I recall being invited to dinner by the parents of the girl I was dating. That awkward feeling of being interrogated without the usual tools of painful extraction. Too pleasant to believe they were actually trying to disqualify me from getting into her panties (fat chance of that). Ok, so some humor, but the starting point here was eventually the parent-favorite question surfaces. "So Al, where do you see yourself ten years from now?" I've never adequately prepared for that question, even for job interviews. To be forthright, I thought it so absurd I'd allow my smart ass to push its way to my voice controls and mutter something like "alive?" or "Not in prison" hoping they'd get the gist. As for the job, well "In your job" seemed to push most back enough to stop the tomfoolery. Truth be known, I had difficulty thinking of life in general ten years from the moment I was sitting.
Here, a half century later, my wife and I were discussing things that needed tending and the item we were addressing ushered her response of,
"well we don't even know we'll be here ten years from now" I agreed and the discussion moved on. But her response had a hook, it got into my head, and I'm using it as a tool for discussion now.
Ten years from now we could be spending half the year in Spain tending her parents. I still don't speak the language so perhaps by magic I'll learn it along the way. But you know, as that ripple widens I can attest to some sentimental pulls. Our pets most likely will have perished, the house we nurture now will be sold, friends dear now most likely will have pursued their own family gravities and now only correspond. And that's not getting sullen with the ending of friends and families that might occur. What was of most interest in this process was my acceptance of such a possibility of my 'forever place' not being what I had once considered a sure thing. At the moment I can feel almost like a grown up, like not having ice cream doesn't bring tears (well so often anyway).
It's the quality of the challenge I guess, less fear, and maybe less abandoned enthusiasm, but definitely no dread. Like it or not, change has become a more pleasant whisper than in the past. Was a time it's gust would blow the curtains in and put goose flesh on my arms. Warm and welcoming it taps on the window pane and I readily open up to see the treasure it had brought for me to witness.
This drill of writing my thoughts is of course divergent from editing my author's bio. And that is a stepping stone to selecting which of my many story-kittens to put into a box and send off into the unknown. I could elaborate and say I'm avoiding rejection, but to be serious, I'm more concerned with success and requests for more. Only then am I obligated to consider manufacturing a canard to keep demand from my door. I have grown from ambivalence to personal change to a state of occasional interest. If only to discover I've been mental unwell all this time and that the real annoyance was me trying to make sense of the world when it was impossible.
That's ok too.
If I were to ask, where do you see yourself in ten years would you resort to well cultivated positive notions about people and places remaining unmolested? Would health be replete with gratitude that you can still chew your food and taste it? I wonder just how graceful all of this will be. I'd like to keep track of me being a good friend if for no other reason than I could do something successfully that didn't have anything to do with money.
I'd hate to consider that my life was focused on just paying bills and allowed the real vaul to sift away with the years. This in no way means I endorse going to High School Reunions; I'd rather eat dirt.
Because if I can do anything, it's the ability to milk absurdity. We all have our talents, do we not?
