Counting to 90

   For him, the question is rhetorical. For me, the being too old to do anything is exactly the point. I want five years, at least, when I’m too old to do anything—when there’s nothing left to do.  At the end of the action, a time for reflection.

   I have spent half a century planning and looking forward:  To the next payday, the next school year, the next vacation and assignment and deadline. I have a dresser drawer filled with photos. I have kept playbills from theatre performances that spoke to me, orders of service from liturgies that moved me. I have books I’ve loved and written in the margins of, journals I’ve kept, letters I’ve received.  I have the copy of Time magazine showing the Beirut hostages coming home, the Life magazine with Kent State on the cover.

   And I never have time to look at any of them.

   I did a visualization exercise recently, a visit to myself at age 75.  I was given permission to ask one question of this future self, and what I asked her was, “What mattered, really?”

   In this active life of mine, I am always torn between things that seem to matter:  The clients who need attention, the cleaning and the tax preparation, the museum openings and author readings and political discussions.  Those things vie with the comfort of holding a cat or walking a dog.

   Ecclesiastes had seasons.  I have only workweekss and weekends and very few external clues about how best to use them.

   So the question I asked my future self is not one to which I can really imagine the answer.  But I want to know, and I want the time, someday, to find out.

                                                                  March, 2004

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