New Things--They're Out There

"...old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." 2 Corinthians 5:17

***

I am rereading Joyce Maynard's book, Domestic Affairs, probably for the 30th time. 

While in my 20's I used to buy the Sunday newspaper for mainly one reason--for Joyce's delightful essays about the ambivalent feelings of being a young mother nowadays. I've mentioned her book here and here before.

You learn much of 'what not to do' while reading Joyce's book (Joyce and her husband later divorced, reading the book is rather like watching the proverbial train wreck). But it's more. For me, it's a trip back to those days of mothering a tiny Naomi and all those lessons a mother learns.

Like this morning. I read where Joyce and other moms sat at the beach chatting and laughing, but always--always--watching and counting tiny heads out in the water. Afterward I thought, "I miss those days. Those days of sitting in the sun at the beach giggling with friends in this 'mothering club,' belonging like that, watching our little ones playing with sunlight upon their hair."

But only for a moment.

I mean, hey. Who wouldn't miss the sun-warmed sandy beach on a dark, sleeting January morning?

And yes, I still belong to groups--just different ones. Groups of moms who are, like me, empty-nesters, women approaching 50 (or beyond it). Almost like a second 'teenagerhood'--a wiser, wealthier, more sensible one. 

Every time I wander the aisles of the supermarket I smile at babies in shopping carts, wave at them from behind their mother's back--and remember. Then I rejoice that, where I am now? I can smile at babies and hold them without feeling like I must have one of my own.

What am I saying? I guess I've discovered that usually what I'm missing is not certain times and people of my past, but rather, certain feelings. 

Feelings of instant-belonging to the mommy group wherever I went those old days. Or the ones which came from creating something from nothing out of necessity. Or being needed by a child or reading her bedtime stories after she's had a bath and is all comfy in her pink Strawberry Shortcake nightgown.

But the good news? There are myriad feelings out there and many can be recaptured--only tweaked a bit. I can still, at whatever age, find ways to feel needed and if I truly wish to spend time around little children, why not help out some parents by caring for theirs?

Personally, I'm happy-out-of-my-mind right where I am at this moment, but this is my point: if we only sit around and grieve over the fun and feelings and Past Times, we'll miss out on the fun and and lovely times of the Present. 

And always there's something good for us in Today. 

But in these later years? Often it might prove harder to discover next steps and new lives. But we can do this. 

With such a huge creative God we can do anything.




***

"Behold, I will do a new thing; now it will spring forth; will you not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert." ... Isaiah 43:19