Questions in Daydreaming on the Porch

October 26, 2016

I dreamed a thousand new paths. I woke and walked my old one.

Chinese proverb

I sometimes find myself thinking about the future when I am no longer a caregiver and I have the now unimaginable luxury of endless free time, if and when I retire. I’m torn now between staying at my job and leaving. I can retire any time I want to. But I can only dream of what the future could look like, whether I move to that idyllic North Carolina mountain town I have visited a number of times and love so much, or whether I move to be near family far away in the Pacific Northwest. Will I eventually leave all the familiar and comforting sights, landmarks, natural beauty and stability of Charleston and environs, my “home” for these past 22 years?

I want to travel again so badly. There are very special and unforgettable places I saw on my cross-country road trips 30 + years ago that I want to revisit. I learned about many places when researching and planning those trips that I wanted to visit but was not able to. I have a travel wish list. I want to fulfill a life-long dream of visiting the English countryside, hiking in the Lake District among the scenic beauty that a favorite poet, Wordsworth, wrote about so memorably in his Nature poetry (Eg., “Lines composed a few miles above Tinturn Abbey” ). Then I want to retrace my steps on a return visit to Paris, which I last saw in 1978. Dream. Dream. Dream. I want to make new friends and take free classes at the local college. I want to go out and eat. Spend hours in my bedroom surrounded by hundreds of beloved books, and actually relaxing and concentrating enough to READ books again. I want to be able to turn away from the Internet for long periods of time each day. I’ve not had a chance to read or ponder deeply in solitude. It’s going to be difficult for me to do this. I’ll feel that I always have to be doing or worrying about something. I have all these dreams even as time is flying by faster than it ever has. Fulfilling them seems a very distant prospect at the moment.

I looked at my hands today and saw the wrinkled skin of age as if for the first time. Could this be me? How much time have I got left? A foolish question. I have now, the present moment.

I want everything to change and yet, paradoxically, this is also what I greatly fear. I can see myself living alone in this big house in downtown Charleston, wandering rooms and hallways filled with books and boxes full of memories. How will I feel? Depressed? Alone? Anxious? Liberated? Will I continue doing what I do now in my limited free time and postpone any drastic changes such as moving soon after Mom is gone? Will I even need to do that much differently but instead re-focus my priorities and learn to practice calm?

Rooted now in the one place I can truly call “home,” will I actually want to leave? I spent two decades looking for a place to settle down. When Mom is no longer here, and even if I am for the first time in many years free from the constant demands and insidious stress of caregiving, I worry that I will feel an overwhelming sense of loss that I can never prepare for. But maybe, just maybe, I will decide to strike out on a new path, a new journey, a new life in whatever time I have left in this life.

Above and below, two of my favorite “old paths” that I have walked countless times at Charles Towne Landing and Magnolia Gardens. I can imagine myself always walking in these magical places, as long as I am here and even to the very end. If I moved I would miss these places more than I can ever express here.

Last updated October 27, 2016