This day

 I have less connection with the past. I don't see this as a bad thing. I sometimes have momentary glimpses of my former self, glimpses that come to me, seemingly out of nowhere. I'll remember wearing a bathing suit at a younger age, when the children were young, and how I felt in a particular moment. I'll remember being even younger in a bathing suit at a public pool and the feeling of being so incredibly hungry after a day of non-stop swimming. I'll remember biting into food  and thinking nothing ever tasted as good as that fabricated meat roll that they served at the kiosk.

I remember, just now, feeling that I was pregnant for the first time and going to the doctor in the early afternoon of a work day and being told, yes, I was indeed pregnant. I remember the surge of joy. I was 28 years old.

In some ways the connection between my younger self and my current self is my children. I remember a flight attendant asking me if I had children and I said that my eldest was eight. I remembering wondering at that moment where eight years of my life had gone.

When he was born it was the most wondrous thing that ever happened to me. In fact, he wasn't a beautiful baby for a few weeks, since he was delivered with forceps due to the emergency that ensued in the hospital. But, I'd sing to him and coo to him as if he was the most magnificent baby that there had ever been in the history of the world. My mother recognized immediately that he looked squashed but I saw no imperfection at all and she didn't let on for many months that I had been in a dream space.

Fast forward to today and he is getting close to 33 years old. It still stumps me, where time goes. It is so interesting that he doesn't seem to have caught on that I have aged with him. That's nice really, that he sees me as eternally young.

In a way, and an important way, I am neither young nor old. It is a part of the meditative practice, I suspect, and a lot of spiritual reading, that I connect more and more to that part of me that has no characteristic that can be defined by age, or a changing body, or even a changing mind. I can't always connect to that part of me that is love itself, unconditional love, but more and more, I can.

Perhaps another way to put it is that I feel closer to a world, a life, a state, that one might call Acceptance, the suchness of things.

Certainly, I associate less and less with my thoughts. They come and go, of course, but I'm more inclined to notice them, rather than feel that they are mine. 'Oh, that's interesting,' is a thought I have quite regularly as the thought enters and plays out before it finishes and is replaced with another thought.

The hardest part of the day, and it has been this way for a long time, is first thing in the morning. I realized something this morning, that I often forget that this difficult part of the day can relate to allergies, sneezing and stiffness that relates to the weather. Over and over I have to remind myself that hay fever and the like induces an  agitated feeling that is best medicated.

Yet, it is more than that, I think. My husband is a night owl and in order to have him get as much sleep as possible I'll put off preparing for the day, having a shower and dressing. This works against me. I have to keep reminding myself that it is best to get up and get ready for the day; create momentum. We've talked about that and he encourages me to day what I need to do.

I'm very aware that there are less days ahead than those that have gone. I've very aware that those who were my age now when I was young are gone to God. Time takes us all. I don't think of this as a troublesome thought but I had a thought earlier, and noticed it, that I want to see my grandchildren. I want to meet them. I am hungry to meet them.

This is a thought, a thought about the future, a fear. We all have our fears, not that they do us much good, unless it is for purposes like getting out of the way of a speeding car and that sort of thing. I'm troubling myself about the future which will most likely have no relevance to my fearful thought.

I think there are times of life when we struggle for awareness at all, such as when I was young, and times like now when I feel a strong need to absorb all the change that is going on inside of me. Meditation practice for children is probably an excellent idea, but it wasn't part of my childhood. I suspected there was more, more than I could see at the time, but maybe all young children suspect that in some way.

Now, for me, it's not unlike a pulling away of people at the end of their lives who develop a deeper understanding of this life. I'm not pulling away from life as I've seen people do who are ready for life to end but rather I'm so awed by life that I need time to simply observe it. To this end, I feel a bit alone. I can't talk to anyone about this, quite simply, no-one. Where would I even start?