Skip to main content

Guacamole: My Life in Retrospect

My grandmother gave me the best advice when I was young.  She said one should live life with no regrets.  If I should mess up, I should forgive myself, forgive the offender, and move on.
I agree.
At the age of twenty-one, I had all these dreams:  I was going to get my PhD in Languages, move away from my home town, and travel the world.  There was no place for marriage or children.  Family would only hold me down.
Then I got married two weeks before I turned twenty-three and my life took a totally different detour, several actually.  I never got my PhD, never moved any further than an hour from where I grew up, and my travels have been limited to the contiguous United States, a couple of hours into the “interior” of Mexico, and a nineteen day trip into China to meet a handful of in-laws.
Not exactly worthy of one single “Yeeha,” but I have no regrets.
If I were to go back in time and be able to talk to my younger, twenty-one-year-old self, this is what I would say:
1.     Dream big and don’t be afraid to adjust those dreams as circumstances prevail.  What you sometimes think is important, isn’t. Alternatives and adjustments to your dreams are not measures of failure, but measures of resiliency and strength.
2.    Trust in yourself.  Wait before you rush into relationships. You deserve to love and be loved.  You deserve to be respected and cherished. Let your suitor chase you.  You will prove to be amazing, stronger than you ever thought, a better person than you were made to feel. (Remember this.  It will save you two failed marriages.)
3.    Life is messy.  It is like a bowl of guacamole.  Things will get squished together, diced and minced.  It will be spicy and intriguing.

It will be worth it all.  It will be delicious. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dating Challenged

I stink at dating – always have.I sputter.I hyperventilate.I fail miserably every time. I blame a pathetically underdeveloped gene that got little use before I married in my early twenties, then atrophied, gathering dust and rust, until I became single again in my fifties. I decided to use this defect to my advantage when I needed to do some investigative reporting a few years back.While on a newspaper writing assignment on Boomer-aged dating, I sacrificed my dignity and my vanity for the sake of the story (and I got several).

Thank goodness, HoneyBunch saved me from all this when we married.  (He comes up with the best dates.) I’ve decided I will “show you mine if you show me yours.”I will swap dating horror stories with you, but you have to promise to play along. The trick here is to tell about your worst date in 25 words or less.You must keep it clean and you cannot name names. Our little contest will run only this week and before my next blogger posting. Me first: The facts:My mom f…
8 comments
Read more

Twelve Female Hero Authors Who Influenced Me to be an Author

In honor of Women’s History Month, I decided to share twelve female authors who changed my life forever and who influenced me to try my hand at writing. Some are not widely popular so you might want to try them out.
1.Charlotte Bronté – English – Her plotting and characters - Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester – are immortal. 
2.Louisa May Alcott – American – I loved how she created a family of Little Women that reminded me of my sisters. 
3.Jane Austen – English – Another author who knew how to build immortal characters. Two words:  Mr. Darcy. Two more words:  hubba hubba.
4.Emily Dickinson – American - What a poet! Her innovation was pooh-poohed at first, but now we owe her for breaking all those punctuation barriers.
5.Beverly Cleary – American – She created a little girl in Ramona that reminded me of me when I was a little girl.  I wish I had met Ms. Cleary’s books sooner instead of when I was in my 30’s.
6.Judy Blume – American - Her female characters said all the outrageous things I thou…
4 comments
Read more

Happy Breastday to Me!

I gave myself a very special birthday present this year – I had surgery. Before you think it was to increase, decrease, or “lift” something, let me tell you it was not cosmetic (though I could probably use a few nips and tucks at my age; the infinite number of creams I buy OTC are not working their promised magic). About four or five months ago, I discovered a hard lump about the size of a large marble in my left armpit.  I had been feeling small pangs of pain in my left chest for several months, but I figured it was just my turn to dance with heart disease.  Everyone in my immediate family is diabetic and suffers from strokes or heart attacks, so I thought – here we go; my turn. I was going to tell my internist about the pangs during my next visit, so imagine my surprise when I discovered the lump. The Drama Queen in me immediately manifested herself – cancer, I thought.  I have cancer. I searched some more and found that the texture on the left side of my left breast felt different t…
9 comments
Read more