What will I be when I grow up?
In the wee small hours of the morning...I wonder where I am headed. The grandkids are out of school this week and I have a summer ahead of me to ponder weighty questions and practice some better living habits. I want to turn my ship around and head out while I still can. See what happens when you get to pace the decks of a wooden sailing ship? My head is filled with seagoing metaphors. I’m finally getting some good health back, the reward for methodically dragging my behind to the gym three times a week. My round belly actually has IN-dentations in it. My noodle arms have grown a couple of bicep-like bumps in them. The best part is I am enjoying myself again while building up a reserve stash of energy. So where to spend it?
We do have company coming, young ones from afar, old college friends, and a sister. I will continue my gym visits, they are turning out to be the difference between living and just existing for me. I will read a lot (what I do in the summer anyway). I just got a copy of “Thoughts Matter: The Practice of the Spiritual Life” by Mary Margaret Funk. Yes, she’s a nun this Mary Margaret, and no, I am not going out into the desert to live for a few years until I get it right. Wait a minute! I already live in a desert. My most simple expression of my faith is the hope that I leave here an improved version of how I came into this world.
The other book I am deeply involved in right now is “Reading Lolita in Tehran” by Azar Nafisi. Most absorbing, especially with the elections going on in Iran right now. But it has given me another view of how women make their lives in a world that is often hostile to them. Nafisi was a teacher of literature as well as a writer and her discussions of Fitzgerald have sent me back to the library to read those books again. And imagine having the courage to teach Western Literature in post-revolutionary Iran. So, at 67, I find myself having the same thoughts I did when I graduated out of school and began my young adult life. Only now it’s what will I be as I grow old?
We do have company coming, young ones from afar, old college friends, and a sister. I will continue my gym visits, they are turning out to be the difference between living and just existing for me. I will read a lot (what I do in the summer anyway). I just got a copy of “Thoughts Matter: The Practice of the Spiritual Life” by Mary Margaret Funk. Yes, she’s a nun this Mary Margaret, and no, I am not going out into the desert to live for a few years until I get it right. Wait a minute! I already live in a desert. My most simple expression of my faith is the hope that I leave here an improved version of how I came into this world.
The other book I am deeply involved in right now is “Reading Lolita in Tehran” by Azar Nafisi. Most absorbing, especially with the elections going on in Iran right now. But it has given me another view of how women make their lives in a world that is often hostile to them. Nafisi was a teacher of literature as well as a writer and her discussions of Fitzgerald have sent me back to the library to read those books again. And imagine having the courage to teach Western Literature in post-revolutionary Iran. So, at 67, I find myself having the same thoughts I did when I graduated out of school and began my young adult life. Only now it’s what will I be as I grow old?
Labels: Fitzgerald, Nafisi
posted by Celia | June 12, 2009
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4 Comments
