I'm already sweating! It's great! Summer, and on the solstice! I'm wearing a sleeveless dress and sandals. Today my daughter and I are taking my foster granddaughter out to lunch for her birthday at a big hotel. I think she will enjoy it. Then, after she's dropped off, we're shopping for shoes. A totally girlie day, eh, what?
I'm reading a terrific book of short stories by Elizabeth Berg - "The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted". There is a story in there that epitomizes the conflict of feelings about growing old. It knocked the socks off me. I also bought the new Billy Collins poetry book, and a book of essays by Paula Fox, one of my favorite contemporary writers. So I have a feast of literature.
Tomorrow my friend arrives. I have to vacuum and grocery shop, but I'm feeling ready for whatever comes. It will be interesting. She's more or less a stranger at this point, but we have ancient history together. I feel like that was another life and I was another person. But I guess this will give me the ability to see who that child was. Not that I will take what my friend says at face value, but it may cause me to have a window into that life. I feel I've been multiple people and there have been endless transformations. But what is steady? That is the hard question to answer. For me, as a Buddhist, the answer is nothing, except my connection to all life, and my part in that huge cycle. I'm grounded from my interconnectedness, not from some definition of myself. I'm a part of something, and as Buddhists says, I'm in the river, a part of it, flowing to the sea, but there is no way to tell which drop is me.
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