Me At 43

This is me at 43. I make my living thinking and writing. I still got it. I still want it. I was a little girl who grew up big. I’m a kid inside, but I’m not the same person as when I was a kid. Life’s interesting and continues to astonish me. And I like gettin old. 

As the years go by though, I miss my family more and more. There is a couple days’ highway between me and them, out where they are in the Rocky Mountains. But at least the distance isn’t further. At least I can cross it now and again. And hey, I do see them often in my dreams, which is a cool kind of consolation.

Last week’s dream: We were in Glenwood, Colorado — an old-western town at the mouth of a chasm where the Colorado River rages through. My sister had wild long black hair that caught the light as she rode a prancing black stallion. She was a kind of powerful warrior I think. 

Me, I was tasked with saddling up a soft and friendly bay mare. I had to ride it through the canyon eastward to our old home, alone. At the mouth of that canyon, there is a tunnel, and I was afraid to parade my poor horse through it amidst the rushing interstate traffic. Dad was there, and he dreamsplained to me: “Just keep her in the median.” 

“Sounds like something I would do,” he said the next day when I texted him CliffsNotes to the dream. 

Sooooooo anyway, here I am, at the mouth of my 43rdyear on earth, ready to clip clop through the tunnel of winter and endeavor to carefully “keep it in the median” as a pandemic/recession/social unrest/fiery apocalypse all rage by in the lanes around me. Dad, I’ll give it a try.