I am a mother and a grandmother and once upon a time I was a wife but now I am living alone for the first time in my adult life and there are many changes that I have gone through to get to the “happy” stage but I’ll save that story for another time.
Well, no I won’t because it is the beginning of the “new” me. So I moved into a retirement community (a large senior mobile home park). I moved from a huge house into 1440 sq. feet and was trying to find a home for everything that I brought with me and getting more and more depressed. One day I bought a new address book and sat down that night to transfer my friends into it and omit “his” and “our” friends. Gals, sometime when you want to be depressed try this little exercise and you will be surprised at the “friends” that were “ours” and no longer or maybe never were yours. I even lost some relatives in the deal! You want a number; okay from two address books full of names I was only able to transfer a handful into my new book and two of those friends live out of state. These were friends that I knew were mine and mine alone. Sad, isn’t it? Yes, it’s sad and it scared me half to death.
I moved into my home in November and spent my birthday with my daughter Cat and I went to her house for Christmas. I knew I needed to meet people and do it in a hurry to save my sanity. While I was still unpacking, I became secretary on the park’s social club as a way to meet people and I also started going to the park’s craft class. (More about the Crafty Ladies later.) Then on New Year’s Eve the social club held a dance and, no I did not go. I sat here by myself watching Tvland and I thought, “Is this the way it’s going to be the rest of my life”. That’s when I made the first new years resolution that I had made in years and it turned out to be the smartest thing that I could have done. My resolution was this: Everyday, I would walk out of my house and talk to someone even if I had to go knocking on doors to do it (and I sometimes did). My daughter knew about my resolution so she wasn’t surprised when I called her one-day and told her “I just walked out to the mailbox and talked to five people so I’m good for the week!” No, she didn’t let me get away with that and I had to remind her of whose resolution it is, anyway! But what it amounts to is that I met a lot of people, some acquaintances, some eventually became great friends and a special few became my back-door friends.
The point is that I was really in sad shape when I moved in here. I had lost my gorgeous big home, my not so wonderful husband, I had very few friends and here I was at my age alone, a place that I never thought about being. I guess what I am trying to say is that I had to learn how to laugh again and find the humor in my life, in all the day to day happenings and conversations. ***
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