Where to Begin

As I said before, this is the year I became 50 years old. While it doesn’t feel the least bit momentous on the one hand, on the other I feel like it should feel momentous , that I should be reacting to this birthday. So here I am, working on that.


As I think about embarking on the second half of my life, there are two things that I love and want to retain 'as is'--despite the ups, the downs, the joys, the sorrows, the challenges and the demands. First is the five men in my life--spouse and offspring (pictured above). I literally do not have to leave my house to experience the world, because they live it and bring music, culture, art, and magic into our home. Everyday. That said, I also want to continue to spend time in and about the world around me--seeing new places, talking to people who live there, eating the food they eat. Walking around new places is my one true relaxation outside of reading.

But I find myself focusing more on how I want to live the rest of my life. What I would either like to better prepare for or out and out change. I watch my parents, who have rambled around in their too-big house for 25 years as they try to downsize in their 70’s, and I realize I do not want to start that late (thanks for teaching me that). I want to start now, to try to be purposeful about how I live, where I live, and why I am doing it this way. The good news is that at this point there is no hurry. I have the house that I have raised my four boys in, and with two of them moved out, I have a lot of room to maneuver in. That is the good news. The less clear issue is what do I want to do. I suspect this, too, will change over time, but here is where I start.

There are things about who I was ten years ago that I want to get back into my life. I have always had things that I do that are productive, because my job, while I love it, doesn't produce much in the way of tangible goods and I need to do that. Cooking has been a consistent way that I have expressed myself, as well as how I have shared with my friends, my family, and the greater community. It is a way to communicate who I am to the outside world. For me, it is very personal, but nobody really sees it that way. I am revealing a lot about myself without many people realizing it. The occasional person will have an 'aha' moment, and see that I am not all that social, but that the part of me that loves people is speaking through my much beloved macaroni and cheese.

So moving forward I want to continue to cook in an expansive way--I am not so much recapturing that part of my past, but reconnecting with the boundless creativity I had then, when I piped holly berries onto the hats of my snowmen cookies and meant it when I said it was no big deal.