GETTING PLOWED

There comes a time when you redefine what you are willing to riskto have a good time. (Hey...thats a poem) Since I already used CRASH COURSE as a title for a recent blog, my love of wordplay has thrown up a different metaphor altogether...and I'm spinning off on an unanticipated tangent. If I was in my high school English class, the teacher/headmaster would make me raise two hands indicating I have comments that will lead the discourse in an unrelated direction...unrelated to him and his planned verbal itinerary. So...here's a two handed offering.

I have long outgrown the belief that having fun requires having alcohol. I think parenting was my initiation into sobriety and realizing there is lots of fun to be had in life without the help of adult beverages. There's an edge you sit on when you have small children. Anything can happen at any time and parents need to be able to respond to quick changes in plan, unforseen emergencies and venturing into untravelled terrain. Ultimately, this is true of any moment in your life but the responsibility for young lives really brings it home. Don't misunderstand me...I enjoy my adult beverages but I am definitely over "getting plowed". This process of redefinition seems to be a requirement that spirals around at many different points in life. I think I'm actually sitting on the threshhold of one right now.

My boys are young men and fully fledged adults as well. Stephen and I enjoy our whole home and the way things stay where you put them. We have discovered the blessings of the empty nest and how perfectly it can accomodate two birds of a feather, as well as how wonderful it can be to have our sons visit with their respective girls. I never thought I'd be able to say "it feels good when they go home". There is an echo in the house when they leave...a reverberation of the walls. I felt it yesterday when Sadie spent the day at the vet's getting spayed. The walls of the house hold the energies of our loved ones and when they are absent, the house seems to feel it. Time has flown and I have become quite comfortable with the silence and myself for company. Going here, there and everywhere has lost it's sheen. Busyness has ebbed to a new fullness that comes out of time spent alone. Guess its a tidal thing that changes as the passages of our lives change. An ebb and flow of who one is and what one enjoys. You'd think the change would come slowly but no...it can smack you unaware or you can suddenly be face to face with a reflection you don't recognize who has needs you don't know how to fill. Then I guess you must spend some quality time with yourself so you can refigure what's required to maintain balance and keep you focused on your bliss. But what happens when you're so focused on your bliss that you forget to pay attention to what's happening? Why is it that when things are going really well, thats when you end up in a faceplant under the lift or sprawled on the street wondering if anyone witnessed your supreme grace and elegance?

I've got to imagine that that is what happened yesterday to our 88 year old neighbor Charlie. It was a beautiful sunny day. And Charlie is always in some kind of a vehicle...his truck, a tractor, a ride on mower. He finds his bliss in working with powerful tools. He is stone deaf and retired, so he can spend whole days moving leaves around or plowing snow. So yesterday, while Sadie was getting spayed, Charlie was plowing at our Paradise house...and whoops...instead of stepping on the brake when he intended to, he stepped on the gas and plowed right in to the front of our garage. Kind of a wake up call...the last two times Charlie plowed something that wasn't snow, he took out the electric wires twice and CMP finally came and moved the wires so he wouldn't plow into them. His back truck bumper is bent from those two efforts. I believe it may be time for Charlie to redefine his bliss and make some necessary adjustments to the limits brought about by age. Charlie...it might be time to hang up your plow. But I can't tell him how to redefine his bliss. So from where I stand, it just might be time to say no to getting plowed.