HOW DID I GET HERE? MY LIFE LIST AT 75!

Monday, October 24, 2022

 

4:30 am ... I am nearly conscious but enough to be moved by stars twinkling brightly through our bedroom window. Not often do they shimmer so radiantly over our part of the Pacific. Is this a dream? I slip into my heaviest winter robe, step out onto the deck and move a lounge chair to take advantage of this infrequent celestial experience.

Just before reclining into my angle of repose, there streaks a singular shooting star flashing to the southwest. So life affirming that bracing the twilight chill merits leaving the warmth and coziness of our bed. I go back inside, grab one of Patricia's ice hockey blankets, then settle in to watch the subtle shift from star glimmering night to astronomical twilight. An exquisite way to celebrate my 75th birthday. So memorable was this that I'm placing it on my life list do once a year. But am was I dreaming?

Like a double exposure, memories of  our recent middle~of~the~night Alaskan Aurora Borealis experience merge with these starry night sky thoughts.  The Aurora is a luminescent early morning vision that is the flip side of a cloud time lapse at sunset.

 

 

There are things we only do once in our lifetimes. Turning 75 is one of those never-to-be duplicated experiences.

 

Last night 14 of my friends and family gathered in celebration at Nobu, a fine Japanese restaurant looking down on Newport Harbor. Patricia called two of them "book ends".  Chucky Thomas my first student genius from Foothill High School and Matthew Mori, from Montebello, my last. Georgia and Michael Litvak from my Garfield High days joined in with Jim Reed whom I've known since 1966, long before anyone else at the table.  Sharon Thomas, Chuckies wife, and my family, Jason, Leandra, David, Cameron, and Samantha.  Together they paint a bright canvas of my life span from my days as a young teacher to now.

Jason remembered my original Sony Reel to Reel tape recorder as I put it out into the hallway at the New Age School filling the corridors with Chariots of Fire.

More soon...

But how did I get here? What events that have shaped the arc of my life? 

 

 

Quote from the movie Land:  "You offered me a way do die in a state of grace." 

We sat with Joyce when she took her last breaths. Her family found it impossible to visit her in the hospital, but I was there. She was a volunteer at Barbara Clark's Demonstration School during her last, preterminal year. We offered her a way do die in a state of grace.

This is a rare gift you can give to someone at exactly the proper moment. This should be on everyone's LifeList of experiences to have during the arc of a lifetime.

From the movie: Woman Walks Ahead  -Sitting Bull Quotes

 "Your society values people by how much you have...

ours by how much we give away." -

"The guards thought I was sleeping but I'd made myself into an eagle."

"Cantognake" Lakota meaning to place and hold in your heart, this moment.

chantoganake...