Old Age Day by Day July 1, 2010

I talked to our son in Asia this morning. It was nighttime for him. We spent a long time on baseball, then the World Cup. I was for Mexico, but now Ghana, and if worse comes to worst I'll root for Spain. My son's thinking well of Germany. We discussed passing and other elements of a game he has played since he was six. It's strange to have him away so long, and without seeing him. Money is difficult for research, and he is forced to be away from his wife and family because the flight is too expensive. It's hard times for him, but the end is in sight. As a mother, I just feel that cord of connection stretched too far, and I want him home. It's irrational, but so ordinary, this feeling of having my field of awareness so huge, and so abstract. Yet, it is a lesson in interconnectedness. Right now, the news there is of huge importance to me. It should always be, but at least I'm forced to open up my world and make it larger, more generous.

I've been stretched in this way from an early age. I married someone from half way around the world, and that has meant, even after his death, that I have family from that first marriage in the Pacific, in South Asia, in Ireland. My field has been pretty inclusive since I was nineteen. And my kids have lived in other countries in Europe and Northern Africa, and been traveling even more widely. Once before, our older daughter was traveling alone in the same country for a year, and it was before cell phones and I talked to her once a week from a phone office. She was in a place I couldn't imagine, and going there near the end didn't help with the worrying. Of course, something can happen anywhere, so it's unfair, but that huge distance does make the worry quotient rise alarmingly.

Yet, as a result, my family has always thought globally, as well as locally. And that is a very good thing. The earth is holding all of us in her arms, and we owe it to her to hold all of it's beings in our hearts.