Monthly Archives: January 2010

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Ten years ago, I had a four-year-old instead of a household of teens, all the original appliances we bought with our house, and my father, step-father and father-in-law were still alive. I didn’t know the new decade would bring a cancer diagnosis, a writing project about the Holocaust, an ability to fill out a FAFSA form in a flash, and a profound love for yoga. Life is like that. Or as one of my friends put it — after adopting one child, and a year later getting a phone message that simply said, “Would you like the brother?” (she would, in turn, and now has 12 and 13-year-old siblings) — “life has more imagination than we do.”

As we enter a new year and a new decade, I invite you to inventory your life. Begin by making a list of all that has changed for you in the last decade. Maybe you moved, got a couch, got therapy, got fed up with one job and found another. Maybe you went back to school or finished school. Feel free to list the big things (your mother passing on) and the little things (singing in the shower more). Keep adding to the list over several days. You might find it useful to divide up changes into categories, such as work, family, finances, passions, losses, community, marriage, art.

When you’re done, look it over, and see if you can name this decade. I named my last 10 years, “Sorting: The Decade of Prioritizing” although I realized I could call the decade before the last one, “Exhaustion: The Decade of Too Much to Do.” Find a name that fits for you and allows you to see more of where you’ve been.

Now make a list of all you want to invite into your life in the next decade in terms of family, marriage or partnership, work, art, finances, community, etc. Be lavish but precise, and consider if all on this list is what you truly want (remember also the old standby: if you ask for it, you might just get it). This can be your wish list for the next decade, and because you’re the boss of you, you can revise this whenever needed.

From here, you can do any/all of the following:

• Write about what difference it will make in your life to have something on your wish list. How might this change you seek give you greater freedom, strength, creativity, time, or whatever else it could bring?
• Write a letter from yourself ten years ago to yourself now, and then write back to your younger self. In doing so, you’ll see what shining coins of wisdom you’ve found.
• Correspond with yourself ten years older than you now. You could also write this as a dialogue.
• Pluck anything off your list from the last ten years, and write the story of this change in your life.

At least that’s what it feels like at moments lately. Our driveway is almost 1/2 mile up and down hills and around curves, and having not had a real winter in ages, we haven’t had too much trouble with snowy weather…..until now. The Christmas Blizzard left 10 inches of the white stuff, and our good neighbor, on his way to plow the drive for us, slipped and broke his collarbone and fractured his skull. He’s okay now, recovering well at home, and our heart goes out to him. We ended up, upon returning from Christmas in Missouri, ferrying armloads of groceries, gifts and luggage through three-foot high drifts along with all of us and Ken’s more-adventurous-than-she-was-planning mother. From then on, I’ve been driving her 4-wheel-drive, making the daily kamakaze bobsled run up and down the drive. Half the time, I slide a little, so there’s a lot of prayer and desperation involved, but what the hell.

Then there was still the unplowed drive, so I called Ozzie, who graciously agreed to visit with his have-truck-will-travel plow. Walking out the door to greet him, I slipped and sprained my wrist (almost better). After he did a great job on our drive, he was swinging around my mother-in-law’s house and encountered human-sized drifts. Luckily, he kept from sliding into the house, and thanks to his humor, the kids helping, and a lot of shovels, he got out.

Last night, charm #3 in snow struggles. I was simply driving the kids home at 9 p.m. from my mother-in-law’s house when I gingerly slipped off the road. Never mind that I was wearing only long underwear, a coat and heavy slippers (a woman can kick a lot of snow in her slippers when necessary). Rocking the car just rocked me further into the hinderlands. Ken was in Wichita for the night, although I called him for ideas, and eventually, I called our good neighbor Monty, who got out of bed, worked with me shoveling, pouring kitty litter around the wheels, and pushing the car forward while Natalie steered it. We almost got on the road, but no cigar, and the backwards approach didn’t work either. Monty then drove to town to get his truck and towed me, first forward, then backwards, then forward again, and then actually sideways until I was on the road again.

Now more snow is readying itself to fall, and unlike past years when the snow was so rare that it was magical, now it’s magical-plus. While it feels like the road to hell is paved with snow and ice lately, I’m also sure that the road to heaven to paved (or plowed) by friends. Thanks, Ray, Ozzie and Monty, our good neighbors. And may all our paths be passable.

Photos: Okay, the top one is sideways, but that’s what it feels like at times.