Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.
What’s something you look forward to as you age? And what do you miss from your youth?
The whole journey through my life has been a voyage of discovery. I’m trying to keep an open mind on what might happen next. After what life has given me so far, there’s no telling what it could be. I suspect it will be interesting.
You see, my life has been a series of events, none of which I could have predicted. From failing all my school exams, getting a job at sea and learning how to command a ship, then becoming an insurance surveyor, a marine consultant, a lock keeper, an assistant harbourmaster at the Thames Barrier, a pilot, a baker and an author, I guess you could say that it’s been a wild ride (Maybe I could have predicted the exam thing, that’s another story).
And that was just the work, having three wonderful daughters was never part of the plan either. As for grandchildren, I never knew that could be so much fun. I watch them grow and wonder what they will become. And how much of it I’ll see.
So, as I get older, I have no idea what the next year might bring. I had hoped, as I aged, that I would have stopped worrying about what people thought of me. Perhaps I’ll get to that happy state sometime?
I’ve found that the way I’ve lived and worked has upset quite a few people. From the fact that I had months on leave, while they were working (strangely, they never noticed the time I spent away), to the fact that in later years we made the decision to only work just enough to keep ourselves solvent. After all the years we had been apart, we could both see the attraction in spending more time together and enjoying life in preference to keeping “busy” and amassing money and things that we never had time together to spend or enjoy.
We might not be rich but we manage. I’ve learned to try not to be jealous of anyone. I ignore the neighbour’s pleas to tidy (i.e., rip out and concrete, like theirs) our garden, the bees like it just as it is, they were here first. Plus, I get to eat the fruit.
If there’s one thing that I do miss, it’s the energy I had in my youth. And the hair that used to cover my skull. I get terrible headaches at the start of every summer, despite taking every precaution to avoid any overexposure of my bald patch to the spring sun.
There is a truth that I can console myself with. It’s the sure knowledge that age and cunning will always triumph over youth and enthusiasm.
Let me know what you think about this week’s subject.
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Stevie Turner
The enthusiasm of youth tends to disappear with age, because mostly we can see the pitfalls ahead and dislike change.
Richard Dee
I can agree with that, 🙂
Daryl Devore
From one gardener to another – keep refusing to give in to the neighbours – garden’s are our sanctuaries – and the bees. And food grown at home tastes so much better.
Tweeted.
Richard Dee
In eleven years here, I’ve planted nine trees and grown some tasty fruit and vegetables.
P.J. Maclayne
And the bees! Please save the bees. They are more important to us than people realize.
Richard Dee
I know, people would soon miss them if they were gone.
Lela Markham
My neighbors wish we had a lawn like ordinary people do, but we have wildflowers and vegetables instead and the trees kill the real lawn if you don’t water it obsessively, so we let it die and then the native grasses took over. We mow it. It looks very lush from a distance, we never have to water it, and if we go away for a week’s trip, the neighbors get to watch the dandelions bloom (American dandelions are an invasive weed). I resolved some time ago to just ignore all pleas by the neighbors, and then last year, the state came along and repaved the street and dumped their barrow on my wildflower bed, so I called the contractor and complained and they actually reseeded my wildflowers and someone from the Cooperative Extension called to congratulate me on my bio-diversity. My fireweed nourishes the bees my neighbor down the street keeps. So now I can tell the neighbors I’m good for the environment. It does mean a lot of leaf raking come fall, however.