Perhaps I shouldn’t be the one posting this since I am not a mother, but then on the other hand maybe that’s precisely the reason why I should post it because I watched all my friends go through all the different stages. I am a witness, this all is true!
…
When they become due, I don’t like them at all.
Taxes look large, be they ever so small
Taxes are debts which I venture to say,
No man or no woman is happy to pay.
I grumble about them, as most of us do.
For it seems that with taxes I never am through.
You would think that an older lady with moderate intelligence and a bit of life experience has learned to say “NO,” but no, she hasn’t. Perhaps I don’t want to?
That you were born
and you will die.
That you will sometimes love enough
and sometimes not.
I think the question is wrong. It’s not IF we spend time in the past, but HOW we spend it. Are we grateful or regretful? Do we cherish the moments we had with loved ones, or do we still mourn even if decades have passed?
…
The wish to change is an urge that society plants in us and so from an early age on, we look at our flaws. Me? I am no exception. The last sixty years I found so many things wrong with me. I had an endless wishlist of things I needed to change dramatically and so I tried.
Go, soul, the body’s guest,
….Upon a thankless arrant;
Fear not to touch the best;
….The truth shall be thy warrant:
….….Go, since I needs must die,
….….And give the world the lie.
(“No brass bands. No speeches. Instead a still, silent, effective influence.”—Anti-suffrage speech.)
We are waging—can you doubt it?
A campaign so calm and still
No one knows a thing about it
And we hope they never will.
No one knows
What we oppose,
And we hope they never will.
“I still have to do laundry and prepare for dinner. I have to play ball with our dog Vader, quickly water the hanging plants outside, and feed the dogs,” and while I’m piling up the daily I-have-do-mountain in my head, old familiar feelings rise again.
…
An old man going a lone highway
Came at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and wide and steep,
With waters rolling cold and deep.