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| Arta, Sumarga and Sumin Do I look nearly 80? The answer is yes. |
I am welcoming the decade ahead of me called the eighties.
Octogen-
arians.
That is what people are called who are between the ages of 80 and 89.
On approaching that significant “80” number I began wondering if I could list 80 memories that have been significant to me over those years, memories that have made me happy to be alive.
Some of them events might even be labeled insignificant, but they will be mine.
I am going to do one memory for each year of my life. I have some rough notes since I have been thinking about this for about a month: notes scribbled in the early morning on a scrap of paper before I have even washed my face; notes penciled on the back of my cheque book while waiting in a doctor’s offices; and hastily written paragraphs done late at night when I want to capture just one last thought and know that my fingers can fly quickly over the keyboard of my computer. So far I can only come up with 74 items for my list. Until this morning, I could only come up with 40 items. I was beginning to panic. Would mine be the life only half lived?
Now it is late evening and my list is healthier. Well, if not healthier, at least longer and I find myself wondering if I can carve out the time to make a rough draft of my intentions, let alone edit my words. I am not going to hold myself to a bar that is too high. If I keep my expectations so low that just one sentence is all I expect of myself, then I will be successful. So now, rolling out of my 70’s and into the 80’s – one memory a day from now until my birthday.
On that day my grandchildren from next door and I are going to have the party of my life. Lots of ice-cream. Just them, their parents and me. We are going to have ice cream for the appetizer, ice cream for the entre and ice cream for dessert. They can hardly wait. I feel the same way.
We have had two of those already, and I am learning something from them.
They don’t want cones.
They like their ice-cream in a clear glass footed sherbet dish. I hope I can convince them over the next eighty days to graduate to the Pilling way: ice-cream heaped to overflowing in a cereal bowl.
Until then, 80 days of blogable memories that mean something to me.
Arta
Happy Birthday! I have been enjoying reading and discussing your blog posts at the dinner table. I want to read quickly, but if I will let myself linger over each sentence, I find you have left little jokes here and there for the mindful reader.
ReplyDeleteI say jokes, but there must be a better word for what I mean. For example, you tell us of listing words to help you guide your writing of 80 memories. Then you draw us/me into that plan by sharing that begin to panic when you only have forty ideas - and wonder if you have a life half-lived. The phrase catches me off guard, makes me laugh out loud, even though my stomach is in knots as it draws on my own memories of fear to write, fear of having nothing to say, and fear of not getting what must be written, writ.
I have a childhood memory of you sitting at a typewriter. You have carefully at least three pieces of paper, the center one being a sheet of covered with purple-blank ink that will rub off on little fingers that try to pick it up. You have tapped them in the table three times to get them even, and are now threading them into this machine by turning a wheel. Was there a metal bar that snapped down to hold it in place? I think I hear that snap before the sounds that ensue. Your fingers are racing across the keys, tapping out patterns that form words, that share stories.
Thank you for the gift of literacy. Thank you for the gift of sharing your writing process as well as your writing. You are a lot of fun.
Happy birthday Arta. I have heard many wonderful stories regarding your kindness and fun loving soul.
ReplyDeleteSherrill Morris