Topics: Forgiveness/Spring/Change*

 

Note: *I cut the financial considerations out of this essay for a reading in the Simpson House writing group.

 

As spring gallops forward with green bursting forth full tilt, I note again the change this winter wrought in my life, and ask myself for forgiveness, gratitude, and joy.

Moving into Simpson House this winter was a good choice, (but a choice that brought with it a great deal of change.)  The first change has to do with money.  I used to donate to a variety of causes, but now I have to divert my earnings to pay the monthly fee.  The second, and in many ways larger, change is how I spend my time.  Moving itself was essential as my house needed multiple repairs, and my tenant gave notice that she was moving to LA on March 4^th.   I am not a landlord.  Trying to find a single new tenant who was both a reliable friend and a cat sitter seemed daunting to me.  My body could no longer take the challenges of a second floor and taking out the garbage and caring for the yard.   I didn’t have the money to move to the first floor, and renovate the second so it could take a new tenant—even if I wanted to search for a new tenant.

And so I moved.  I had been exploring the choices for retirement communities for two years, but still, I knew I could get a modern apartment for half the cost--$1800 a month.  I could save over $1000 a month and be ready for a move, say, in ten years’ time.  That would have been a savings of $120,000.  But what would be the cost of retirement housing in 10 years, I asked myself?  And the effort to shop for food and cook meals weighed on me.  I have a book to write, I told myself.  What if my care for housing and for myself was minimized?  

I thought I could bring everything I do to Simpson House: I could remain a hermit in an apartment of my own, work on my unfinished book undisturbed, and venture out to socialize at dinner time.  The last time I made progress on my book, in 2016, I had room and board as Artist in Residence at Pendle Hill Quaker Retreat and Study Center.   I have yet to make closure on the promise of those days.  I thought taking up residence in a retirement community would help me with that.  And maybe someday it will.  But right now what has been happening instead is that I have read the books of the Reading Group, attended and written to the prompts of the Writing Group, joined the card making and neighbors group, attended art classes of Zen tangle for fun and of acrylic painting to try to capture the strength of the two trees I loved from the backyard I have left behind.   Also, I’m playing scrabble on Saturday mornings, and checking out music and documentaries in early evening.  All of this is in addition to continuing physical therapy, on-going engagement with my Quaker meeting, and participating in my previous book group in Yeadon, PA.  I've been enjoying the activities, but mostly the people of Simpson House.

I think: This is the curse of my horoscope.  I’m a cancer, and find it hard to focus on my own work when other activities are going on.  I am reminded of moving to a college campus back in 1969, when I discovered theatre and anti-war work, and earned 2 incompletes every semester.

I need to release myself from the guilt I feel for spending almost all my earnings on myself, and for playing almost full time! I am spending my income on myself and planning for my own future instead of continuing to fund anti-war slash humanitarian work.  I am not participating in reparations.  Yes, I feel guilty for cutting back on my donations to causes I believe in.  That’s the money part.  I often feel full of light and blessing instead of struggle these days.  This seems a luxury.  Have I done enough in life to have earned such lightness of spirit and lengths of time that I forget what is going on in the world?  That I forget the work I've been led to do?  My cause has always been about children’s lives, education, and release from trauma.  My writing is fiction about aging, creativity, and feminist theatre, a lost history of the 1980s and a semi-autobiography.  Is this truly time to cut back on that?

Maybe it is.  I am finding it easier and easier to feel joy, and when I stop paying attention to war news, forgiveness does not even come up as a question.  This writing itself is doing a lot to acknowledge loss and to relieve guilt.  I, too, have a traumatized child inside who wants attention.  How many people in the world rue their good fortune when a burden has been lifted?  I think only those of us who have tried to convince others that they have a part to play in making this a world where children can have both a present and a future.

As a partial solution, I have lately turned the guilt I carry into meditation and prayer, mostly centered on gratitude.  Gratitude for the challenges I’ve faced in my own life that have made me strong, aware, creative, and friendly.  Gratitude for the lessons I still learn.  Gratitude for the time to write and the blessing of groups to share writing with.  Gratitude for family and friends.  Gratitude that I have gifted this time to myself, time when stress slides away and creativity, as a result, soars.

Gratitude outweighs the guilt.  The practice of forgiveness—the practice of loving and supporting myself—is healing.  I can’t believe I wrote that sentence.  Healing.  I am grateful that it is true.  Imagine that!  As spring continues to awaken the world around me, I surround myself with it.  I am emerging from a long winter in my life, and if, at this point, aging feels like spring instead of winter, I am blessed.  To forgiveness and joy and gratitude, I say yes. 

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© 2024 Susan L. Chast