I am thinking about reverses, the upending of things, switcheroos: I used to highlight my hair, putting streaks of blonde in it to lighten up the dark. But now that my hair has become stark white, I decided to try lowlights to relieve the whiteness. I got the idea from my dog, who, it turns out, is two dogs in one. When she’s shaved down, she is sleek and sophisticated like dogs in pictures of dogs, chasing sticks on greeting cards and magazine covers. When she is grown-out, she is curly and cute, like those flopsy tv commercial dogs who are getting up to mischief.
In this winter of my discontent, I find new answers in old places, and new ideas by turning the old ones on their head. I have found, in the world of loneliness, the compensation of peace, and in the realization that I will never learn to ski, the comfort of self-knowledge.
Negative positives kind of rule my world: a day with nothing to do, no calls for my attention, no need for my input? I re-focus so it is a day of freedom, and the absence of stress.
I am giving myself new permissions: to change my mind and stay home instead of going to the party, even if it is because they forecasted rain and I don’t like to drive in the rain, and then permission not to feel guilty when the rain doesn’t happen. I am also exchanging stoic for demonstrative. I am unleashing my emotionality. That embodies a reversal, too: not reigning it in with my feeling, but allowing myself to stay in when it rains?
Yesterday I listened to the score of the Broadway musical, “Merrily We Roll Along” which starts at the end of the story and proceeds to the beginning, so the finale becomes the first moment of each character’s “once upon a time.” It reminded me of my earliest dreams, and instead of swallowing my tears, I wallowed in them, and remembered and relived the past. What a fun cry! What a wonderful day.
l suppose, in serious old age, when you have to begin to think the unthinkable, it is important to find reasons to alter your thinking, and welcome new ways to live.
vinegarmother 