I was thinking recently about some of the things I\u2019ve lost as I\u2019ve grown older. But since I\u2019m basically an optimist, after a while I also began to consider the good things I\u2019ve found. I decided to make a list and try to balance lost with found.<\/p>\n
Lost:<\/strong> My beloved husband after 27 years of marriage. I miss him every day. There are so many things I wish I could tell him. Lost:<\/strong> The dog I adored, who died a few years ago when he was about 15. I loved him as if he were my last child\u2014the one who would never leave home. Dogs are so much like humans. They understand our emotions and we understand theirs. Lost:<\/strong> To death, my parents, my brother and so many friends. Lost:<\/strong> My ability to multitask. I used to spend my evenings reading the New York Times while watching television. I had no trouble keeping track of both. I can\u2019t do that any longer. Lost:<\/strong> The occasional pleasure of making eye contact with a man I don\u2019t know, or barely know, and realizing that he finds me interesting and attractive. For my part, I can still appreciate a good-looking man (I\u2019m not dead yet). And the men who catch my eye are all ages. I\u2019m not alone in that. A friend of mine, who\u2019s also in her 80s, was driving her car when she spotted a middle-aged man jogging on the sidewalk. He was wearing shorts, and she was so busy appreciating his long, sinewy legs that she drove right up over the curb when she turned a corner. Lost:<\/strong> My lifelong dream of publishing a mystery. Years ago, I actually wrote one, and my agent couldn\u2019t find a publisher for it. It lives in a drawer in my desk. Lost:<\/strong> My inclination to daydream about the future, now that there isn\u2019t nearly as much of it ahead of me. I used to spend a lot of time daydreaming. Lost:<\/strong> The sense that my future is almost limitless\u2014or at least that death is so far off that there\u2019s no point in thinking about it. Found:<\/strong> A new equanimity. Lots of things happen and instead of getting upset, I recall that I\u2019ve been through similar experiences before and survived. Things are rarely as bad as we expect them to be. Never lost:<\/strong> The feeling that there aren\u2019t enough hours in the day for all the things I want to do. I was thinking recently about some of the things I\u2019ve lost as I\u2019ve grown older. But since I\u2019m basically an optimist, after a while I also began to consider the good things I\u2019ve found. I decided to make a list…<\/span><\/p>\n
\nFound:<\/strong> Sole custody of the TV remote and of my own time.<\/p>\n
\nFound:<\/strong> The cat who\u2019s now the center of my life. Before Velvet came to live with me, I thought a cat would be dull company, compared to a dog, but it\u2019s not true. In the past I\u2019ve always had cats in multiples, sometimes with a dog as well. An only cat is something else altogether. I\u2019m all she\u2019s got and she\u2019s all I\u2019ve got. It\u2019s a very intense relationship. And where the dog kowtowed and tried hard to please me, she treats me as if we\u2019re equal. She\u2019s a completely alien creature, unpredictable and therefore fascinating.<\/p>\n
\nFound:<\/strong> A gut-level understanding of just how much my children and grandchildren mean to me, and how much I value and appreciate my close friends. Family and friendships are more important than career, romance or anything else. I didn\u2019t always know that.<\/p>\n
\nFound:<\/strong> How satisfying it is to concentrate on one thing at a time and to succeed occasionally at living fully in the moment.<\/p>\n
\nFound:<\/strong> The freedom that comes when you just don\u2019t much care what most people think of you. Including men.<\/p>\n
\nFound:<\/strong> Writing that mystery was more fun than anything else I\u2019ve ever done. The research (it was a historical mystery) and the writing took about a year and totally absorbed me. In fact, they were so much fun that I\u2019d be willing to try again whether I ended up with a publishable book or not.<\/p>\n
\nFound:<\/strong> The time to dwell on memories instead. I\u2019m fortunate enough to have lots of good ones that are fun to recall.<\/p>\n
\nFound:<\/strong> Acceptance, mostly, that I haven\u2019t much time left. That awareness feeds into so much of my thinking. When a pundit predicts some disaster that will probably happen by 2030 or 2050, I assume I won\u2019t be around to experience it, and that\u2019s a relief, though I worry about my kids and grandkids. At 83, I know I could be gone a year from now. A week from now. Tomorrow. But there\u2019s not much I can do about that, so there\u2019s no point in thinking about it.<\/p>\n
\nLost:<\/strong> That sense of equanimity when it comes to politics, which are strange and scary these days. No one has been through anything like this before.<\/p>\n
\nFound:<\/strong> A suspicion that slow living\u2014or slower living\u2014could actually be a very enjoyable thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"