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Old women's group

1/26/2019

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    I am blessed to be part of a group of long-time friends who get together to share what’s going on in our lives. The six of us are all circling eighty. Here’s the essence of my contribution to a recent email exchange.
 
Our honesty and hopefulness helps us be realistic and resilient. We each take our turn; at the moment two of us are on center stage, the rest of us with essential supporting roles.
 
Each one of us is strong. We have high P.A.—personal authority, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need each other’s support.  Although I believe that when all is said and done we are alone in this world , I also believe that we can only embrace and cherish this aloneness if we are surrounded and loved by others. (For example, I am peaceful and not lonely traveling alone because I have family and friends who love me and support and understand this long of mine.)

 
     Maybe it’s not a old woman’s secret that we need our peers. 

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Remembering Mary Oliver

1/18/2019

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​Mary Oliver died yesterday. She was 83, four years old than me. Three years ago she was diagnosed with lymphoma. I don’t know if she suffered from it, but I like to think that she knew her journey was coming to an end and that she had lived the journey she had encouraged her readers to follow: determined to save the only life you could save.
    Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. Mary Oliver followed her own instructions; she told about her life throughout a life time of writing poetry. She showed us how to pay attention and be astonished.
      Mary Oliver didn’t seem to have old woman secrets; she just kept writing. She was transparent and honest. We old (and young) women will continue to learn from her. 

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Secret of an old woman--staying home

1/5/2019

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​    On December 30th I turned 79. I don’t feel old, and in many ways I don’t fill the usual stereotype of someone entering her 80th year. In other words, I’m healthy and active. But I feel an old woman secret creeping in, which has to do with travel.
    I’m fine going to Florence because I know the routine. As the expression goes, I could do it blind-folder, although my eyes are excellent. But flying to a new airport, renting a car and getting onto the highway, and being my own tour guide over-whelms me.
    I’m beginning to understand the attraction of tours, but I’m not interested in spending energy hooking up with them. Plus, and here’s another secret, tours are inherently social, and I want solitude—which is why I love traveling alone.
     Old women are happy staying at home. I don’t know if it’s a secret, but it sure is true. 

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    Author

       I am a 78 year old white, educated, privileged woman, in excellent health, with a wonderful family. I go to church and travel by myself to Italy and Scotland. That’s my public vita, my public persona. But that’s not all who I am. I have secrets, secrets of an old woman. So let me say some more.
         I’m old. Not in the usual physical ways of a person age 78, but I’m old in years, and that very fact guides the sense of meaning that I feel and experience in my life. Put succinctly, more and more my age is becoming the filter through which I lead my life.
         I’ve had a rich life, with caring parents, a loving husband of 54 years, two wonderful children, and four amazing grandchildren. My teaching career was rewarding; I published six books for teachers describing my experiences as a kindergarten and first grade teacher. When I retired I earned a divinity degree and became the spiritual care counselor for a local hospice.
        I ask myself if now I am really retired. Well, yes and no. Yes, in that I have more free and unscheduled time to satisfy my longing for silence, solitude and simplicity, which I blog about in this blog-- www.acottagebythesea.net, and more time to attend to my spiritual life, which I blog about in www.aprayerdiary.net. I have more time to spend with family and friends, help at church, read for pleasure, write, and travel,. My old woman secret is that I am still searching for meaning and the search is intense and life supporting.

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