Changes

I purchased a new piece of software this week, an app called "TurboCollage" for making different kinds of collages without much work. I put together this one in a few minutes, dragging pictures from the vintage pictures section in the iPhoto library on my laptop. It does a half-dozen different layouts, and each picture's position can be changed or enlarged. This one is called "Pile" (simulating the way it looks when you stick pictures onto the fridge with magnets). I can put in a background if I want, but I just felt like sticking together a few photos of my life for this post. Doing this quick and dirty like I did, I found that the original size of each picture is preserved, and I couldn't shrink it as small as I do for most pictures I put on here. I can fix that, but not today. It serves its purpose just fine, and that is to make a collage to illustrate some of the lives I've already lived and that are gone forever.

Yesterday I spent the day at the Drop Zone, making three skydives with my friends. When I came home and discussed the day with Smart Guy, we talked about how normal it is to have changes occur gradually, but sometimes those changes come all at once. This is happening right now with our move. Boxing up your possessions and considering whether you still need something that was once indispensable; finding items of value to pass on to others; discovering something you thought you lost—it's all part of moving. And that is after only five years of living here.

There are myriad ways to go through change in one's life, and I much prefer those that come with a conscious decision to alter a situation in order to make it better. Those are not the only ones I've experienced. As I gathered those pictures, I remembered the tumultuous years of my twenties, when I had two small children, lost my little Stephen overnight to spinal meningitis, the horror I lived through for the next several years, just trying to survive. That is long, long ago, and when I think of it, those memories are softened by the passage of time, but I could probably dredge up the awfulness of those years if I wanted. I don't.

My thirties were also years of change, but I finally found the place I wanted to live in: Boulder, Colorado, and I think of those years with pleasure, mostly. My son Chris grew from an adolescent into a man; I found a job I loved and kept for the next thirty years; I learned that I was a valued member of society. The contentment of those years became my reality and the pain of my twenties receded into the past.

During the decade of my forties, I gained more responsibility at work and simultaneously became an outdoors person. The friends I made at the time introduced me to backpacking and hiking in the beautiful Colorado Rockies. I became a Forest Service volunteer in my spare time, which continued for years, until I was 47 and discovered... skydiving. That was one of the sudden changes that I still cannot believe happened to me. It was a positive thing, and I was madly and completely in love with the experience. All my spare time was dedicated to it, and my friends became fellow skydivers. When someone is as enchanted with it as I was, your non-skydiving friends eventually fall away. They get tired of hearing about it.

The decade of my fifties began with meeting Smart Guy. While I was going through my books and bookcases, I found the binder that contains our original emails to one another. In those days (it was the early nineties), the Internet as we know it today was in its infancy. There were various newsgroups for like-minded people, and I had discovered one in the recreation category: rec.skydiving. It was a place where I met skydivers from around the world, and one of them was Smart Guy. We met in 1992 and married in 1994. I wrote about our freefall wedding here. By the time I turned sixty, I had been a skydiving instructor for six years and spent countless hours at the Drop Zone.

My job changed, too, and I began to travel all over the world with my former boss, traveling internationally to China (six times), Vietnam (twice), Bangkok (four), France, Switzerland, and many other foreign lands. I had to organize trips for dozens of scientists from all over the world and make it possible for them to get to the venue easily. When I think back to that period of time, I cannot believe how much I accomplished. It wore me out, literally. By the time I turned 65, I retired and moved to Washington state. Now that has been almost five years ago.

What I notice, thinking about all the changes I've been through, is how sometimes a change will occur without me noticing, and I'll simply realize that what had been an all-consuming passion (such as my job) is no longer at the center of my universe. Hiking and backpacking simply fell away when I began to skydive, although I looked forward to hiking with intense joy at the time. Today, I am again hiking with my Senior Trailblazers and have learned so much about the incredible Pacific Northwest. And I am still skydiving seasonally, starting in the springtime and ending when the rain starts up again.

Yesterday at the Drop Zone I chatted with a fellow skydiver who was packing his parachute alongside me, and he told me he's been teaching now for nine years, while holding down a regular job during the week. He does it for the pleasure of it (and getting his skydives paid for) and will be turning fifty soon. He wondered when he should stop teaching, and I told him I taught for twelve years, with more than a thousand students, beginning at about the age he is now. I said that the time will come when it's appropriate to let it go, but it's not today. It's a different kind of change when something is truncated, wrenched away from you because of life circumstances. When you can make the decision yourself, it's painless. Or almost painless. Realizing that life moves on whether we like it or not can be a lesson in itself.

I guess what is coming to me is the hope that whatever changes I still have ahead of me are ones I choose to make, or ones that have fallen away because they don't fit who I have become today. The hope is that when the day comes that I can no longer do something that gives me pleasure today, it will be because I've chosen to move on.

Moving at end of August

Our upper corner apartment

This fine little apartment has been our home for the last four-and-a-half years. After realizing that we would indeed be forced to move in order to maintain our sanity, we began to look for another place. As I mentioned in last week's post, we looked at two places last Sunday and were encouraged to realize that both of them would have worked for us. However, the one I loved wasn't Smart Guy's favorite: it's an upstairs apartment in a triplex, with attic type ceilings (which I adored) and unique and quaint little nooks and crannies. He's taller than I am and hit his head twice on the low ceiling. Plus it's 200 square feet smaller than what we have now.

The other one was in the part of town known as Happy Valley, and as we drove over to look at it, we descended into a valley, giving us little ocean breeze and no views at all. It was adequate but not as good as our present place. The large pine tree in our current front yard shades our apartment and has been filled with birds of all kinds. My first step towards moving was to stop feeding the birds, since summer is the very best time to do that anyway. I was surprised to find that it wasn't as hard to let it go as I thought it would be. I don't miss the house sparrows or squirrels one little bit! And they are still around, as other tenants also feed them.

I had learned that Roger, one of our community garden tenants, is moving at the end of the month, and he is in the equivalent apartment to the one we have now: the other end, thirteen apartments to the north, upstairs. He was kind enough to let us look inside and we realized it is exactly the same as our present apartment, but mirror image: everything is backwards to what has become my normal layout. We negotiated with the owner to move there and learned that I will need to pay for the rug to be steam cleaned here, and I plan to do all the rest of the cleaning myself. The deed will be done. It means I will need to arrange for the cable and internet to be switched, the electricity to be changed over, and to change my address for voting. Funny that simply changing an apartment number means a complete address change.

It's also time to lighten up my possessions. Smart Guy and I have decided to change the way we are living in the apartment to reflect our current state of affairs. When we first moved here, I was very attached to my iMac and set it up in the living room to look out the front window at the view. Today, the portable MacBook Air is my new best friend and I realize I am moving away from using the iMac as my main computer. With an iPad and the Air, I could easily get along without the iMac. Smart Guy reminded me that I can get a big screen if I want to expand my view. I'll think about that once the iMac is toast.

Yesterday I went through my closet to donate the clothes I haven't worn. For some reason I brought along all my clothes I wore to work: suit jackets, dress pants, and many dressy blouses. They simply gathered dust in the closet, not having been worn in five years. I guess I wasn't quite ready to realize my work life was behind me, so yesterday they all went into an enormous pile, with their concomitant memories of times past. The clothes no longer belong in my present life, but I'll keep the memories. It felt good to let them go.

A move also gives me the possibility of rethinking the way I use my environment. Since the community garden has become such a pleasure, I really didn't want to leave it behind. The triplex apartment had a box garden outside I could have used, created by a previous tenant and abandoned at present. I have learned that digging around in a garden is very satisfying, not to mention the actual food that is produced. Last night I woke wondering what one does with a garden in the winter. Do I pull up all the spent plants and amend the soil in preparation for next spring's planting? I'll find out from the internet and my garden neighbors. It will be another learning experience.

Yesterday I didn't get to go skydiving as has become my usual Saturday habit. The heat wave finally broke, bringing in low clouds with the much cooler temperatures. Although the skies in Snohomish were expected to clear by 2:00 in the afternoon, I decided to pin my hopes of making some skydives this week on today's forecast: overcast in the morning and partly cloudy in the afternoon. I counted up the number of skydives I've already made this season, and it's more than thirty already, more than I've made in previous years living here. We can usually jump right into late October, with September being either really spectacular or rather unsettled. It was 88 degrees F here on Friday but only 66 yesterday. The chill in the air was very welcome, as I hardly know how to cope with the eighties and nineties any more. I've become acclimated to the Pacific Northwest.

It was hard to make the decision to move, since I cannot seem to help getting attached to my humble abode. Renting seems the best option for us, since we have no money for a down payment on a home, and we have also become accustomed to being able to pull up our roots and move on. I learned over the past week that there are many places to explore here in Bellingham that we had neglected to consider, and many options for the future.

Even with the best of intentions, I accumulate stuff. Although Smart Guy doesn't accumulate like I do, I seem to want to "nest" and have little places where my stuff surrounds me: the recliner in the living room has everything I need within reach on both sides, with a lamp overhead. I do the same next to my spot in the bedroom. Time to rethink everything as we pack up and get into "motel mode." Consolidating all the important things into one place and rethinking all the unnecessary detritus of the past: that's my task for this upcoming week. We will be in our new place by Labor Day.

Labor Day! It's two weeks from tomorrow! Falling early this year, but still. It marks the end of the summer season for many of us. Kids go back to school, the leaves begin to turn, and the migration of so many birds to the south will also begin soon. At present, we are losing more than three minutes of daylight every single day as we move towards the autumnal equinox on September 22, at 7:49am Pacific Daylight Time.

Before I know it, it will be here, with the three months of fall gently moving us into winter. The seasons change, people move on, and I will continue to delight in the wonder of it all.

Living lightly on the planet

Planting the garden in early June

I am a pretty lucky person, living in the Pacific Northwest and having enough health and wherewithal to pretty much do what I want during these very full years of my life. Yesterday I was able to drive in my ten-year-old car down to Snohomish and spend the day with friends, playing in the sunshine as I made four separate skydives with my friends. Then I came home to spend some time with Smart Guy and discuss our upcoming plans.

When we packed up to move here from Boulder, lightening our possessions and putting everything we wanted to keep into a U-Haul, we got rid of at least half of what we had accumulated during the fifteen years we had been together. We are both minimalists, and it's one thing I appreciate so much about him; he's not one to want lots of "stuff" around him. We got rid of much of our furniture and have perched lightly here in Bellingham, preparing for a day like today.

Our rented apartment has been mostly very satisfactory, an upstairs corner unit, one of 26, with an enormous tree outside our front porch that shades us from the sun. Of course, here in this part of the country close to the Canadian border and the Pacific Ocean, we don't actually have a lot of sun most of the year. Right now, however, it's been sunny and warm, with lots of sunshine and the tree has been doing its thing. I will miss it.

In the time we've been here, we have had several tenants around us come and go. When we first moved in, we had a divorced man right next door who occasionally had his three kids, ten-year-old twin boys and their younger sister. They could be pretty rambunctious, but they were amenable to bribery. I told them I would reward them handsomely come Christmas if they would keep the noise level down, and when they did, for three holiday seasons they received gift certificates from me. They were at the time the only kids around. They grew up and spent their time glued to their electronics after a while and the problem was solved permanently. When they moved last year, they all thanked me for being such a good neighbor, and I too felt grateful to have known them.

Then a three-year-old moved in last fall, right downstairs and one apartment over. He is a normal little guy, liking to play in the yard with his tractors and trailers. He's also a good kid but very vocal and loves to scream. This has only impacted me in the summertime when we all have our doors and windows open, and I've grown accustomed to his play and find it rather comforting; he's a happy child and always notices me and talks to me when he sees me.

The apartment directly below us has had two sets of tenants since we moved in. They have never been a problem. And then... a month ago new tenants moved in, a mother with her two kids, six- and nine-year-old boys. They are not small children; I was amazed when I saw them the first time and wondered how it would be with them below us. It's been an education. The noise is not the problem, but the vibration: when they roughhouse, which seems to be most of the time, the dishes in the cupboards shake. It's impossible to deal with, since we have no idea when the next crash is coming, and it has put me on edge all the time.

When I went downstairs one afternoon last week to ask the kids to take their roughhousing outside, I found it was the mother and her sister dancing an Irish jig in the living room, it wasn't the kids at all. We had a conversation that wasn't exactly friendly, with the two of them saying they had every right to dance in their own living room in the middle of the day, and me saying that I couldn't concentrate, read a book, or block out the feeling that I am living inside a base drum.

So we are moving. This morning we will look at two possible apartments in a different part of town, and we are also considering moving within this same complex, to the upper corner unit on the other end. This section has us completely surrounded with young kids, whereas the other section has no kids around that apartment at all. Of course, there is no guarantees in life, but I'm hoping that it will be better than this situation.

All this has happened right at the time that I've planted my first vegetables ever in the community garden behind the apartment complex. I've already harvested some kale, green beens, zucchini, and am looking forward to having collards, cabbage and delicata squash, if we stay here anyway. The collards will be ready to eat any time now. Because of the garden, I'm hoping we will stay here, but I'm also looking forward to seeing what the rest of our adopted town has to offer. I've learned over the years to let go of expectations.

It makes me very glad that we are living lightly, not having accumulated much in the way of heavy furniture and keeping our possessions to a minimum. It will make the move easier, and I'm thinking I'll hire some young men with strong backs to do the heavy lifting, saving us from more than the usual thrash of packing everything in boxes. But it's an upheaval, and my dreams have been filled with difficult predicaments, reflecting my current dilemma.

This morning, however, as I write this post, I realize I am filled with optimism about the future and wondering what will come next. It took a few days of agonizing over what to do about the situation, but now that I have a plan of action, the future will unfold and take us to the next adventure. To me, a move is a disruption, but it also gives me the opportunity to remind myself that nothing is permanent, and living lightly on this planet is the very best choice I can make for myself.

My garden in August

Growing up without roots

Taken last week in the mountains

Many of my blogging friends have lived in the same part of the country for most of their lives. I had to choose a place to call my home, since my dad was in the Air Force, and we moved around the entire time I was growing up. The longest we stayed anywhere was in the early 1950s, when Daddy was stationed at Travis Air Force Base for around five years or so. When I think of my childhood, that is the place that I think of before any others.

My sister Norma Jean and I had each other as constant companions, and when I was seven my sister PJ was born into the family. However, there was enough difference between her and the two of us (two and a half years apart) that we never brought her into much of our play. There was just enough distance in years to make her a baby while we were growing older. And then when I was sixteen, my parents decided to start another family, raising another three children, two of whom were born after I left home.

Isn't that an interesting phrase? "After I left home." What happened to us, and I suspect to most migrant families, is that wherever my parents happened to be was "home," even if that wasn't a constant place. I remember when my dad finally retired and they bought a home in Fort Worth, Texas. It meant that my three youngest siblings would grow up entirely differently from the three earlier children: they went to the same schools and had the same friends as they grew up. It's almost as though we were two different families, but we had the same parents.

However, that home in Texas became "home" in a different way, one in which my siblings and parents established roots that I didn't feel were my own. Since my first husband and father of my sons was in the Air Force, my life continued on in the same way as in my childhood: moving from Georgia where we were married to Puerto Rico to Michigan, where my husband's family lived. We moved there after he left the military.

There were only short periods of time in my adult life when I wasn't working. My years as a young mother were just about the only time I wasn't actually holding down a full-time job. I sometimes think of how different my life would have been had I grown up like my mother, having babies, raising them, and working in the home rather than out in the world. That was what I expected to happen in my life; it was all I had ever known.

Growing up while moving around from place to place was completely different for Norma Jean and me. She was shy and introverted and it tore her up each time she had to leave her hard-won friends behind. It made her become more introverted and more dependent upon me as her big sister. We usually shared a room as young kids, and when I think of our childhood, there are few memories where she was absent. I am just the opposite: I am extroverted and make friends easily, so I didn't mind moving around.

The persona of the "new girl" became familiar to me, and I liked it. What happened so gradually that I didn't even realize it, is that I stopped knowing how to be a real friend to anybody except my sister. I developed an external habit of relating that put me in the middle of my drama, and everybody else was a bit player, easily replaced by someone else. Why should I invest in friends when they would be left behind in a short while?

How much of this lifestyle is responsible for the chaotic years I spent in my twenties? By the time I turned thirty, I had been married and divorced three times. Those years now blur together as a time of pain and struggle. You can just imagine how my son Chris' life was: when he turned ten, his father convinced me that it would be better for Chris to live with him and have a more stable upbringing. By that time Derald had remarried and had a much better situation, so I agreed.

Then I was totally unmoored from any responsibility to anyone except myself. I traveled around and finally settled in Boulder, Colorado. I remember the first time I visited that place. It felt different to me, and I realized that I had no home and could choose one for myself. Boulder became my "home," except the place where my parents lived was my childhood "home." After Daddy died, wherever Mama was became home.

And then Mama died in 1993. Now I really had no home except the one I had made for myself. For more than thirty years, I lived happily (and sometimes not so happily) in Boulder. I met Smart Guy when we were both fifty, and we married. Now it has been twenty MORE years, and he and I have retired to a new "home." We moved here from Boulder more than four years ago, and I call Bellingham home, where he is, where my life is.

That picture of myself that I put in this post (I always feel I need at least one picture) shows a contented older woman, living her life. I've learned over the years to value friendship and partnership, and I owe the healing I have gained during the past twenty years to a partner who showed me how to become a real friend. His wisdom and maturity brought me, a little at a time, to wholeness.

Sisters and best friends

"Two beers or not two beers: What was the question?"

Norma Jean's late husband Pete took this picture of the two of us when we were visiting Texas for a family reunion. I'm not sure what year it was, but I'm sure it was at Thanksgiving, and I don't think Mama was still alive, so it was sometime in the early nineties, most likely. It amazes me to realize that it was around twenty years ago, but when I see this picture of the two of us, I realize how much we have changed.

I tend to date things by major life events: the death of my mother (1993), when Chris died (2002), and when I began to skydive (1990). Thinking back, I try to imagine what else was going on, usually based on how much we each weighed at the time, the length of our hair, and how much gray is (or is not) in my hair. Norma Jean has only a little gray even now, but I am completely white-haired today.

Some other clues taken from the picture: under Norma Jean's leg is a little dog, maybe her dog Radar, but I'm not sure. It was taken at Fia's home in Texas; I recognize the couch. We had purchased the t-shirts at a mall earlier in the day and decided to take a picture commemorating the caption we found amusing enough to buy. I've got no idea if I ever wore that shirt again, but I have a vague memory of posing for the picture. It was in the days before we had digital cameras so I didn't see it at the time, and Pete was busy taking lots of family pictures.

I've got a brother and four other sisters, but the one who is my best friend is Norma Jean, always was. We grew up together, moving from place to place as Daddy was assigned and reassigned in the Air Force. We moved so often that I had many different schools and teachers that simply evaporated from my memory banks. There was a period in the 1950s, however, when we stayed in one place for several years: at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California. I think that's why when I think of where I grew up, that area and those memories are the most vivid. Norma Jean and I often recall events that happened during that time; we are the only ones who share them, since our other family members are either gone or weren't born yet.

After we became adults and had our separate lives, Norma Jean and Pete with their two kids, and I with my numerous tumultuous marriages and liaisons, we only saw each other at these gatherings. But it didn't matter: whenever we got together, we would go running or on long walks or shopping expeditions and it was just like we had never been apart. Our connection has always run very strong in both of our lives. When Chris died, Norma Jean was the first family member I called. I had to cry on her virtual shoulder. That was ten years ago now, and the ensuing years have only bonded us more closely.

Although we have very different personalities, so many aspects of our lives have begun to dovetail ever since Pete died. I went to Florida in February 2011 when he died and spent three weeks with her. We woke early every morning and cried together while we drank coffee and thought about the way forward. She and Pete had made arrangements for her to be relatively well off after he would be gone. She owns her own mobile home in a retirement community and has no debts, allowing her to live comfortably on her social security and some small investments. After I came back to my own home, we got into the habit of talking on video chat two or three times a week. Usually we talk for a long time, often a couple of hours, and the time flies by. It's like we are together, being able to see each other's expressions and mannerisms.

During this time we have begun to share other aspects of our lives: she pretty much stopped eating meat after Pete died and has begun to eat vegetables that she never ate before. I feel like I can take some credit for that. She now loves kale and brussels sprouts and eats them every day. She has turned me on to ways to prepare flax. The list goes on and on, and every once in awhile we discover that we made the same decision about a purchase, independently from one another. We laughed as we held up matching water bottles for the other to see, and on her birthday last week, we shared a glass of wine in our matching wine glasses, pretending to clink them together as we talked.

She sees her next-door neighbor relatively often, so I don't worry about her being without any support in case of emergencies. They each have a little dog and combined their back yards so the dogs can play together. Pete and Doris' husband were close, and they died within a few months of each other, making Norma Jean and Doris both recent widows. Doris has been traveling for the past month or so, and it worried me that Norma Jean has been alone. I am glad that her son Peter has come to visit, because I now no longer worry in quite the same way. I had been counting the days until Doris returned, but now I feel vast relief. It's the only downside to being so far away from my best friend: what if she needed me? How could I get there in a hurry?

She chides me for being a worry wart. I can't help it. She's very important to me, and if something were to happen to her, well, I get distressed just thinking about it. Of course, that's what happens: some life event marks another place where everything changed. I just hope it will be a long, long time before anything like that changes my relationship with my sister, my best friend.

Time marches on

Mama and me at Pete and Norma Jean's wedding

Not only do the years pass quickly, the changes that come about without noticing are profound. This picture was taken of Mama and me at Norma Jean and Pete's wedding in 1965. That young girl in the teal is me, if you can believe it! I was 22 at the time and in four months I would lose my precious baby Stephen to spinal meningitis. But the unmarred young girl standing with her mother didn't know any of that at the time. Mama was 41 and probably felt really old, seeing her second daughter getting married off. It's amazing to me to think I had already given birth to my two sons and had that svelte figure. I'm sure at the time I felt fat, which in retrospect is silly.

Mama lived to be 69 and died four months prior to her seventieth birthday. I remember talking to her on the phone about the big day, but I think she knew she would not live to see it. Not long after this picture was taken, Mama developed breast cancer and, although she survived it, her heart was damaged from the radiation they gave her. She suffered numerous heart attacks over the years that followed. She always rallied and sometimes came back from her trials seemingly hale and hearty, but she took a massive amount of powerful drugs daily to keep her that way. Mama was a fighter. She was the center of my universe in so many ways, but I didn't know it at the time. It was only when she was gone that I realized how bereft I was.

And now, today, I am exactly the same age Mama was when she died: four months shy of my seventieth birthday. The young girl in the picture is now officially old and white-haired. But the difference between the way we have lived our lives, Mama and me, is profound. Yesterday I woke to clouds and grumpily gave up my thoughts of going to Snohomish and skydiving with my friends,  so I joined the women's walking group at 8:00am and walked briskly for more than four miles. I kept looking up at the sky and saw blue sky peeking through the clouds, so I went home and checked the web cam at the Drop Zone. As I saw it was indeed beginning to clear, I hopped in my car and headed south. By the time I got there, the first load had been sent. My skydiving buddies Linny and Christy showed up soon after I did, and we made three wonderful skydives together before I headed home at 6:00pm.

Although I was tired and hungry by the time I arrived home, I related the day's activities to Smart Guy as I drank a glass of wine and then had a wonderful dinner. There is no doubt in my mind that I am fortunate to have the life I have, and hopefully I will be able to continue on in this lifestyle for a while yet. But time passes, sometimes quickly and sometimes not so much, as the years and the decades continue to march on by. Mama has been gone since 1993; the young girl I was in the picture is gone too, and the wedding we were celebrating is no longer, since Pete died last year. My sister is now a grandmother with two grown children in their forties. And both of my children are long gone; next month will mark a decade since my son Chris died, as hard as it is for me to fathom that.

Yes indeed, time marches on, and I find myself here, still here, this morning as the sun begins to rise. It's time to begin another day. I have so much to be thankful for. My dear partner sleeps next to me and I tap away at the keyboard, my slick new Macbook Air in my lap. My iPad lies nearby, with the latest book I downloaded onto it partially read. The technology that allows me to video chat with Norma Jean several times a week continues to amaze me. The difference between a telephone conversation and chatting with her while I can see her is remarkable. We mention that every now and then. She tells me she is so accustomed to video chat when she talks to her kids that on the rare occasion one of them will call her, they find it a real hindrance in communication.

It's all what you get used to, isn't it? Our lives today would look like science fiction to the two women in that picture above. Remember the old show "Believe It or Not"? I remember the prediction of Dick Tracy-like watches that displayed the face of the person you were talking to; today it's a reality. All the latest technology has evolved in a very short span of time, when you think about it, and it makes me wonder what the future holds. Probably things I can't even imagine.

When you reach seventy and you begin to think of the future, you realize that the next decade will most probably be one of decline. It's natural; it's the way of life. Even though there are many vigorous people in their eighties and even nineties, they are the exception rather than the rule, and they will also succumb to the ravages of age. It's natural, and I realize that it's also like the passage of time: it's gradual and you don't even realize it until you see an old picture, or until someone you love passes away.

In the meantime, I'll continue to enjoy my activities, both mental and physical. I wish all of you, my readers, a wonderful journey as time marches on.

The best laid plans

Why couldn't the sky look like this today?

Yesterday I didn't get to go skydiving as I'd planned, because the weather didn't cooperate. Actually, compared to today, it was much better skydiving weather, as it cleared out late in the afternoon. But today the clouds are low and dismal and the chances of me going skydiving are very low. This weekend I had planned to go out both Saturday and Sunday, expecting the Pacific Northwest summer blue skies to continue. "The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry." Makes me realize that things rarely turn out the way you expect.

Last night I woke from a dream in which I was a young woman who was trying to discourage a guy who wouldn't leave me alone. This sort of thing hasn't happened to me for decades, but in the dream it was very immediate and real. When I woke up, I realized that the young man reminded me of someone but I couldn't think who. As I lay in bed thinking, I realized that there are many facets of my mind that remain mysterious to me. Why do we dream? What function do dreams have? I was there in the dream, I could feel the strong emotions, both mine and his, the situation as real and solid as this keyboard. It took a few minutes for the dream to fade away.

Then my mind turned to an old friend I haven't thought of in a while, Baat. I began to imagine what might be going on in her life. We met when she was a skydiving neophyte. Before I even met Smart Guy, she showed up with 35 jumps at Skydive Colorado and we became friends. We ended up traveling together to different places to skydive, such as Arizona, and we shared a tent now and then. I introduced her to the skydiver who ended up becoming her husband, a postgraduate student at the University of Colorado. They now have three children, and I went to her Facebook page when I woke this morning and looked at pictures to see how they're doing these days. That's the nice thing about Facebook: I can see what is going on with friends and family by simply logging on and taking a visual tour.

Back to the early 1990s: Baat was getting ready to attend college but didn't have any idea what she wanted to study. She thought perhaps she might become a teacher, and she was smart enough and talented enough to do whatever might interest her. At the time I needed someone at work who might be able to help me create a web page for our section. This was back in the days before everybody had websites, and there weren't even any tools for creating them. Mosaic had just become available to use as a browser. I hired Baat to take a stab at it, with none of us having much idea how to proceed. Smart Guy taught her the basic functions of html coding, and she was like a duck that just discovered water: she was simply amazing. Within a week she knew more than I could have imagined, than anyone could have taught her, and her imagination and innate ability gave us our first website.

She then knew what she wanted to study: computer science. Baat has gone on to become an innovator in computer science and technology and now works at Women 2.0 in San Francisco, a company that aspires "to increase the number of female founders of technology startups with inspiration, information and education." It just goes to show that you can never tell what occurrence might start any of us on a new path that ends up becoming our passion.

When I think of my life today, with the beginning of my eighth decade just around the corner, I wonder what life event might cross my path and change everything. Of course, it could just as easily be the sudden passing of a loved one, but I'm not even going to go there in my thoughts. That has already happened to me too many times. What I would like to imagine instead is a fortuitous conversation at the coffee shop that leads to an exciting new adventure or two. Doesn't that sound like fun?

My life has a form to it that I hesitate to mess with: riding the bus four days a week to town to have a latte at the coffee shop and then take my exercise class; spending every Thursday in the mountains with my senior friends; riding my bike around town and learning all about the bike trails; and driving down to Snohomish in the summertime to play in the air. I've made many friends and acquaintances and feel a distinct sense of belonging here. But there's always room for improvement.