A simple life

It is the second week of March but the weather remains cold. Late at night it gets colder. I only use the air-conditioner that comes with the flat when the weather is terribly hot so I am sensitive to the temperature outside. The breeze stirs the leaves in the trees outside my window constantly. The equivalent of our spring is not yet here.

I have been tidying up my home, fixing, fixing, fixing. I have decided to put butterflies on the lights above my dining room table. I have a light made up of three baskets. It has remained plain for a whole year. But in my tidying and fixing I have found so many butterflies. I love butterflies, you see. Now I have decided to wire them on my basket lamp and add my personality to the dining room.  That should give me something creative to do.

Every morning when I wake up I thank God that I am still alive. I am deeply grateful for the life He has given me. Then I walk around my house wondering what creative thing I can do today. This is how I’ve managed to rearrange my living room, make it more convivial. My daughter bought new throw pillows for her house. I asked her for her old throw pillows. Then I bought a patchwork throw from Patis Tesoro and covered my old white chair with it. Now it looks like a friendlier place.

I was thinking of reupholstering that but could not decide on the color. Bright yellow? Purple? Fire engine red? I cannot decide. The pretty throw buys me time to decide what color I really want or should I do it at all?

You know, dear readers, time is important to me now. For the first time in my life I feel I am getting old. Every day I drink buko juice, lots of water, beer, wine to thin my blood, which was getting thick. I eat more fish and chicken than meat though I still go for the occasional steak with fat. I cannot believe I am actually careful about what I eat because I never cared before. But now, strangely, I care.

I find myself thinking about who I will pass my things to? My daughter Sarri, who lives in England, e-mails me asking for Rizal books. I tell her I can pass on my entire Rizal collection. Then I go on — all my painting books will go to Faye, my daughter-in-law, the painter. All my craft books and the accompanying threads and needles will go to Panjee, who is another craft person like me. And to my oldest daughter Risa, my frog collection will go. We have the same unhappy history with men consequently, I have a frog collection — in glass, stone, paper mache. They are in memory of the men I have kissed who ungraciously turned into frogs.

Sorting out my notebooks I found a poem I wrote in 2010:

Why am I writing this?

What did I begin again?

A search for something

as simple as what

will happen next.

I do not know

and now I realize

there is no need to know.

I must just trust

that there is a future

and things will change

even if today all my pieces

are up in the air

near the crescent moon

held there by smoky mist

hoping, laughing,

blown wildly by the breeze

while I below, writing this,

trust

that the future holds

something for me.

That expresses fully what my life feels like these days. The future is no longer as important as once it used to be. Once, in my 30s through my 60s I always wanted to know what the year would bring. Where would life take me? Now those things don’t matter anymore. I will live for as long as God wants me to live. I enjoy life and trust myself to live each day gracefully, fully doing all the little things that give me pleasure.

These days it’s adding butterflies to my light. Fitting pieces into my elaborate jigsaw puzzle that I know I am bound to finish in August. Knitting sweaters that I will send to my children within a month. Then I’ve been thinking I will sew again. When my children were small I used to sew everything we needed — pajamas for my husband, my dresses, my children’s matching little dresses. I even still have a sewing machine and stacks of cloth to work with.

I will get them all in order and begin sewing again. That should give me something new and creative to do as I live my life from day to day creatively, joyfully and simply.

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