For nearly twenty years now or, perhaps as long as twenty years, my friends, Medora and Meryl, and I, gather by phone, for a half hour or hour, whatever it takes or our schedules allow to touch base, to share, seek support and advice, ponder the vagaries of life and of our lives in particular, to celebrate the good moments and hold each other up in the dark moments.
Following one such conversation, I woke the next morning, with a riot of thoughts, and how it was that in the mornings, sometime while consuming the news, absorbing the dreadful state of things, as it usually is, and as it has probably been since time began, I look up from my phone, and realize I am happy, cossetted here in this little cottage, on this island, at this time.
This moment has followed me for most of the last year, as I have wandered the world, a moment, after waking, of contentment, a second of the self at rest, regardless of where I was resting. It happened in St. Malo, the coastal town in Brittany with which I fell in love, or in Wiesbaden, Oaxaca, Los Angeles, at my friend Larry’s guest house in Stuyvesant. It has been a welcome thread in the past year, anchoring in me the sense I made the right choice in cutting loose the bonds that held me, venturing out into the world again, without the steadying bond of a home.
It was last year, here on the Vineyard, in the “Most Exotic Marigold Hotel” of guesthouses I first noticed it, coming upon me as I lay in bed, reading, gratitude for my life, absorbing, as I age, that I am at peace, mostly, with the hand I have been dealt and the way I played the cards given to me.
Life is never lived perfectly; we lost that option when Adam and Eve took that fateful bite of the apple, but to come to terms with life is a blessing.
Perhaps, still, I will write that novel percolating in my brain, living in snatches on my laptop, perhaps more poetry will find its way to the page. If not, I think it is okay.
When the time comes, I won’t be holding my hand up, shouting to the grim reaper, not yet, not yet, I still have to…
There really is nothing I have to do; there are things still I would like to do: sail down the Nile, drink a crisp South African white in Cape Town, make another crossing on the Queen Mary II, another stroll around St. Malo. Those are the things I would like to do but do not have to do.
And, mostly, I have forgiven myself for my human flaws, of which, God knows, there are many. I do my best, for the most part think I have done my best, mostly imperfectly and that is the way of life.
This is what, I think, age should give us, a chance to reflect and forgive, ourselves and others, who, too, were on their own imperfect paths through this odd thing called life.
Letter from the Vineyard 
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