I Made A Decision!

I put in an offer. . . . .

There comes a moment in every reasonably sane person’s life when they do something so wildly optimistic that it borders on a controlled hallucination.

Mine arrived in Santa Fe.

I put in an offer on a condo.

Not a sensible little hideaway where one quietly retires to organize tax receipts and compare medications over herbal tea.

No.

A magnificent place. Light pouring through windows. Walls begging for art. Rooms large enough to hold friends, poetry, abstract paintings, questionable dance moves, music, long dinners, impossible conversations, and the chosen family that somehow keeps finding its way into my life.

Naturally, within minutes my mind hired an army of accountants, economists, estate planners, and doomsday prophets.

What are you doing?

Can you afford this?

You’re seventy-five!

Have you completely lost your mind?

Probably.

But if you’re lucky, there comes an age when losing your mind is vastly preferable to losing your nerve.

Last night, Lonnie, Margaret, and I gathered around a table buried beneath acrylic paint, flowers, brushes, canvases, stories, laughter, and twenty plus years of friendship.

Three grown women making glorious, unapologetic messes.

No one asked permission.

No one worried whether the painting was “good.”

Well. . . . . almost no one.

Margaret kept apologizing for her flowers.

She couldn’t see what we saw.

Lonnie and I stood there, practically shouting at the canvas.

“Margaret! They’re beautiful!”

But isn’t that the oldest story in the world?

We are often the last to recognize the beauty that has come through our own hands.

Fortunately, that’s one of the sacred jobs of friendship.

To borrow one another’s eyes.

To keep pointing toward the light until the other person finally sees it.

Somewhere between the magenta and the impossible orange, I realized this whole condo business wasn’t really about square footage. It was about creating a place where my chosen family - from Florida to Texas, Colorado, Deleware, Massachusetts, California and New York. . . . could gather without needing a reason.

Where someone could walk through the door carrying grief and leave wearing a little more joy.

Where paint stains on the table would be considered interior decorating.

Where poetry could interrupt dinner without anyone complaining.

Where growing older would look suspiciously like growing freer.

If the offer is accepted, I’ll live seven minutes from Lonnie and Margaret.

Seven minutes from spontaneous painting.

Seven minutes from laughter that begins in the belly and ends in tears.

Seven minutes from the dangerous possibility of becoming even more alive than I already am.

And if they reject my offer?

Well. . . .

The desert will still be here.

The paint will still dry.

Margaret will still paint flowers she thinks aren’t beautiful.

And we’ll still remind her that they are.

Because that’s what love does.

It notices what the frightened mind cannot.

I’ll still make art instead of war.

I’ll still invite my people to gather wherever I happen to live.

But I have to admit!!!!!!

I’d really like those windows.

The kind that let the morning swagger in like it owns the place.

And if this crazy gamble works?

There’ll always be another chair at the table.

The coffee will be hot.

The paint will be wet.

The stories will get taller every year.

And everyone who walks through the door will be seen a little more beautifully than they see themselves.

Now that seems like a perfectly irrational investment.

Love. Always.

Jayne