Sweet anticipation perfumes the air today, my daughter is coming home. I’ve stocked the fridge with her favourite things, her sheets are clean, her room is tidy. It’s this moment of tender expectation—her arrival, our reunion—that brings me such pleasure. I want to savour this moment.
This is a big birthday year for me, with an out-loud promise to actually live, instead of cowering in this itchy fear coat I put on a few years ago. I’ve outgrown it and if I am honest, never really liked it. (Like those ill-fitting “comfortable” clothes I bought online during Covid).
It’s time to change. Into what, I’m not sure, but I’m listening to what is true for me and that’s a start.
I’ve become an apprentice to living.
There have been past lives: radio talk show producer, television host, film maker and entrepreneur. All these versions were true, and who am I now? It’s a powerful question.
When I started this blog eight years ago, I left my full-time job to write a book called “Creative Retirement”; planned on interviewing amazing humans to learn how they navigated the transition from working-for-pay to working-for-purpose. I kitted out my cramped basement for a video podcast, outlined a book, created a timeline. I was eager to get going.
Then life happened. I willingly became my mother’s fierce and loving care giver, a life as Professional Daughter. I wrote a manuscript about it. And it helped. So did reading books, talking to others, and focusing on the small moments of almost unbearable beauty amidst the relentless chaos—what I think of now as the gratitude crucible.
Instead of writing a chirpy book about the endless possibilities at midlife, I dug deeper, uncovering a throughline of prairie resilience* that connected me to my past and my future.
Parents falter. Children leave home. One day you’re cutting rhubarb and realize yours are the hands of a much older woman. What I am trying to say is life changes us. The shoes—or those Covid-era pants—no longer fit. The truth is maybe they never did.
Whether because of the year or the evening, I find myself rooted in the pleasure of right now. I don’t know how the world goes, or when the story ends. I do know we are on this earth for such a short time, as young now as we will ever be.
My beautiful daughter is coming home. I know she’ll be gone again soon, to follow her own path. I wish her grace. Tonight, I will hold her and tell her how much I love her. She is an amazing young woman.
And there it is, gratitude for everything that has brought me to this moment.
*Let me leave you with a simple recipe, passed on to me from my mother, and hers. If you find yourself meandering down an alley under a warm summer sun, or a full moon—and it feels right— pick the rhubarb. Enjoy the walk. Anticipate the sweetness.
Thank you Kerrie.
It’s funny that you sent this yesterday because I was just talking to my son about these times” when he will leave home and I would have to let him fly find his own path”….and when my time will come to enter the era of “ freedom “, no commitment to a schedule imposed by others for half a century.
And I was saying that people got so used to this “ normality” of being told to show up every day and what to do for all their life, hypnotized somehow and believing they are free …. Then, when the time comes to actually be free they are so trapped in the matrix, in the controlled mind that was programmed for so many years, when the time of freedom really comes, they don’t know what to do with it; most of them anyway.
I hope I will not be like most.
Beautiful!
Thank you for thinking of me.
Lumi
Thank you for this Lumi, and for shining your beautiful luminescent self in this world.
Kerrie, What a great way to begin my day! Have been anticipating your next treatise and again, you don’t disappoint so, thank you! Yours is a talent envied by many, enjoyed by so many more, and so often applicable to us all in one fashion or another. You are an elixir….
Thank you for your reading and for your faith and support over the years.
Beautiful, as always, Kerrie!
Linda, I look forward to reading more of your wonderful words, perhaps another book in your future?
Kerrie,
So well timed- I was missing your thoughtful words and tender observations of life. And sushi time with you…
I too have been navigating this space and time and putting pen to paper in book form with a friend. Look forward to connecting soon..
Trish xo
I look forward to your words Kerrie. They are a salve.
Kerrie, your recipe for rhubarb marmalade is clearly a recipe for surviving life. Mix bitter with sweet and hope for the best. Grandmother to mother to daughter, boiled until reduced to the essence of life. A masterful essay.
There is such poetry in your words Kimberly! Thank you.
As I read this on my new phone, too tired to move, full of Two Houses worth of pizza, my voice lost somewhere last weekend, I am so grateful for you and your words. The only thing better than reading them would be hearing them in a podcast…
Well Laurie you may be pleased to know I am recording many of the essays and some new ones, and will be posting them here, as well on Spotify. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to launch. A podcast could be in the future. Thank you for your kind words.
Such truth KP. One day we are the seed, then the fruit, then the marmalade! And somewhere along the way we like walnuts too!
or become nutty…