Today's epiphany is that the planet is more or less our neighborhood and everyone is our neighbor.  I stand (or sit at the moment, actually) in awe of the 21st Century.  Yesterday I had a lovely chat with my dear friend, Glad, who lives in Canada.  Today SO FAR (it is changing from minute to minute) I have exchanged conversations with friends in Northern Ireland, North Wales, France, and I just now got a message from a friend in China.  It's getting wonderfully weird.

These friends are not new, and perhaps it's not so surprising that I've heard from them all today since I've been making a concerted effort to get in touch with people I don't see or hear from often enough.  But REALLY!!  All of these contacts from people I can't reach out and hug are making my head and my heart whirl.

For example, what, when you get right down to it, is the difference between these friends with whom I can't sit down to share a meal, and the ever-growing parade of friends and family who have left on another level?  The presence of all the people I have loved and lost remains very real to me.  I miss them, I can't see them, but they're always with me, tucked away in some pocket of my heart (which I usually picture as one of those shoe-bags that hang on the back of the door...each with its dedicated spot). 
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At the moment Himself is in the process of transferring slides to computer images before we lose them all.  Some of those go back to before we were married, but most are of our early years, the kids growing up, the wrinkles arriving, etc.  And in among the children and our younger, less gray and thinner selves, are friends and family, forever frozen in time.  Seeing the pictures is enough to summon the presence, the feelings, the sounds of those encounters.  Another friend who took a too-early ride on a rainbow, used to exchange endless e-mails with me when I was a stay-at-home and over-aged mom trying to keep my sanity.  Before I retired I printed out every e-mail (on company time!) and when I take out the notebook in which I've saved them I can hear his voice as though he were on the other end of the phone.

I am not living in the past.  My memory isn't dependable enough for that.  And I'm not in a big hurry to get to the other side of The Great Divide.  I've still got stuff to do.  Nevertheless I am feeling enormously comforted today, and very much in touch with people both here and there, wherever "there" is.  We're not lost to one another.  We're just not in the same place anymore.  One of these days I do believe we will be.  Until that happens, reach out to the people YOU don't connect with often enough.  Maybe even take a quiet break for a moment with those you thought you couldn't connect with ever again.  And may you feel the warmth of friendship and love, rather than the pain of loss.  Feel the blessing of love shared.

So my father-in-law is 92 and thinks I make the best shepherd's pie in town.  He's not wrong.  It takes a lot of time, however, so I don't make it very often.  This Sunday I made the effort.  I cut the carrots and the onions, browned the lamb, added the spices, and had the potatoes just waiting to be mashed.  When I walked across the room to the drawer where the masher was, I heard a huge crash.  The glass top of a casserole dish had somehow fallen from the second shelf in the cabinet, bounced off the counter where the finished casserole sat, and landed on the floor exactly where I had been standing 10 seconds earlier.  A tiny piece of the glass top chipped off.  But it was Corningware, and for those of you in the know, the results weren't pretty.  There was glass EVERYWHERE.  On the floor, on the counter, in the sink, under the fridge, and...oh yes...IN the casserole and the potatoes.

My reaction for the first 15 seconds was a string of non-Mary-like language, but by the time I got to second 30 I turned to my husband and my father-in-law and said, "Well, I guess we're going out for pizza."  Remembering to thank my Guardian Angel for not getting a broken foot or a cut from the glass, and actually realizing that we were lucky we could go out for a pizza, off we set.

The revelation for me was that I didn't nurse it, didn't sulk, didn't let it ruin my day, and I really would have expected this to be my reaction because patience isn't one of the gifts God gave me.  There are a lot of surprising things going on in my head since I've retired.  If half of my daily "To Do" list gets addressed, that's enough for me.  If plans get cancelled I just take an extra nap on the couch.  And if people have different beliefs, political or otherwise, I let them.  That's a biggie.

My latest purchase was a flagpole to attach to the wrought iron railing on our front porch.  I change the flag once a week, alternating the Pride flag, the Black Lives Matter flag, and the American flag. Turns out liberals are still citizens, which felt uncertain for a while.  There are no lectures, no eggs thrown at the house, and if anyone has problems with my choices they haven't voiced them.  Neither do I feel a constant need to argue anymore.  Standing up for what is important to me, quietly, seems like a much better thing to do than giving myself an ulcer over debating with people who don't want to hear it.  It's important to me, however, to state my support for some people who don't seem to get a lot of it in my neighborhood or, for that matter, in the world in general.

So I'm either calming down as I age, acquiring wisdom, or just getting tired and running out of steam.  Whatever the cause, the result is a lot easier to live with.  At least for now.