Good things in my life

A good friend of mine told me I should take stock of the good things in my life. I recognize that there are some good things in my life. And it doesn't take very long to come up with quite a long list.
Let me start at the beginning, my Mother. I am blessed in having a wonderful loving mother, a mother who kept loving me despite a rebellious youth, despite a number of unwise life decisions, despite that late in my life I took up some activities that probably brought on her gray hair at a pretty fast clip. A mother who is still active and vital and self reliant.

Then there's the men in my life. First of all there was my Dad, he was the most loyal, responsible, mechanically intelligent man I've ever known. He could fix anything. As an adult we had a parting of the ways politically, but we loved each other anyway. I've had more than my fair share of lovers and despite the numerous times my heart's been broken, I've known some wonderful men, men that made me very happy, Mark who gave me two beautiful sons, Stoneman who was the first man to ever make me feel truly appreciated and who's still in my life and the inspiration for this post- he's also the one who gave me back up as I went through the process of buying my first bike, Rich who prodded me into learning  how to ride and  taught me how to travel safely on the bike and treated me like a princess, Kirk who taught me to embrace winter and  to truly enjoy and appreciate nature, Jay who helped me have the confidence to expand my gardening and to start beekeeping. Jay may very well be the one to enable me to survive my old age. He helped me make the transition to being almost a total vegetarian which has made it possible to live off my garden for most of the summer. He also threw down the gauntlet and told me he didn't think I would make it to retirement, which just makes it impossible to do anything other than just that. Of course he also abandoned me on the turn of a dime, but I'm trying not to dwell on that right now.

Out of necessity I've had to learn to entertain myself  and my children without spending any money. For almost 40 years now I've been going to Fox Island for recreation, hiking or cross country skiing in the winter, swimming at Bowman Lake in the summer. I used to take my boys there almost every day off in the summer. It makes me so sad to think of the family who just lost their toddler son in a drowning accident last month, and to this day  it brings on an attack of the guilts remembering the time I fell asleep on the beach while my two boys played in the shallows, even though that was when they still had lifeguards. I knew it was still my sole responsibility to protect them. I've always loved reading and  I taught myself how to knit and crochet, and carried on Mom's tradition of baking homemade bread, pies, and Cowboy cookies (which are actually almost healthy-I think Ben ate at least a dozen of them while driving to New Orleans the first time). Thinking about my sons makes me miss them so much. Ironic since I could hardly wait till they were launched. Speaking of being launched, I couldn't be prouder of my boys. I've been truly blessed when it comes to my children. I have such handsome, intelligent, and self sufficient young men, and am still not sure how that was accomplished. I give most of the credit to them. From  the time they were 12 years old they stayed alone during the summer. I would zip home on the bike at lunchtime to check  on them and to see what they broke that day while they were roughhousing. They got up to all sorts of hijinks but they were still good boys, never gave me any  real trouble. Now, Ben's found a job in his career field, quite an accomplishment in this present economy esp. since I had no influence or connections to smooth the way for him. He did it entirely on his own. He moved to New Orleans with a bed and a lamp and encountered and survived  a completely different culture than he'd been raised in.Christian is still in grad school and will be for another half of 2014. He's done marvelously, worked as a resident assistant his sophomore through senior year and now in grad school won the resident director position. From what I understand the position can be quite stressful and demanding and he's still managing to stay at the top of his class academically. So, there is plenty of good in my life, but  the state of being alone brings me low.