One of the absolute best things about growing older is the comfort of friends who’ve been around the globe with you a time or two…or more.
I’m lucky in that way with my dearest Linda whose been at my side for decades. We both know that holiday time can summon a flood – a rush of memories both bittersweet and buoyant as we remember scenes from the past. Often of those we’ve loved and lost.
But there’s more. The rush at the end of the calendar year invariably prompts us to think bigger as we shake our heads, comparing tragedies worldwide and wondering what’s become of humanity.
We lean closer to one another because the shared belief in doing better, being better is what drew us to each other in the first place, many moons ago. While the fire is still within us to slay a dragon or two, we know we need to temper our resolve with a growing awareness that our influence may not be enough. Some will not listen.
When Linda texted me two days ago to ask if I’d seen the latest Anne Lamott opinion piece in the Washington Post I was excited. An outreach from my dear one…about another dear one? Perhaps my all-time favorite author? I dropped what I was doing…and the article didn’t disappoint.
And so…from me to you…with gratitude from Linda and of course the brilliant Anne Lamott, here are three excerpts that spoke to us.
“At 33, I knew everything. At 69, I know something much more important.” -Anne Lamott
My white-haired husband said on our first date seven years ago that “I don’t know” is the portal to the richness inside us. This insight was one reason I agreed to a second date (along with his beautiful hands). It was a game-changer. Twenty years earlier, when my brothers and I were trying to take care of our mother in her apartment when she first had Alzheimer’s, we cried out to her gerontology nurse, “We don’t know if she can stay here, how to help her take her meds, how to get her to eat better since she forgets.” And the nurse said gently, “How could you know?”
This literally had not crossed our minds. We just thought we were incompetent. In the shadow of the mountain of our mother’s decline, we hardly knew where to begin. So we started where we were, in the not knowing.
The portals of age also lead to the profound (indeed earthshaking) understanding that people are going to do what people are going to do: They do not want my always-good ideas on how to have easier lives and possibly become slightly less annoying.
Now there is some acceptance (partly born of tiredness) that I can’t rescue or fix anyone, not even me. Sometimes this affords me a kind of plonky peace, fascination and even wonder at people and life as they tromp on by.
Peace and love,
Vicki 💕 (and of course Linda)
Victoria Ponders 
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