Lessons in Value

The magazine I had to have, made a trip across town to purchase it, remains unopened and unread. It is almost a year old now, wearing a thick jacket of dust and cat hair. The shirt I ordered, knowing I should be ashamed to be paying that kind of price for threads, has never been washed because I only wore it for an hour before I was convinced it made me look both old and fat. The self-help book that I knew would open doors to freedom, doors in my soul that had never been opened before, is under a stack of self-help books that cannot read themselves. The elliptical machine that I purchased with last year's income tax return was supposed to tighten my thighs and strengthen my abs. I would soon be sleek and sexy. But even a two thousand dollar piece of exercise equipment has no effect on my muscles unless I use it, actually turn it on and step into its paddles.

I remember, 1983, when I purchased my first new car. I had had used cars, cars that took me from home to work and away on vacation from time to time. But in 1983, I went to the lot and purchased a Nissan wagon, never owned by another. I expected to feel like a new born behind the wheel of this trouble-free vehicle. Some people might feel anxious about unpaid debts while I was in my new car. Some people might be crying over a marriage that should never have been while I was feeling the breeze from the open window in my deep blue Nissan wagon. Some people might be drinking and smoking themselves to death even as my new car purred into action each time I needed to go somewhere. But I was not some people anymore. I was a woman with a new car, a car without mechanical problems, a car nobody else had mistreated. I expected to feel the taste of slick success and to keep that taste forever in my mouth. I was in control and now my life would begin to matter. Yet, on the first day in the life of being not just some people, as I rushed late out the door with my crying child who was unhappy with her hair and her incomplete homework, I tripped on the driveway and suffered a grass stain on my dress pants. The husband I could not get away from, try as I might, was glued to the recliner and already smoking a joint. I thought I felt a bad cold creeping up the back of my throat as I slid into the driver's seat. Not much had changed. The new car seemed to mock me!I thought I saw a weird sneer on its dashboard. I was still the same some body among some people who hope to one day buy the thing that can save us from ourselves. Certainly not enough had changed with the purchase of my new car to make the monthly payment feel personally affirming. Writing the check and licking the envelope each month I remembered how little the car could do.

That was so long ago. I might have learned an important lesson even then and might have saved much money by now, socked back cash to use when I'm really old and weary of lessons I have difficulty learning right away. And yet, now that I am fifty-five, I notice how much I enjoy sitting by the window in the morning, just after I wake up, coffee cup in fist, and before I go to shower. I watch the morning doves land on the feeder, the flowers lifting their faces toward the warmth of the sun and I listen. I listen to the sounds of nothing in particular while I watch for anything at all. I breathe while I pet my little dog. I move my feet just a bit so everything that is me feels uninhibited, relaxed and open to receive. There's so much more in the morning than I ever knew when I was young and scared of being just a somebody among some people. The yard springs to life with butter flies, squirrels and sparrows. I am among them and connected, related even as I am related to my cousin Nancy who lives in Florida and goes out to the barn each morning to feed buckets of oats to her two alert and loyal horses. Money cannot buy the things I really need, the family and friends who color the background of my story, the answered prayers I celebrate and the times I've felt useful and free to need others, to be needed.

Still I know myself well enough to know that even tomorrow I might go rushing down the main road of town on my way to buy a thing that seems to promise new horizons for me, a fresh outlook, a deeper appreciation for who I am and what I can do while I am here. It might be a pair of shoes, a potted plant or a bracelet. It might be a gift for my daughter. At fifty-five I have learned it is best not to judge myself too harshly, not to expect that I will be more than some people in the neighborhood. We all catch glimpses of the glory and we all get stuck in the mud. From beginning to end. I look to the morning for refreshment and inspiration. Some morning I might wake up to find that I no longer need money or anything that it can buy.