Part 6.  Mango Tree Coffee

The future comes to you looking like something else.

Late July morning.  Mara gets up at 3am in Alameda and picks me up in her old model BMW in Santa Clara and we switch off driving all day, meandering down through the California Central Valley - breadbasket to America -  then over across on Interstate 40, Tehapachi, Barstow, etc,  and finally make it to Prescott Arizona 800 or so miles later, and Jill's house by late dinner time.

It was nice for me to get a whole day with Mara.    Just me and her.  With both her and Jana, and now that they are starting up on their lives, I don't know how many of these Whole Days I will have with either one of them, so I try to hold onto each one.   Of course I drive them a little crazy along the way with my dad advice and such, but I do try to keep that to a minimum.

I was thinking on this, then found an old unread email this morning that I had saved along the way, and it said:

“You have to assemble your life yourself...If you accept the obstacle and work with what you’re given, an alternative will present itself—another piece of what you’re trying to assemble.” Marcus Aurelius

You have to rebuild your life yourself.  No one is going to do it for you.  If you accept this challenge, and are willing to work with what you have - and not what you want - an opportunity will present itself. 

 

The future comes to you looking like something else.

So I texted it to both of them individually this morning.    They both seem at a point in life where they are in the process of figuring things out.    

I don't blame them.  Whenever one of them would make a mistake growing up - while my first instinct was to be critical  - always, always upon reflection I would think back to when I was growing up, and could rather quickly remember things that I did that were way worse than any one of their transgressions.   I was a hard and difficult kid to raise.    All I wanted to do was to raise myself without any adult intrusion, and make my own mistakes.    This led to any adult trying to help me disappointed in the attempt.    Consequently and Eventually, when I left home, I ran.   I had to strip clean everything that had come before, until all life lessons lay scattered in pieces around me.   Naked, it was only then that I could pick each piece up and decide what to keep and what to discard.   What I kept became mine because I wanted it as part of my life, not because it was given.   The things you carry in your life define you.

Of course in my 30s I apologized many times to the adults around me, my parents included.  Usually a bemused smile in return.  "You just had to grow up".

   

Sitting in Mango Tree coffee on Broadway in Englewood Colorado 6:30am, waiting until 9am when Scott and Tammy are coming over and we are going to paint the concrete under the front porch or Tammy's parents house where I am house sitting.    I drink way too much half and half in my coffee.   Have done for years.  I feel my arteries clogging as I write this.  I need to stop.   A woman who looks like Bethany at the counter smiling and serving coffee.   A young dad gently bouncing his baby in the baby Bjorn across his front chest.    A quiet peaceful start to the day.     Time to read and write and just stare at people.  The kind that suit me.