Dear Future Me...

I wonder what it wold be like if I could write a letter to me and send it into the future to arrive on my doorstep handed to me by a mysterious trench-coated courier? I would have my very own Marty McFly or Sally Sparrow moment and stand there a bit dumbfounded for a bit before tentatively accepting it I'm sure! It would probably be scrawled across the front in my messy loopy cursive "Do not open until 2055". Forty years. I would be 71 then.

When I was eight, and fifteen, and twenty-six I had my life all figured out. I knew what  I wanted and how I was going to get it. I knew that I would go to culinary school and open a five star restaurant to rival Charlie Trotter's. I knew I would be driving that cool electric blue Mustang and toting around my younger siblings in style. I knew that I would be married by 23- at the latest- because it would really be more like as soon as I turned twenty that the love of my life waltzed in and carried me away (but I wanted to give God some wiggle room there, in case something went wrong). I knew that I wanted to write and be published, to be able to support myself on that by the time I turned thirty so that I didn't burden other people.

And the list goes on and on....

I'm pretty sure that every one of us has had a list like that at some point in our lives. Actually I'd be lying if I pretended if I wasn't still keeping a running one of sorts in my head, jotting notes on each goal card and shuffling them around like the slots on a racehorse standings marquee. Now that I've turned thirty-one though I've felt myself a bit...blank.

After all, what goals come after thirty? By thirty you're supposed to have an awful lot of things crossed off of that list and most of the new ones that you've written down are likely related to the things you've already accomplished like how many more kids you are going to have, when you will have just enough to put the down payment on your first house, and when you are going to have to trade in the Mustang for an SUV.

But I'm not really in any of those situations.

I've thought a lot about what my life might look like in the next five to ten years and I'm happy enough with most of the scenarios that have played out in my mind. The one thing that really concerns me though is my health. Right now I chase after two beautiful nieces and a nephew and I love it- but it has also taught me that my limitations are far closer to me than I would like them to be. I get tired out too quickly. I can't lift and heft kids too much or my back pays for it later. I can't dance like a fool with a child in arms or I'll flare my hip or my knee and spend weeks grinding my teeth as I climb stairs and bend over. So, I have a good idea of what life will be like for me in many ways the next ten years.

But what about in twenty? Thirty? Forty?

I can only guess.

But I wonder if it will scare me as much then as time passes, as it does now when things are practically standing still in terms of life achievements and the progression of my disease?

Right now my family is rehashing the dead horse of convincing my eighty-six-and-counting Gran, my only living grandparent, to move closer and be a five minute drive away instead of a forty-five minute one. Through that process I have heard several things coming out of my mouth.
First,

"Don't you ever think that you are going to cause me this much grief and trouble when you get to be her age!! You are gonna do as you are told is best for you and that's the end of it!"

And second,

"I swear I am never going to be this hard headed and stubborn and unreasonable!!"  

Ahem.
Well, I hope that those things are equally true when ever I reach that point in my life where the come true but here I am, sitting and contemplating it and wondering what I will be like. I understand how difficult is is to uproot yourself from somewhere you call home and move somewhere you don't necessarily want to be. Like really. Like someday-I-really-need-to-write-a-blog-about-that-cause-it's-important-really. The fear of loosing your health is a fear I understand all to readily as well. At the same time, however, I look at it from this side of my youth (haha) and try to figure out what I would want to hear, would need to hear from myself in case I've gotten horribly stubborn and stopped listening to those around me?

If that time-hopping postman came banging down my door with a letter from my past self I think I would want to hear myself say...

"Wow! You got old! Look at you! You're still fabulous you know that right? Look how beautiful that bobbed silver hair is! I always knew you'd never dye it. Your body got old but you're eyes are still young, still full of feeling and mischief. You got old but you know you've still got miles to go- women in our family live into their ninety's remember! You probably use a cane now but that's cool- really- cause you're still walking! Who'da thought that you would be walking on your own at 71?
Do you have people to care for you? I hope you do. I hope that you have at least a child or two who love you and want to see the best for you. I hope they bring the grand babies over and chat. I hope they do your dishes. I know you hate dishes and if there's a perk to being old I hope its that you don't have to do so much housework!
Where do you live? I hope it's close to them so that you can go over and harass them and so that they can come running when your laid up with your ankle replacement (again) and have no one to run for your mail.
I hope that you let your kids in on how you're feeling and your needs. Then again, you've always worn your heart on your sleeve and never been able to hide your emotions very well so they probably already know. When you are in that position, don't feel guilty or sad, take strength in knowing that they are your right arm and your left and they are there to hold you up. You raised them right remember? They take joy in holding you up and in being your support! They love you and they want their actions to show that. Let them. Let them honor you this way. And hey, I know you got old, and that you planned to be that sassy old grandma but give the kids a break ok? That kind of attitude just hurts people who love you. Don't make it hard for them to love you. Their feelings matter as much as yours do, just remember when it was you in their shoes... So do what you have to and do what you must and do what you and the kids think is best for you to do cause you have life that needs to be lived and there is a good bit of it left. Don't live your life in fear of what comes next.
You got old, your body's much more broken down then it used to be, your hair is a different color, you are wrinkly (hopefully it's cute wrinkles- wrinkles from smiling and laughing and enjoying your life), and you can't do everything that you did before when you were thirty-one. When you were thirty-one and didn't know how good you had it, when you were thirty-one and couldn't imagine what was ahead for you. Maybe you didn't reach all those goals and live the life you had planned- but you know what?

You got old.

And that's pretty cool."

Source: pinterest.com/pin/341851427934879665/