I was about twelve I wrote story after story in small lined notebooks. They were largely adventure stories inspired by my love of Trixie Beldon, a fictional character I could relate much more to than the sophisticated Nancy Drew. The biggest compliment I got for one of my original stories was from a teacher who accused me of stealing it from a book.

I have tried my hand at fiction throughout the decades but, for the most part, I never put enough into it: most of the writing I did was work-related and non-fiction. Recently, I've entered that imaginary world again. Whole-heartedly. Creating lives for people who exist only in my head. I don't know if I can master something good enough to last but I know I am enjoying trying. And I know that I am able to enter imaginary worlds because I have the time to stay with them, to move undisturbed hours at a time with the next moves sloshing around in my brain. And that I have the experiences in life to create full characters.

It may be easy to see the creativity of the third phase as some sort of hobby to pass the time. Especially if we believe that creativity is the domain of the young. There are those that say our creativity begins to die the moment we enter school (We all know the changes in the wild drawings of children once they learn to draw inside the lines), and declines further as we try to conform or develop ossifying habits. 

But I just can't see it that way. I see it a a chance - for those open to it  - to grab the creativity that has been latent for too long. And I don't see it as a desperate act of accomplishing something before it's too late.( Of course, I am aware of time becoming a limiting factor. But then I always worked better with a deadline.) Creativity in the third phase comes without the pressure to perform; it is done more for the self than at any other time in adulthood.

The question remains; how good can the creative results of third phasers be? Creative energy is often equated with youth, especially in our social media/instant recognition era. But David Galeson in his book Old Masters, Young Geniuses, says creative types can be divided into innovators, the young geniuses who make brilliant breakthoughs and experimenters who build on their experience and improve with age. Think of masters like the artist Matisse and the poet Robert Frost who did some of their best work in their later years.

I once met the Canadian print maker David Blackwood and he told me he expects to continue to work as long as he's physically able to. He collects old French prints done by a master who got better and better until his death. Each an experimenter building on a life's work.

But what of those of us who haven't had the time to focus all our lives on particular creative skills?
I have a friend - Debbie Dryden - a woman I worked with in my early twenties when I started out as a teacher. She was the art teacher at the school, a graduate of a university art programme. But she had - as we all did - a complicated and busy life for much of her twenties to her fifties. She still managed to produce some innovative art during that time but could not give it her full attention. Now that she is retired she has returned to art in a serious way.

She turned part of her home into a studio, takes courses in her chosen art form - encaustic painting - joined an arts co-operative in Guelph, Ontario and regularly has shows with successful sales. No one can call this a hobby. She has the time, the commitment, the skills and the free imagination to accomplish great work. She is a prime example of rediscovering the full potential of a latent creativity in the third phase.

               

                                                       

                                                                        Photo Courtesy: Debbie Dryden



While I love the visual arts, I'm more interested in knowing how writers fare as they age. Star writers like Doris Lessing and Alice Munro both decided there was a time to stop, which is alarming. But then there is Frank McCourt who didn't write Angela's Ashes until he was 66 and Wallace Stevens who started writing poetry after a career in business. More promising but perhaps just exceptions.

There's a bell curve (which looks exactly like a bell) that's been around for decades showing how creativity builds up until about forty and then declines rapidly until it almost flat lines by age 70. It has supported the belief out there in workplaces that new, young blood is needed all the time to come up with fresh ideas and has made us doubt our own powers of creativity and renewal.

Dean Simonton, a psychologist at the University of California, did research that sustained that bell curve. But then he discovered that if people traveled, had new experience, changed careers their creativity flew off the peak of the curve and spun upward.  In other words, age does not have to mean ossification. And that is the most hopeful take I can find.

That means, of course, that there's great creative potential for a generation of career-changers, frequent flyer, experimenters. It all makes sense to me.  Experience + new challenges + latent abilities = late creativity. Inhibiting bell curve be damned. D

What Are the Rights of The Elderly and Are they Different from the Rights the Rest of Us Have?

 

In the 1990s, while working at CBC Radio`s Morningside, I produced a series of conversations about the then emerging field of elder law. Most of the work being done was in the area of living wills, obligations parents owe to children and vice versa and whether any or all the rules change when one party to any transaction or issue reaches the milestone of 65 years of age.

Nearly two decades later, I am visiting the Evita Museum, just around the corner from the zoo in Buenos Aries. Argentina is not an easy country or culture to crack but it is clear that Evita, the Show Girl turned National Hero is an important piece to understanding the last 60 years of the country`s history. It is during the playing of one of the several newsreel type movies about Evita and her time on the national scene that I am brought up short by one of the subtitles that declares that in 1948 Juan and Evita Peron introduced legislation enshrining the `Rights of the Elderly`. There are no further references to the content of these rights at the museum but it is the phrase itself that gets me remembering and thinking. I know that the third phase of our lives is filled with changes in attitudes and opportunities, but does it also change our legal status?

A couple of years ago, our daughter Jane came upstairs to our kitchen at breakfast time and, while she was waiting for the kettle to come to a boil, asked me what a living will was. I took her through the basics and she seemed slightly perplexed and asked what Power of Attorney was and I explained that and she then asked if I and her mom had made arrangements for a Power of Attorney. When I said no, she asked if we wanted to give her Power of Attorney. I laughed and said a first rule of life is never give Power of Attorney to someone who asks to have it. She laughed, made an instant coffee and headed back to her room

That's story makes me laugh because Jane is one of the most truly kind and generous individuals I have ever met, certainly kinder and more generous than me and so I don't actually worry about the idea that control over my life might fall to her. But the reality is that all kinds of people, good people with good children, worry about what life might be when they are no longer in 100% control or even 50% control. Blanche DuBois, in A Streetcar Named Desire, is wrestling with a double edged sword when she says "Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."

In January, The New York Times ran a fascinating story about the increasing frequency of nursing homes seizing power of attorney over patients to collect debts, often without informing family members in advance. It is enough to cast a cold chill over any of us, regardless of how many years remain before a nursing home becomes a likely possibility. At the heart of any sense or idea of Elder Rights are questions or control, respect, attention and compassion. 

It has been nearly 70 years since the Peron Government experimented with the idea of Elder Rights and a quick or even exhaustive Google search leaves me still wrestling with what exactly would those rights are. Would subways have the power to insist that you give up your seat to a senior citizen, would Seniors Tuesdays at Shoppers Drug Mart become the norm and legally binding for all stores? Would seniors be entitled to a greater degree of respect and attention than anyone else in society? It doesn't require much imagination to realize that all of those ideas are more than slightly askew and unlikely public policy initiatives. 

After all there is nothing magical about turning 65, or 60, or 55...wherever that  'freedom at' figure falls for you and suddenly fearing a loss of control or needing some reassurance that you are still a valued if slightly less valuable member of society. A 30 year old contingent worker relying on a whimsical supervisor for the number of hours of work they might get that week probably feels a lot less powerful and in control than a 75 year old with a defined benefits pension and the ability to spend the entire winter relaxing far from bitter winds and deep snow. 

If there is one area where the 'Rights of Elders' might be made concrete it is probably with questions about whether the things being done for the person or to the person are in their best interest. And then to make it that much more complicated, how do we define 'their best interest'? When public services, including health services, are under strain how do we ensure that the provision of services is equitable? Does the 80 year old have less of a right to dialysis than the 30 year old, and, if so, what is the value system we are using to make that determination? 

I don't have easy answers to any of these questions. I know for some disabled activists and some elder advocates the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision on medically assisted death raises a host of complicated ethical questions, not the least of which is how do we ensure that the wishes of the person in question are adequately represented. 

After leaving the Evita Museum, Debi and I had lunch at a very nice coffee shop on a leafy square and we talked about Evita and the idea of the rights of the elderly. We talked about our parents and others we knew and the problems that can and do occur as families drift apart and the elderly are left at the mercy of individuals and institutions that have other priorities, other demands that might at times trump the needs and wishes of the person in question. During that conversation the idea of the Child Advocate in various legal systems arose. The concept is simple. Children have rights, needs, concerns that are separate from society, from their parents, from institutions charged with their care. The Child Advocate steps in as a check on the power and privilege of others, a check to insure that the needs and perspective of the most vulnerable party to the process are respected and acknowledged. Do the elderly need an Elder Advocate? 

A couple of days after the visit to the Evita Museum that prompted these thoughts, we are in a gorgeous park just around the corner from our apartment. At the heart of the park is a huge rubber tree that spreads shade everywhere. Dozens of  teenagers, adults, young children were present and simply enjoying another gorgeous day. I was reading a new biography of Pope Francis and was in the section where his birth and circumstances in Argentina were being discussed. The author, Austen Ivereigh, takes us through some of the reasoning behind Francis' attention to the migrant and notes that of course Francis is the child of migrants, his grandmother Rosa had emigrated from Italy. Ivereigh writes "Francis was born to an American nation forged from millions of similar deracinations. Nostalgia- from the Greek words nostos and alga, a yearning to return to the place- ran in his veins. When we lose it, he said in 2010, we abandon our elderly: caring for our old people means honouring our past, the place we come from."

I close my book and watch small boys led by a very determined young girl race around the park on scooters, bikes with training wheels, bikes and an odd little means of locomotion that scares me a lot more than the young boy using it. I watch a couple in their late seventies or early eighties return from lunch and I enjoy observing the adults talk and eye their children while simply letting them play. The rights of the elderly are not something pressing but in this our third phase something we attend to from time to time. Life might actually be a circle. All the issues that bedevil us as infants and children return to bedevil us at the last moments of life: the need for respect, attention, decency and an understanding and commitment to the proposition that all human beings have human rights.

P                                        

The Power of Grandmothers

I started to write a blog last week about the unfair way older women are treated. The idea came out of the obit for Colleen McCullough, the author of the Thorn Birds, in which she was described as "plain of features and certainly overweight." It seems where sexism meets ageism the joint is particularly sharp.

The anger and derision that shot through Facebook and blogs over that obit resonated with me. It's easy for any women over fifty to come up with her own examples in careers and personal life, and I certainly have stories of being treated unfairly or dismissively because of my age and gender.

Here's just a small, fresh example: the week before the obit went viral we had a sexist/ageist tradesman in our house. Now you have to understand that I am the one in our household who does minor repairs, all the painting, the designing etc. And I am the one who knows what needs to be done when a tradesman arrives. Well, the tradesman who came that week didn't get it, even though I showed him the materials I'd picked and talked to him about the possible ways the job could be done. Throughout his visits, he kept calling Peter "sir" and me "dear,"(over and over before he switched to "honey.") And when he needed to find the electrical panel he walked right past me to Peter's office to ask him where it was.

But my heart's not in writing that blog anymore, I'm just not feeling particularly outraged at the moment. I still believe we have to fight sexism and ageism in the workplace and politics and when it comes up in our daily lives. But the huge outcry over that obit comforted me. And, as the old saying goes, living well is the best revenge. Strong, old women may have the last word yet.

Then I remembered a quote that I'd filed away in my brain although it had no relevance to me when I first heard it. I was a producer involved in an interview with Germaine Greer who had just written a book about women, menopause and aging. In the interview she said that, after menopause, women become invisible and then she laughed. What she said next stuck with me for decades and finally became useful. She said it was wonderful to be invisible; you could do whatever you wanted. At the time I couldn't believe that Germaine Greer, of all people, would enjoy not being seen (and I still don't buy it completely) but it seemed such a liberating statement.

Certainly, there's some pleasure in walking for hours down streets at home and in foreign cities without being eyed or harassed. But there's more to it. Old women can get away with so much. And it is in realizing this power that they can make changes others can not.

That brings me to this week when I watched the remaining Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo march around the plaza in front of the Casa Rosada, the Argentinian seat of government, as they have for almost forty years. There are far fewer than the fifty or so women who started the movement and they circle the square three times instead of marching all afternoon. They have their own bus now and sell pins and cards of their iconic white scarves.

But they can not be dismissed as a tourist show. They began marching in the dirty war when generals "disappeared" their children; they demanded to know what had become of their grandchildren, who were often born in prisons and put up for adoption, sometimes to the very military men who had destroyed their families.

Today, there are plaques on the streets of Buenos Aires to commemorate those who disappeared but back then most citizens turned a blind eye out of fear, out of impotency. The military had banned public gatherings but didn't quite know what to do when a group of women in skirts and white scarves started marching with pictures of their loved ones below their windows.





And the women got results. Of the suspected 500 missing children, they have identified more than 100, enlisted an American geneticist, and are credited with creating the Argentine Forensics Anthropology Team. Just last summer the leader of the group, Estella Barnes de Carlotta, then 83, was reconnected with the grandson she had been looking for all those years. A pianist in Buenos Aries, he volunteered to give his DNA to find the truth. The two then met Pope Francis, who had been archbishop of the cathedral next to Plaza de.Mayo during the time the women were marching.

Watching the frail, elderly women march in the 30 degree heat, I was in awe. They are a fierce reminder that old women should not allow themselves to be dismissed, that they are capable of becoming a society's conscience and fighting for what is right. If they choose to, if they don't allow others to define them. Then, those who describe them only through their appearance will be the real dinosaurs. D

Old-New Thinking

I am watching an episode of The Bridge, the Danish-Swedish co-production version, and one of the characters, a young, cool and ‘entertaining’ columnist, is talking with an older, much less cool, ‘married with kids’ reporter. The older man has mentioned that he borrowed his daughter’s CD of a band the young guy was referencing the previous week, listened to it and liked it. The cool guy sneers. The older guy says ‘you liked them last week’ and the cool guy spits out, ‘and now you like them’. I immediately think of a screed I have just read from an anonymous CBC producer objecting to a recent management appointment who, by-the-by, writes about ‘the younger and more creative producers’ and I find myself living both sides of that teenage dilemma we all had with our parents, with both sides thinking that the other knew nothing, and that we knew everything. My whole life I have watched and been part of this divide between energy and experience, fresh perspectives and a deep appreciation of the enduring, the surprise of excitement and the serenity of the given. It is only know that I have come to understand that perhaps there is no real conflict and that in fact we are all players in a more troublesome game.

We, the media, marketers and planners, have institutionalized the idea that youth, the new, and the current are the conditions that truly matter. It is partly a pushback against the remarkable hold that Baby Boomers are said to have on the economy, society, culture and politics. At the same time, it is a really complicated set of assumptions that hurt the young, hurt the aging and devastate the aged. On the one hand, we praise the innocent and inexperienced, ‘out of the mouths of babes,’ while extolling the experience and perspective of the elder, ‘commissions of wise people’. When I was a teen, we didn’t trust anyone over thirty and today we are heading to a moment when even thirty seems past some imaginary ‘best before date’.

You can see the consequences everywhere. In workplaces, there is a generational war for resources, attention, benefits and power. It is a battle that has little to do with quality of work or the larger needs of either the organization or society. It is about which subgroup gets to play with the most expensive toys the longest. You see it all around you in sullen youth, bored adults, crass cynicism and a host of debilitating ‘addictions’ ranging from deadly drugs to soul destroying and mindless forms of entertainment. Way too many of us feel that we are being denied the opportunity to be truly useful, vital and valuable either because we are too young or too old. I know brilliant energetic and deeply creative 80 year olds and dissolute, apathetic and unimaginative 25 year olds and of course the reverse.

The reality is that at the heart of all this destructive ageism is a set of assumptions that have little basis in reality and are largely fueled and maintained by a culture and an economy that desperately needs, demands even, a never-ending series of changes. The culture we inhabit of never-ending consumption and constant early obsolescence thrives on anxiety, psychological dependencies, artificial and real competition as well as true inequalities and misguided anti-human first principles. The wonder isn’t that we experience ‘generational conflict’ it is that the generational conflict doesn’t break out into true terrible violence.   

I have no magic bullet for resolving this conundrum. I am simply committing myself to taking note that living long doesn’t automatically bestow wisdom, being young isn’t a guarantee of vitality and innovation and having automatic assumptions about someone based simply on their age is a prejudice as devastating as any other. P

Old and Mean

I remember, when I was about nine, being sent to a Girl Guide camp for a week. I lived on a farm and we didn't usually get to travel in the summer months when the fruit needed to be picked. So going to camp was a big deal. When I got to the field that was our campground, I was assigned to a tent with four older girls from St. Catharines. They were savvy city girls; I was a skinny little thing with fine hair that I twirled, ending up with un-combable knots. Each tent required a leader and the St. Catharines girls unanimously picked me. They did it so enthusiastically, without knowing a thing about me, that I doubted it was an honour. I said I was skinny, not stupid.

It soon became obvious that what they meant by leader was the person who did everything. One night it poured and the wind pulled a peg up at one corner of the tent, driving the rain in on our sleeping beds. "You're the leader," they all said. "You have to go out and fix it." And I did because I had no idea how to stand up to them.

I couldn't wait for that week to end.

I grew up awkward socially. I never made friends easily. Not in public school. Certainly not in high school in the small town where I was the principal's daughter. It got easier at university and in workplaces where I met like-minded people. But the expression, third wheel, still gets me in the gut.

Sometimes when I admit to my social discomfort, others seem surprised and I take that as a good sign that I've moved on. I have accomplished things; I have created a fine life. But secretly,I know that I`ll always be the one you'll find hovering around the cheese table so I don't have to stand in the middle of a cocktail party trying to figure out how to join a conversation. Part of me will always be that skinny, awkward girl.

Luckily, what has saved me is my own comfort with my own company and with those I hold most dear. And I`m quite fine with that. I`m ready to enjoy the activities I love with the people I care about in my third phase.

But the old gut fear of being the outsider, of not knowing how to stand up to bullies came back to me this week when I read the New York Times story about mean girls in retirement homes. What if at the end of my life, old and vulnerable,with none of those cushioning loved one around me I have to deal with being ostracized by the cool old ladies.

I searched the web, hopeful this was a one-off, that the granny in the New York Times story had just been unlucky in her chose of retirement home. But the words `mean girls`and `cliques`came up all too often. ``It`s like junior high, with that cliquishness, that excluding,`` one article said. And in its own unique way, Gawker reported on ``cliques of old bitches terrorizing old folks homes nationwide.``

The coping strategies sound familiar: don`t look a bully in the eye, try to ignore mean comments, don`t provoke a bully, try to understand a bully`s behaviour. They also sound like things I can no longer be bothered with in life. I have spent a lot of my time to this point conquering fears. And each time I face something I didn`t think I could do and then do it, I realize how paralyzing fear is and take on another challenge. Loneliness is still something I do fear. But being "on the outside:" not so much anymore. And I have never feared solitude.

So, I'm not going to waste my time worrying about the old folks`home and let that ruin the next thirty years. (She says, optimistically.). Beside, I've developed a pretty mean glare of my own. And damn it, when the mean old bitches come after me, I`ll be ready for them with a sharpened cane. D

Shaping My Story

I was sitting down for coffee in the small cafe inside the local recreation centre when a guy approached and asked if he could sit in one of the other easy chairs scattered around the table. I nodded and he pointed at my cane and said 'I got a brace and the guy coming in the door now is worse off than either of us; he has an artificial leg.' The guy with the metal leg heard him, laughed and sat down at the table with us. I had no idea who either one of them was; they were old friends and the three of us settled quickly into a pattern of conversation that was both superficial and deeply revealing. We each were letting the other two know what we believed mattered most about our own personal story. We were, through emphasis and selective life editing, creating our personae anew.

In the New York Times this week there was an intriguing examination of what is called 'expressive writing'. 

               "The scientific research on the benefits of so-called expressive writing is surprisingly vast. Studies have shown that writing about oneself and personal experiences can improve mood disorders, help reduce symptoms among cancer patients, improve a person’s health after a heart attack, reduce doctor visits and even boost memory.

                  Now researchers are studying whether the power of writing — and then rewriting — your personal story can lead to behavioural changes and improve happiness."

We all do it; that's what the three of us were doing over coffee, orally mind you and the evidence collected so far is about the written word and the written word has a power that we will explore deeply in this blog. But when I read the article, after accidentally encountering the two guys at the cafe I found myself returning again and again to the idea of 'writing and rewriting' my personal story. It is something I have been preoccupied with these past couple of years and I can testify to the fact that it does change you, it does challenge you, it does reshape how you see yourself and your world. 

That's what integrating one's life experiences is possibly all about, a re-telling, or re-understanding perhaps of what the arc and narrative of life so far has been and what the arc and narrative not yet written might be. I learned a great deal about those two strangers in just a half hour through listening to the condensed version of their lives so far. I suspect they learned much about me, not the whole me by any stretch but perhaps hints of the me that I am now trying to put forward front and centre. How that image might morph over the years is not clear to me at all but writing it and re-writing it is going to be fascinating.

Human beings are story tellers, it maybe the thing that made us significantly different from the ape, though that might just be the story we tell and are sticking to. P.

Conditionals

The third phase of life is part new discovery without the demands of full-time parenting and full-time work but also part review. If  can be a major word in sentences about the past. If I had been braver... If I had been smarter... But the ifs can also be filled with a sense of wonder at the happenstance and luck of life. Here's an example: I almost died once – well, once that I know of, for sure. I’m talking about one moment when  an accidental decision spared me and the if still leaves me with a shiver of relief.

We were in India. On the sacred Ganges River. In the city of Varanasi. A city so ancient feeling that, despite the fact it has been rebuilt again and again, Mark Twain once called it, “older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend.” We had wandered through the narrow alleys of the old city, trying to find our way to the river for hours even though countless people gesticulated in its direction and said it was just down there. Finally, we stood with the river below us and the ghats, the steps for the holy and the hopeful, spreading out in each direction. Before we could even take in our success at reaching the river or appreciate the legend before us we were surrounded by touts who buzzed around us wanting to guide us, wanting to sell us something, wanting money. We knew we had to keep moving but which way?  We both agreed to turn left for no apparent reason and, before we had gone fifty metres, I felt an intense heat on my back through my Indian shawl, felt my lower back pushed forward. Then and only then, like a physics lesson made virtual, I heard the sound of an explosion. If we had gone the other way, we would have walked right into the blast and become one of the mangled or the dead carried out by bicycle rickshaws, the only vehicles that could make it to ghats and through the alleys.

If we had gone the other way, we might have been in pieces.  In grammar: the third conditional, meaning we didn’t and we weren’t. Unreal conditional. It didn’t happen.

I thought a lot about conditionals over the past summer and fall as I reviewed my life so far while downsizing one house, settling into another, as I witnessed so much of the world in war and chaos, as I tried to explain the peculiarities of grammar to advanced English learners over the summer at a college near Toronto.  If, I told my students, is such word of longing, of possibility in the English language. Sentences that start with “if” express not only real conditions but wishes and regrets.  To let them feel the emotion of the third conditional, I showed them a scene from the movie, Benjamin Button, a scene a clever English teacher posted on YouTube for just that purpose. In the scene, Benjamin describes all the actions of strangers that led to the moment his girlfriend, Daisy, the dancer, is struck by a car and her leg is crushed. If only one thing had happened differently she would have been spared. His voice trembles with sorrow as he recounts the moments before her accident. If only. If only. If only.

It’s what too many people were saying this summer and fall. Families in Gaza, grandmothers in Israel. If  we had made peace my children and grandchildren would be alive.  Children in refugee camps outside of Syria. If only this war would end, then I would be celebrating my birthday at home. Families watching their loved ones die in Sierra Leone. If only the world cared.

This past summer was one when the conditional fragility of life was evident everywhere. But the personal stories from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was shot down over the Ukraine, struck me hardest.  And the story of one Miguel Panduwinata tore at my heart. Miguel was a 11-year-old boy, the Associated Press News Agency reported, a boy who usually travelled happily from the Netherlands to Bali where he visited his grandmother and relished jetskiing and surfing. But this time it was different. The day before Miguel had questions about death and what would happen to his soul when he died. That night he refused to let go of his mother and, before boarding the plane the next day asked her, “what will happen if the airplane crashes?” A real conditional that came true.  After the news of MH17’s savage end, his mother lashed herself for not paying attention to her son’s premonitions. I should have listened. I should have listened. And I imagine that for the rest of her life she will say to herself: If only I had listened, Miguel would still be alive.  He would still be in one piece.

My own regrets, my own what-ifs,pale in comparison. As I threw out old photos and furnishings before moving, I was nonetheless filled with conditionals. If I had stayed in that job, what would have happened? If I had been a better person, would my first marriage have lasted? If we had waited would we have sold our house at a better price? If I could have done things differently, what would they have been?

What surprised me is that as the conditionals piled up fewer and fewer of them seemed connected to regret. Rather, they seemed more and more to be filled with a light happiness and with gratitude.  If my marriage had not ended, I would not have met the wonderful man I share my life with. If I had not married my first husband, I would not have my beautiful daughter.  If I had not quit my job, I would have missed out on new adventures.

As I hurriedly packed memories away in boxes in the summer, I took down the post card of the ghats of Varanasi that had hung by our side door for nearly a decade. It had constantly reminded me as I left the house each morning that I have been a lucky person. Perhaps it was just the exhaustion of emptying a house and the emotion of moving on but I came to a new appreciation of the conditional then. Gratitude. Unconditional gratitude. D.