Thank you for your thought provoking questions and this poetic energy that you give us every Sunday morning. 💜
At my age, there is long receding tunnel of life! Its walls are covered in graffiti. Some, black, sooty words: Disappointment. Grief. Sorrow. Strife. Lucky for me though, most are bold, colorful masterpieces of art: Satisfaction. Fun. Connection. Joy. Every time I look down at the narrowing end of this tunnel I see something new. The more of a human I become, the more human I see in others, past and present. And I give myself grace for not knowing then what I know now. 😎
I really like, “The more of a human I become, the more human I see in others, past and present.” So true and it’s so healing to have this perspective. Thank you.
This weekend I was at a pumpkin patch with my daughter, who is now 12. In one moment, she came bounding up to me, and appeared so long-legged and grown that I had the odd experience of unfamiliarity… it was one of those moments when an adult says to a child, “I barely recognize you anymore!” I immediately made jokes about how she wasn’t allowed to keep growing, and then found myself searching for photos of her three-year-old self on my phone. There she was, full cheeks and innocence, dragging a scarecrow decoration like a friend, wearing pink butterfly wings for Halloween. And there my mom was, too, who cared for her granddaughter so much, who has now been dead for more than three years. How I loved seeing my mother love my daughter.
I took a screen-shot of the past image and saved it to my current photo library, before lifting my eyes from the tiny screen towards my now twelve daughter, who was running and laughing in real time.
Facing backwards felt good for those few moments, but ultimately they brought me back to the love of the now, not yet passed, yet always passing.
It’s like we’re always riding backwards on the train, isn’t it? I can’t see tomorrow. I can see right now: my daughter as she’s playing, moments to cherish as they keep sliding by, life moving forward into some semi-predictable yet unknown destination. Which brings me to the core of everything, which whenever I get there, is always the urge to love.
Thank you for this lovely reflection. I too almost wrote about those feelings of loving my children now, in my case very adult children, and also feeling nostalgia for who they (and I) were when they were young.
Ah, Padraigh. Ah, everyone. I'd like to be clear that what I am writing is my REACTION to your question more than a response to it.
"What do you see now that’s receding from you?" I find myself powerfully pushing back against this question, uncertain I even want to respond, as the answer is "absolutely everything". My life, my career, cherished family and friends that I have gotten to hold against me that now are gone, experiences--once vibrant and transformative--now murky, illusive... Just like your gorgeous description of what was passing outside that train window, I SEE all that fleeting beauty. And in this very moment, I find ACCEPTANCE receding from me and my insides responding with a familiar "no, no, no, no, no." This morning I don't really want to think about impermanence, mortality, the passing of things--even though I ponder and teach them every day.
What I WANT to write next is something poignant about pausing for a bit of anchoring, and moving into my own gorgeous reflection of a specific moment, or a specific life that I have loved, whose beauty and meaning is taking a different shape now in me. But I'm not there quite yet. I have to slow this train a bit. Move through the sorrow of this particular vista. Sit a while with this truth of mutability. Make no mistake, though, I am powerfully grateful. For the scenes I get to watch as they pass. So much beauty. And understanding. Thought. Love.
Lyn, thank you for your reflections which resonate deeply with me. ‘Anchoring’ provided me with a rich image of a ship attaining safe harbour amidst a raging storm. I guess in such times ‘divine discernment’ is welcomed… determining what is a ‘stable anchoring’ and what is ‘digging in our heels in a fierce resistance movement’ against the natural flow of life? As in many things, it seems there is a sweet balance to be had. :)
Thank you for honestly expressing the pain and push back that this question of looking backwards at life can bring up. You opened the door for the rest of us (for me, at any rate). I'm grateful
Lyn, thanks for sharing the depth of your reaction to the speeding train. This past week my eldest cousin died, at age 90. Now I am the oldest cousin of our generation. What gives me great joy is making plans for family visits and seminars. Working on projects for environmental, justice and children’s causes keeps me living for the future. I wish you the blessing of these strong connections because our young people really need the support of elders.
Yes, in my own comment I mentioned how the future always takes me by surprise but spending a more relaxed look at the past shows me where these diminishments started. I agree perhaps more frequent pauses to reflect on the past will help us.
Thank you Padraig for your inspiring question. I sometimes see myself on a boat slowly slipping away from a sunny shore where I played, where so many inexplicably loved me, whom I wish I had loved more. I see the moment when, in 1971, arriving back late at night at my student house in a Victorian terrace, I unlocked the door to be greeted by a candle-lit room and friends, with a newly-built hifi system, friends who'd been waiting for me, who, as I entered, put on Arlo Guthrie singing Bob Dylan's "Percy's Song". I see a snowy evening in town, venturing out with Anne after listening to Simon and Garfunkel singing "For Emily Wherever I May Find Her"... 'We walked on frosted fields of juniper and lamplight'. And the shore suddenly glows as I remember how lucky I've been. May your children, your friends, be blessed with such memories.
I was struck by one of the things you noticed riding backwards on the train. “hate my mind, love my soul” inscribed on the underpass beneath a cast-iron bridge;
I accept that it is time to realize that my body is slowing down but my soul is being invited to stretch open in new ways.
So interesting. This stood out to me as well, though I interpreted it as reflecting my experience that soul fails far less in pointing to truth than does mind (as mind represents thoughts that can be so misleading at times). And for that reason, a love/hate exists, even if not entirely helpful or true.
Five years ago I helped my 48 year old daughter die from breast cancer. In the months, and years, afterward, I felt that I couldn’t face forward. Time was too quickly moving me away from her. I could only look back. She’s back there! So I felt that I was backing slowly into the future.
Roberta, it’s odd to me that after seeing a loved one decline and die, they are suddenly released back into the full vibrancy of youth. This is a mystery to me, but also a miracle as it means my mother who died at the age of 50 from breast cancer is no longer in a hospital bed with no hair and in pain. she is gorgeous and alive and with me every day.
Let me introduce you to my father. For too much of my 77 years I was so angry with him, so blinded by this anger. I lived in the shadows of mixed hatred and even more lost in the shadows, love. A few weeks ago I found a photograph of my father, long ignored and packed away. I placed the photo in full view in my living room, on top of a book shelf. A true blessing has visited my home. My anger has disappeared. All the stories I have carried that supported my anger have fallen aside. All I am left with is a sweet feeling. When I gaze at this photograph now I can truly see his smile. That’s it, his smile. And thus I am actually eager to show to you my father’s photograph, to introduce him to my life, friends and strangers alike. Here, here is my father, smiling. Best, David🏮
Share some of your sentiments for sure. What strikes me here is the thought that had not been "looking backwards" from a slightly different seat (perspective) you might have never seen that smile. It was there all along. How hard it is to really see what is in front of us most of the time! The grace notes of aging do allow us an option to re-view what we thought we already knew, and see them perhaps for the first time in a sort of fullness.
I was married for 37 years. My partner died over seven years ago. As with any partnership, there were good times and bad--maybe I should write a poem about that !? I don't think so. For the last five years of our life together, I was a caretaker, and the burdens, exhaustion, and sometimes resentment of that role were central in my mind's eye/memory, until recently. I have moved recently near to my partner's home community. Now, the apples, the apples! he was a small orchardist; the winding back roads with names like "Niantic." his funny expressions, trying to get me out the door: "we went..." Blurry, and beautiful. Thank you.
I so empathize with this, Nancy. What you express about your husband is similar to what I was attempted to share in my post about my late husband, Walter. I don't know how to link posts but maybe you'll stumble across mine. Sending sisterly love.
My children are adults with whom I continually experience the depths and reciprocity of love and admiration I never knew possible.
Sometimes my heart aches with a loss that takes my breath away as they grow towards and into their lands. I catch myself with a fixed backwards gaze holding the past too tightly while I experience them meet their lives and places with passion, courage, and love: for partners, chosen families, places, and each their chosen life's work.
My heart unclenches from her grief to hold loosely the gift of the profound and unconditional love they hold for their silly mama who learned the true meaning of love by serving as the vessel that ushered their souls into this present.
Thank you Pádraig. Just the prompt I needed in real time to process a moment I had not words.
I see my daughter as a baby, as a young child, an older child, a young adult. …Moments captured after moments experienced;moments captured too briefly to hold on to their fullness. All of my senses were there and they lingered long enough to hold on for a while , long enough to still be here with me in part but with time and my own aging they are receding . I don’t see with the same clarity. A new clarity perhaps is there for having enjoyed them for they grow up and change so fast.
Yes, there is new clarity, a different clarity. I see a many layered masterpiece created and still being created by many hands including mine and my daughters and all that touches and has touched her life. I see still some of what was and I see some of what is and what will be that the future will see.
I sit with remembrance and I sit with acceptance. I sit with a form of grief knowing that I can’t stop time long enough to see my daughters masterpiece fully complete but I sit also with a feeling of being tucked in , content and comfortable knowing and seeing that all will be well.
Shelley, I relate to your comment. I have a brand new three week old grandson and I am 77. There are many milestones in his life that I will never see but just for today I can hold his tiny body and listen to him gurgle and coo and know that we are part of The chain of life.
How timely. I just took a train across Norway, from Bergen to Oslo and sat backward facing. I actually enjoyed seeing things as they passed and as they "wavered and blurred." At 68 years old, many things are in a receding tunnel. Despite my vitality, this is a time of deep transition that I am having trouble naming. The reality of "youth" is certainly receding, and I am loosening my grip on that. But other things like professional identity, physical ability, energy levels, and a tolerance for bullshit are receding as well. Friends and relatives are dying, and as Mark says in his poem, I see them, over time, more beautifully yet less specifically.
I'm usually out the door well before dawn and don't always have time to read your posts. This morning it was too rainy to go rowing -- a sport we do while facing backwards. Your "Facing Backward" piece connected with my experience on the river. We use mirrors to see ahead, or turn around to make sure we're steering straight, but we can only get glimpses of our immediate path forward. I've used this metaphor so many times in my life. We can only see clearly where we've been, but power forward with confidence just the same. And try not to hit the bridge.
The need to edit, to pull in and be smaller, be acceptable. Now, I watch a certain type of worry, a fixation on the appropriate, leave me. I do not hesitate to engage, to ask questions in order to understand, to push those who are offering up the unacceptable, the demand, the challenge, and say—why? I no longer bow and agree. I want to be in dialogue with you. The world is not heard in mono but in stereo.
An October day 2 years ago. On the day my mother died, I her adult child refused to go to bed. As long as I remained awake, today remains a day my mom is alive.
I see the assuredness of opinion fading a bit. I’m more empathetic. As I reach midlife, there’s an appreciation of presence rising…of simply being here.
Not to say that it’s gone, It just stands in the background, waiting for its moment. 😂
Thank you for your thought provoking questions and this poetic energy that you give us every Sunday morning. 💜
At my age, there is long receding tunnel of life! Its walls are covered in graffiti. Some, black, sooty words: Disappointment. Grief. Sorrow. Strife. Lucky for me though, most are bold, colorful masterpieces of art: Satisfaction. Fun. Connection. Joy. Every time I look down at the narrowing end of this tunnel I see something new. The more of a human I become, the more human I see in others, past and present. And I give myself grace for not knowing then what I know now. 😎
I love "I give myself grace for not knowing then what I know now"
I too am struck by the wisdom and kindness of this phrase.
I really like, “The more of a human I become, the more human I see in others, past and present.” So true and it’s so healing to have this perspective. Thank you.
Such a poetic description of aging. Thank you!
Love your view backwards Jae. I feel I need to add more bold graffiti to mine!
Beautiful!
This weekend I was at a pumpkin patch with my daughter, who is now 12. In one moment, she came bounding up to me, and appeared so long-legged and grown that I had the odd experience of unfamiliarity… it was one of those moments when an adult says to a child, “I barely recognize you anymore!” I immediately made jokes about how she wasn’t allowed to keep growing, and then found myself searching for photos of her three-year-old self on my phone. There she was, full cheeks and innocence, dragging a scarecrow decoration like a friend, wearing pink butterfly wings for Halloween. And there my mom was, too, who cared for her granddaughter so much, who has now been dead for more than three years. How I loved seeing my mother love my daughter.
I took a screen-shot of the past image and saved it to my current photo library, before lifting my eyes from the tiny screen towards my now twelve daughter, who was running and laughing in real time.
Facing backwards felt good for those few moments, but ultimately they brought me back to the love of the now, not yet passed, yet always passing.
It’s like we’re always riding backwards on the train, isn’t it? I can’t see tomorrow. I can see right now: my daughter as she’s playing, moments to cherish as they keep sliding by, life moving forward into some semi-predictable yet unknown destination. Which brings me to the core of everything, which whenever I get there, is always the urge to love.
Thank you for this lovely reflection. I too almost wrote about those feelings of loving my children now, in my case very adult children, and also feeling nostalgia for who they (and I) were when they were young.
Yes, it does seem as though we are always riding backwards!
You capture parenting so perfectly.
I feel this too and my son is not even 3! There is still nostalgia
Lovely post. Thank you.
What a beautiful reflection of love that spills across generations. All children deserve to thrive in that surrounding.
Ah, Padraigh. Ah, everyone. I'd like to be clear that what I am writing is my REACTION to your question more than a response to it.
"What do you see now that’s receding from you?" I find myself powerfully pushing back against this question, uncertain I even want to respond, as the answer is "absolutely everything". My life, my career, cherished family and friends that I have gotten to hold against me that now are gone, experiences--once vibrant and transformative--now murky, illusive... Just like your gorgeous description of what was passing outside that train window, I SEE all that fleeting beauty. And in this very moment, I find ACCEPTANCE receding from me and my insides responding with a familiar "no, no, no, no, no." This morning I don't really want to think about impermanence, mortality, the passing of things--even though I ponder and teach them every day.
What I WANT to write next is something poignant about pausing for a bit of anchoring, and moving into my own gorgeous reflection of a specific moment, or a specific life that I have loved, whose beauty and meaning is taking a different shape now in me. But I'm not there quite yet. I have to slow this train a bit. Move through the sorrow of this particular vista. Sit a while with this truth of mutability. Make no mistake, though, I am powerfully grateful. For the scenes I get to watch as they pass. So much beauty. And understanding. Thought. Love.
Lyn, thank you for your reflections which resonate deeply with me. ‘Anchoring’ provided me with a rich image of a ship attaining safe harbour amidst a raging storm. I guess in such times ‘divine discernment’ is welcomed… determining what is a ‘stable anchoring’ and what is ‘digging in our heels in a fierce resistance movement’ against the natural flow of life? As in many things, it seems there is a sweet balance to be had. :)
Thank you for honestly expressing the pain and push back that this question of looking backwards at life can bring up. You opened the door for the rest of us (for me, at any rate). I'm grateful
Love this: “have to slow the train down a bit”…me, too.
Lyn, thanks for sharing the depth of your reaction to the speeding train. This past week my eldest cousin died, at age 90. Now I am the oldest cousin of our generation. What gives me great joy is making plans for family visits and seminars. Working on projects for environmental, justice and children’s causes keeps me living for the future. I wish you the blessing of these strong connections because our young people really need the support of elders.
The image of slowing the train is powerful. I feel overwhelmed speeding backwards. But slowly? How would slowly feel?
Lyn, I feel such simpatico with your sentiments!
Yes, in my own comment I mentioned how the future always takes me by surprise but spending a more relaxed look at the past shows me where these diminishments started. I agree perhaps more frequent pauses to reflect on the past will help us.
Thanks for your bravery in sharing what we all feel at times but find hard to share.
What a thoughtful, kind response, Sean. Thank you for the blessing. I am deeply grateful for it.
“Ohh, that’s why”
I say to myself.
When I can now realize and appreciate why that kid in my 6th grade class was bullying (hard life at home).
Why that person is driving a car that’s spewing out noxious gases (cannot afford a different one).
Why it’s hard for me to be in a room where anger is present (too much of it in the small rooms where I grew up).
Such wisdom! Thank you.
I wish I could have figured some things out sooner!
Thank you Padraig for your inspiring question. I sometimes see myself on a boat slowly slipping away from a sunny shore where I played, where so many inexplicably loved me, whom I wish I had loved more. I see the moment when, in 1971, arriving back late at night at my student house in a Victorian terrace, I unlocked the door to be greeted by a candle-lit room and friends, with a newly-built hifi system, friends who'd been waiting for me, who, as I entered, put on Arlo Guthrie singing Bob Dylan's "Percy's Song". I see a snowy evening in town, venturing out with Anne after listening to Simon and Garfunkel singing "For Emily Wherever I May Find Her"... 'We walked on frosted fields of juniper and lamplight'. And the shore suddenly glows as I remember how lucky I've been. May your children, your friends, be blessed with such memories.
Precious memories. Thanks for sharing. I just pulled up Guthrie singing Percy's Song!
Wow. Your memories with your Anne, Simon and Garfinkle, friends singing and frosted lamplight, are a delight for me, in a dark week. Thank you!
What precious memories so beautifully rendered to share. Thank you for these treasures.
I was struck by one of the things you noticed riding backwards on the train. “hate my mind, love my soul” inscribed on the underpass beneath a cast-iron bridge;
I accept that it is time to realize that my body is slowing down but my soul is being invited to stretch open in new ways.
So interesting. This stood out to me as well, though I interpreted it as reflecting my experience that soul fails far less in pointing to truth than does mind (as mind represents thoughts that can be so misleading at times). And for that reason, a love/hate exists, even if not entirely helpful or true.
Either way, relatable.
Five years ago I helped my 48 year old daughter die from breast cancer. In the months, and years, afterward, I felt that I couldn’t face forward. Time was too quickly moving me away from her. I could only look back. She’s back there! So I felt that I was backing slowly into the future.
Roberta, it’s odd to me that after seeing a loved one decline and die, they are suddenly released back into the full vibrancy of youth. This is a mystery to me, but also a miracle as it means my mother who died at the age of 50 from breast cancer is no longer in a hospital bed with no hair and in pain. she is gorgeous and alive and with me every day.
Roberta, I'm so sorry for your loss. Thank you for sharing this tender, poignant, deeply human reflection.
Roberta, I am sorry for such a loss. May the unmistakable love you still have for your daughter be a light for you, accompanying you always.
Let me introduce you to my father. For too much of my 77 years I was so angry with him, so blinded by this anger. I lived in the shadows of mixed hatred and even more lost in the shadows, love. A few weeks ago I found a photograph of my father, long ignored and packed away. I placed the photo in full view in my living room, on top of a book shelf. A true blessing has visited my home. My anger has disappeared. All the stories I have carried that supported my anger have fallen aside. All I am left with is a sweet feeling. When I gaze at this photograph now I can truly see his smile. That’s it, his smile. And thus I am actually eager to show to you my father’s photograph, to introduce him to my life, friends and strangers alike. Here, here is my father, smiling. Best, David🏮
Share some of your sentiments for sure. What strikes me here is the thought that had not been "looking backwards" from a slightly different seat (perspective) you might have never seen that smile. It was there all along. How hard it is to really see what is in front of us most of the time! The grace notes of aging do allow us an option to re-view what we thought we already knew, and see them perhaps for the first time in a sort of fullness.
Thank you for sharing that photo. I am so glad you found that smile.
I was married for 37 years. My partner died over seven years ago. As with any partnership, there were good times and bad--maybe I should write a poem about that !? I don't think so. For the last five years of our life together, I was a caretaker, and the burdens, exhaustion, and sometimes resentment of that role were central in my mind's eye/memory, until recently. I have moved recently near to my partner's home community. Now, the apples, the apples! he was a small orchardist; the winding back roads with names like "Niantic." his funny expressions, trying to get me out the door: "we went..." Blurry, and beautiful. Thank you.
I so empathize with this, Nancy. What you express about your husband is similar to what I was attempted to share in my post about my late husband, Walter. I don't know how to link posts but maybe you'll stumble across mine. Sending sisterly love.
Blurry and beautiful!!! Thank you for that. ❤️
"the grief of things growing"
My children are adults with whom I continually experience the depths and reciprocity of love and admiration I never knew possible.
Sometimes my heart aches with a loss that takes my breath away as they grow towards and into their lands. I catch myself with a fixed backwards gaze holding the past too tightly while I experience them meet their lives and places with passion, courage, and love: for partners, chosen families, places, and each their chosen life's work.
My heart unclenches from her grief to hold loosely the gift of the profound and unconditional love they hold for their silly mama who learned the true meaning of love by serving as the vessel that ushered their souls into this present.
Thank you Pádraig. Just the prompt I needed in real time to process a moment I had not words.
I see my daughter as a baby, as a young child, an older child, a young adult. …Moments captured after moments experienced;moments captured too briefly to hold on to their fullness. All of my senses were there and they lingered long enough to hold on for a while , long enough to still be here with me in part but with time and my own aging they are receding . I don’t see with the same clarity. A new clarity perhaps is there for having enjoyed them for they grow up and change so fast.
Yes, there is new clarity, a different clarity. I see a many layered masterpiece created and still being created by many hands including mine and my daughters and all that touches and has touched her life. I see still some of what was and I see some of what is and what will be that the future will see.
I sit with remembrance and I sit with acceptance. I sit with a form of grief knowing that I can’t stop time long enough to see my daughters masterpiece fully complete but I sit also with a feeling of being tucked in , content and comfortable knowing and seeing that all will be well.
Shelley, I relate to your comment. I have a brand new three week old grandson and I am 77. There are many milestones in his life that I will never see but just for today I can hold his tiny body and listen to him gurgle and coo and know that we are part of The chain of life.
Your sharing brings such comfort. Thank you.
How timely. I just took a train across Norway, from Bergen to Oslo and sat backward facing. I actually enjoyed seeing things as they passed and as they "wavered and blurred." At 68 years old, many things are in a receding tunnel. Despite my vitality, this is a time of deep transition that I am having trouble naming. The reality of "youth" is certainly receding, and I am loosening my grip on that. But other things like professional identity, physical ability, energy levels, and a tolerance for bullshit are receding as well. Friends and relatives are dying, and as Mark says in his poem, I see them, over time, more beautifully yet less specifically.
I'm usually out the door well before dawn and don't always have time to read your posts. This morning it was too rainy to go rowing -- a sport we do while facing backwards. Your "Facing Backward" piece connected with my experience on the river. We use mirrors to see ahead, or turn around to make sure we're steering straight, but we can only get glimpses of our immediate path forward. I've used this metaphor so many times in my life. We can only see clearly where we've been, but power forward with confidence just the same. And try not to hit the bridge.
Eva your image of rising is right on.
The need to edit, to pull in and be smaller, be acceptable. Now, I watch a certain type of worry, a fixation on the appropriate, leave me. I do not hesitate to engage, to ask questions in order to understand, to push those who are offering up the unacceptable, the demand, the challenge, and say—why? I no longer bow and agree. I want to be in dialogue with you. The world is not heard in mono but in stereo.
Thanks, Padraig!!
An October day 2 years ago. On the day my mother died, I her adult child refused to go to bed. As long as I remained awake, today remains a day my mom is alive.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-190409465
The brashness of youth.
I see the assuredness of opinion fading a bit. I’m more empathetic. As I reach midlife, there’s an appreciation of presence rising…of simply being here.
Not to say that it’s gone, It just stands in the background, waiting for its moment. 😂