Wham- its September
I still begin the new year in September. January seems like a weird start to me. It's the middle of the winter. Nothing begins in the middle of winter. Its half done in January. September seems like a better start to the new year.
Yesterday the air changed and wham- it felt like fall, September. My youngest son left for school. Wham- it feels like a new year. I turned 50 in March but yesterday when the air changed and my youngest son went away to school and drove himself and I didn't pack anything or get into a car for that long ride wham- I felt like 50 .
Yesterday when the air changed, and I realized iIwas 50 and my son went off on his own driving a 11-year-old car filled with who knows what because I didn't oversee the operation at all, wham- I felt nothing. Nothing feels odd. Nothing feels un-tethered and uneasy and what am I doing and who am I anyway and what do I do now. My to do list is 50 miles long, 50 years of stuff I need to start and finish before I run out of time. I am forever out of time. I am the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. I'm always late. I am forever just barely squeezing under the gate in Mr McGregor's Garden, tearing my blue velvet jacket and adding that to the list of small repairs I must get done while I delay getting to the main thing.
Which brings me to the main thing. Now that the air has changed and I am 50 and my youngest son has just left for his second year of college and it's getting to be September, I need to start my life. Did I tell you I am an obsessive planner? I have been planning for my life to start since I started school. It was probably September 1971, Lemoore CA. I got on a school bus in a red plaid dress my mom made for me with a gold peter pan collar. She also slip-covered a chair in the same fabric. I could blend in like a rabbit hiding in the grass in that dress in that chair. My shoes were burgundy t-straps, those Stride-Rite ones. I had a plaid lunch box. I loved kindergarten, I loved Mrs Neighday, naps, hearing her play the piano, and recess. We read and I planned for when my life would start. At recess, I would nestle in the silty dry patchy grass, like a bunny.
That small farm was the first home I remember it was etched indelibly in my soul. A small frame farmhouse, 2 perfect pastures , a rose garden, a chicken house, the smell of manure, and dust and fruit and flowers and animals. A Shetland pinto pony, chickens, a dog , a cat, my loving parents and my sisters.
I am the daughter of a US Navy pilot. Jet planes fly very fast. Life moves even faster. We moved as fast as the Navy and life could move a family. For the last 45 years I have been trying to forge a plan to get back to that first home.
It is almost September 2016, I have been living at Brown Dog Farm for a little over a year. It didn't happen the way I planned, well not the original plan, but plans change, constantly- that's why it's so obsessive, there is no end to the plan, it's always changing and why there's never enough time and then wham- you're there and you can't remember how exactly it happened. I have taken this challenge to begin the rest of my life, to write and paint and tell a story that will create the next chapter. So I am back to the first day of school and my to do list.Shit- I’m late for work....