The circle game

And the seasons they go 'round and 'round

And the painted ponies go up and down

We're captive on the carousel of time

We can't return we can only look behind

From whence we came

And go 'round and 'round and 'round

In the circle game

- Joni Mitchell, “Circle Game”

In the past week or so, I wrote two blogs that now have follow-up stories. The original topics seemed to be on opposite ends of some continuum: one was about death and the other was about summer vacation. But there you have it, the two sides of retirement: the reality that it ends and the joy of being here in the meantime. 

So here goes: the circle game.

In the recent blog about death and dying, I talked about the odd ways we manage death—especially, managing to act like it isn’t really a part of life. Just a few days later, I went to a memorial service for a wonderful woman who seemed to so enjoy her life, and in the process, brought great joy to other folks. At the service, a couple of people mentioned how they had appreciated that blog entry. Only then did it strike me: Hmmm, I thought to myself, I knew this service was coming up before I wrote the blog. Maybe writing about death at this particular moment wasn’t just a coincidence. Of course, when I wrote it, I attributed my focus on death to Joe Klein’s Time magazine article. But I have to wonder if I was also thinking about death precisely because it was so close to my life at that moment—as close as a casual friend with whom I’d shared many potlucks, whom I often saw at the neighborhood movie theater before the cheap matinee so beloved by us retired folks, whom I’d seen at many LGBTQ events, always interested, always curious, always enthusiastic and earnest.

Seeing the connection was a reminder of how the reality of death floats around us all the time, how we keep it at bay, and how we find ways to process it when it insists on staring us in the face. We wrap the fearful future in the things we do every day to give meaning to our lives.

And in another domain entirely ...

Last week, I also wrote about my commitment to noticing the singularity of this summer—which is to say, to avoiding last year’s time warp when I realized that summer had passed, and I’d done nothing to appreciate it. I talked about how different summer vacations are now from when I was a kid—how today’s organized camps and outings have reshaped my generation’s unstructured time and neighborhood games. Well, this week, just to show how everything is connected to everything, retirement adventures and kids’ summer activities intersected.

I had planned to take another swell hike on Wednesday, but the smoke from the fire dissuaded me. (For those of you who aren’t in the Boulder area, there’s a major forest fire not far from here, and the result is not the clear mountain air we’re used to. It makes outdoor activities less enjoyable—and likely less healthy). So, I decided to visit Denver’s Museum of Nature and Science instead. 

Denver skyline from DMNS

        

There were lots of cool things to see, including a temporary photo exhibit on the Alaska Arctic (where I’ve been several times), and there's always lots to learn.  

But the best story is this: All around the museum were these swarms of kids in matching t-shirts. What a kick—these were the camp kids I mentioned in my blog! Here I am, an old woman, enlivening my summer vacation by exploring the museum, and I find myself surrounded by boisterous kids, enlivening their summer vacation by exploring the museum. Is this cool or what?

So much for the summer vacation “generation gap.” 

Welcome to the circle game.