This distraction thing…….well, this one is a wonderful one. No, I’m not telling, nor spelling it out, but it is far beyond cancer or insect bites, has nothing to do with hospitals nor scary journeys with too many questions in my mind, too many fears. This one is magical and hopeful and exciting and I feel wilder, free-er and it just looks as if the being of 71 is suddenly not the slow slide into an ending. Of course, there will always be that ending wotwot, we can’t avoid that, but if it’s possible to shout Wahooo on that slide, I am in. I didn’t think it was mine, however, just a short 3 weeks ago. No. I sat with coffee and my spectacular view and the birds dafting away around the feeders, watching other people living out their lives in a snapshot as they careened by (young) or wandered (older) and I reconciled, reluctantly to what seemed inevitable. In my experience, from what I can remember of those long ago days when my reddish chestnut hair was long enough to sit on and my body obeyed me and my eyes were light bright, twinkly and challenging, the next generation up seemed ancient. Perms and blue rinses (good god) and with shoes matching handbags, and the men, jowly and rotund, not that there is anything wrong with any of that, but I confess to thinking, oh very dear. Please not me. I said (I did) please take me around 60 when I still have control of my bladder and my footsteps. Obviously that fell on deaf ears! And now I am where I am, and, by the way, I still challenge anyone to stay longer than me on the dance floor, with breaks now and then, of course.

Do you remember a time when something, or someone happened, and that connection, so random, so unexpected, made a deep shift in everything, when thoughts, confused by this happenstance, swirled like a whole frickin twister as it just ran right through you? Sensibilities are unsensibled in a moment, and it takes some time to settle the unsettlers. But it seems to be a good thing, after decades of self-protection, fuelled by fear and doubt. We immediately doubt and question, after a lifetime of caution and routines that uphold, define and confine, until this normal is normal, even if we don’t like it one bit. We accept and perform as we are expected to, and, to a degree, that’s a good thing, until the roots go miles down like blades, cutting through the fragile connections to self.

And then something or someone walks into my vision, yours too. How wonderful is that! Even if it is just a snapshot, it came to me, came to you, a shift in a personal tectonic plate, the underground split into a new geology. That’s something, for sure. It proffers a chance, a wild step into the unknown. If we are to live with joy, fun, light and energy, it is up to each one of us to risk.

My favourite word.