It’s my route most mornings to walk through a 55+ community that is a circle of condominiums with an assisted living facility at the front of the property. I do this, in part, because my mom lives in one of the condos. I don’t stop in to say hi when I go through, but it’s just that I appreciate the small moment of connection I feel to her when I walk by her home.
It’s been on my mind quite a bit lately how I am in (or approaching) the autumn of my life. Though sharing this with a friend yesterday who is sixty-six and I will be fifty-nine in July she lovingly said, “You’re only in August.” I had to chuckle about that, because yes, I suppose that is correct.
But it’s how I feel that prompts me to say I’m in the autumn of my life. I think also the fact that my husband is four years older than me and he is by the definition of how we see the autumn of our lives, as he is now entering this phase at almost sixty-three.
But this autumn of life concept is something I’m very much jiving with as it feels in alignment with my heart’s desire. It’s the seemingly simple moments I often overlooked in my youth as I was often on the go, trying to keep up with the latest everything and not to mention working hard to achieve the material things.
So as I made my loop through the 55+ community this morning I was struck by a simple moment that perhaps others may not have seen in the way I did.
As I rounded the corner past my mom’s I saw a woman walk out her front door, across the porch, and pick up a rain gauge nestled in her front garden. She looked at it for a few moments, no doubt, reading the gauge to see how much rain we’d gotten the night before.
After that, she turned to her left where there was a wrought iron vessel hanging from the front porch post which held dainty pink flowers. She then proceeded to deposit the collected rain into the flowers.
It was such a simple act, yet, it stirred an expansion in my heart. It had me reflecting on how when I was younger and caught up in my busy life if I’d had a rain gauge I’d likely have had it just there as a decoration and not paid much attention to it. But there was this simple act of connecting with something outside ourselves as this woman had just done that just touched my heart.
As I walked on with an extra spring in my step from what just transpired, I reflected on how this is what I would define as being in the autumn of one’s life — where you deeply appreciate these moments of connecting to nature and simple pleasures.
As we age we have the choice to bemoan it or find joy in these small pleasures, which for me feel so much bigger now than they ever did before.
And somedays moments like this catch me off guard as I feel this deep stirring of something in my heart that I can’t always necessarily define. I just know that it feels incredibly good and has me in sweet anticipation of when that next special moment will come.
And how these are the things I want to continue to experience as I make my way toward not only the autumn of my life but the winter of it also.
XO
Barb
