They say it goes by so fast.
Life.
Well, actually, they usually say that in regard to raising kids. That too, for sure. It was a blink.
I was visiting my parents recently, and my mom said, “Can you believe I’m 91?”
I could honestly answer, “No!”
It was only yesterday she arrived on Christmas Eve, laden with presents, all the ingredients to make monkey balls for breakfast, and a bottle of Bailey’s to add to our hot chocolate. And it seems like only months ago, I watched in shock as my mother, who wouldn’t let us buy Captain Crunch, pulled out a jar of marshmallow fluff from her cabinet to make my kids a peanut butter and fluff sandwich.
And when I think a little more, I can clearly picture her sewing a blue satin gown for me to wear in my senior recital or hear her arguments for why JCPenney jeans were as good as Levi’s. I remember worrying only a little when she strapped mattresses on top of our old station wagon to deliver to someone in Wilmington who finally got off the streets and into a home.
She’s 31 years older than me, so her question made me think—“Do I have another 31 years?”
Thirty years ago, she still lived in the home where I grew up. She was so active with travel, volunteering, church, and friends, that it was hard to get on her schedule for babysitting our brand new baby. The baby who turns 30 next month.
30 years feels like a lifetime. The possibilities seem vast. And it’s made me wonder what I plan to do with them, should I be as lucky as her.
When we moved my parents into their new assisted-living apartment, we had to get rid of a lot of things. Pondering the stacks and stacks of photo albums from their travels, my sister-in-law said, “There’s no room.”
The next day I sat cross-legged in the rapidly emptying apartment and flipped through some of those albums. Australia, Greece, Kenya…they were amazing, but what was more amazing was my parents. The smiles, the friends, the adventures. My mom squinting through sunglasses from the top of a camel. My dad gazing out over crystal blue waters from a sailboat. A giraffe poking its head into the window of their hotel room (really!). The two of them in rain jackets, holding on to each other and laughing in front of waterfall.
We will make room, I decided.
Nick and I found a shelving unit that had yet to be given away. He took it apart and lugged it out to the truck. Then we stacked the albums in six huge bins and moved all of it to the new apartment. We made room. As my mother loses much of her immediate memories, she still holds fast to the old ones. I want to hear those stories.
“I’m sixty,” I say to my mom now.
“You are? That doesn’t seem possible.”
No, it really doesn’t.
“You and Nick should travel,” she says wistfully, nodding, and likely remembering all her adventures across the globe with Dad.
I shrugged and told her we planned to travel to Texas this winter, driving slowly along the edge of the US all the way around Florida and up the Gulf Coast to the Bolivar Peninsula of Texas, with the dogs in tow (of course).
“That’s good,” she says when I tell her about our plans (which I told her about the last time I visited ten days before).
I just finished reading another collection of Mary Oliver’s poetry, and have been pondering her famous question—What will you do with your one wild and precious life?
I plan to fill it with love, adventures, and enough memories to require 60 scrapbooks, just like my mom.
I hope you find plenty to do with your one wild and precious life, too.
Honored,
Cara
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