School is drawing near, when weekends are no longer for lounging but rather pounding keys on the keyboard, hunching over books, reading and absorbing at a rate that no human is really capable of. I feel a bit frantic about getting all the things I want to done before this starts again. In the process of cleaning out and attempting to unpack some more boxes (yes after almost two years we are still living in boxes). I have a longing to not store, that if its not out, its not kept. But of course this won’t always work, there are the boxes of photos, and old journals that I can’t come to throwing away. We have heaps of photos from my husband’s family, and I have a whole box of half filled Journals. He keeps these photos because it’s his history, and I keep mine in case I ever write (for real) they may come in handy. But even these things make me pause wondering why we lug these things with us into all our stages of life, will our (possible) children even care? Our dog certainly doesn’t!

We have both agreed, that no box goes with out being gone through. However still we have different opinions about what should be kept. I am a get rid of girl, he is a keep boy. So somewhere in the middle of these different paths we need to meet, knowing that neither is wrong, just different. This is something I struggle with, I feel like my opinion has to be right, that others need to live like I do, or at least the way I think one should live. I am not really sure where this comes from, but I have a guess that it comes from years of wanting approval from my family. So I cling to others approval and hold on to little ideas that if I can control the person I love (DH) into doing certain things they (my family) will approve of me (and him) more. It is silly really, and in my past trip to Vermont to visit my mom and sister and her family I tried to let that go. I am working to let go of trying to control my DH (and others) to conform to standards that I believe have been set, but really in many cases haven’t.

In this trip, I also caught myself passing judgment, judgment that was ill placed on family and it didn’t need to be there. Why do I think I know so much? That I could even for an instant decide for someone else what would be best for them, why for an instant do I believe I should tell or demand that my DH get rid of something that means something to him, or act a certain way? I think in the latter case that I can convince myself that his keeping something affects me, but really how, how much does it have any bearing on my life? So it’s an extra box, or vase, or book, does it really matter in the grand expanse of life? I don’t somehow become a better person because I have less possessions then someone else, it doesn’t mean that I am freer or happier or better in anyway. Possessions it is true can be negative but they can also be positive and heart warming. A friend recently gave me her hand painted Spirit stick, wood and paint, that’s all, making something both beautiful and meaningful for me. So you see it can be the simple and it also can be the complex that brings joy. Buddhism teaches us to free us from possessions that these attachments tie us down. However, we are tied down, we are on this earth right now, and I hope to be here for a while longer, I am not done. So maybe when I am 100 years old I can get rid of all the things I own, but not just yet. Nor can I easily shed my judgments of others, but I can become aware of them, and take into consideration how they affect others.

My road has been bumpy, it hasn’t been vanilla. I can remember once a teacher that I had a wise, creative and spirited woman told me that she didn’t see my life as ever being vanilla. She expected it to be more of a rainbow sherbet, colorful. And it has been, while part of me longs for a similar plainer life, another part of me knows I excel when challenged, I grow when pushed, I become what I am not because of those things that have been simple and easy but from those things that have been a challenge and a struggle. We do not grow and learn so much from what we have done right but what have done wrong or should I say different since I dislike the term ‘wrong’. Perhaps if we become more sensitive, more in tune with the happenings around us, we can learn from gentler pushes and shoves then if we turn away and become careless of our life.

As we grow old as women, our skin softens and becomes droopy and wrinkled. We become soft not like the softness of a child, whose skin is full of life, but energy begins to fade from our tissue, yet at this time our heart, our mind becomes softer too. We can become gentle, delicate, and sensitive. Of course this is always a choice I have seen many an old woman who has chosen to become hardened, rude, angry because her life wasn’t what she had envision. However those women that grow old gracefully, like my mom, laugh at life, smile easily and in the crinkles around their eyes is love no anger.  These women who choose this may not be perfect always but they strive towards gentleness a sort of softness that more then likely they couldn’t embrace when they were young. I don’t want to wait to be old, to become soft and gentle. I know life can be sour grapes but when you taste a bad grape you throw it a way right? Well I feel like its time do that with life, when the experience is sour like a bad grape its time to throw it out and move on! Here is to moving on, finding sweet grapes and throwing away the sour ones.