I've been contemplating the word "value" today....and letting my mind have its own way instead of trying to tame its patterns & expressions. What follows is an approximate reconstruction of what came & went as the day passed.

I started at the place of thinking about the "value" of a particular item. I was looking at a little painting of a cat with which I was gifted by a young woman expressing her appreciation for my time & energies. At the moment I appreciated the efforts she had put into its creation. I also appreciated that she valued my time enough to want to acknowledge that. The cat has been placed in a number of locations, each move to a place less & less visible to anyone entering the house. In fact, it had become largely invisible to me. I don't think I had even dusted it for weeks. If I had, it had been without "seeing" it.

By this morning, however, I DID see....but only the "it's really bizarre looking" and "one more thing to dust" aspects of that little painting. Its time of use & value in my life had come to an end. Today it made it into the "charity" box at the foot of the basement stairs.

It did occur to me to offer it back to the gifter but I think I'll sit with that for awhile until I ponder how I would feel were the roles reversed. Right now, I think I'd LOVE that...because I only give gifts these days of thing I really like. NO, that's not true. There are those times I pick out something especially for the recipient when that person's tastes differ markedly from my own. But I'd stil appreciate the offer even if I refused it, I think.

Well, during the day, though, I wasn't thinking of regifting to the giver. Instead, I leapt from the ugly cat painting to thinking about the 45th High School Reunion I had not attended this past week-end. Reminiscing about who I had been as a teen & what had been important to me, I had such angst about how I looked: hair, skin, shape & size of body, clothes, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends. Those were the things I valued. ...and agonized over. But were they my values? And what are the differences now?

As much as I would like to be completely self-actualized, truth to tell one of the reasons factoring into the decision to not go to the reunion was about the clothes & the body & all the externals that I just didn't want to deal with. Yes, the scheduling conflicts & timing were more important . But appearance is still an issue.

Larger still was the issue of the bonds not maintained. I had always valued a few deep and somewhat exclusive friendships over a large & fluid crowd of friends. Those few I had been close with were also not the ones likely to stay in the same town (none did) & stay in contact with others who mostly had no more in common than shared classrooms.

What I shared with those few in my inner circle was the trust that the secrets of our families and our first young loves would be held tenderly & in confidence. We depended upon one another to match our moods and yet also be catalysts for uplift from the turmoils of early loves and unsettled, unsettling family circumstances.

I realized today that there are many similarities between the teen-ager of 45 years ago & the (gasp!) senior citizen of today. I still value truth & tenderness in myself and others. I still need others to mirror my self-expressions and gently suggest ways to reframe the pictures I paint of my realities when I'm being too hard on myself. I cherish most those who trust my intuitions and truths, even the ones that make my dance in the world off the beat of what others are doing. I still would rather be in solitude than with those uncomfortable with authentic expressions. I still don't excel in current events & cocktail parties. Don't even ask about dating!

While the events didn't unfold how I expected at all, it has been an interesting life. Thinking about it as I went about other tasks made for an interesting day. Truth to tell, 'interesting' has always been of greater value to me than 'predictable'.

I never expected to be wholly self-employed & forging new pathways. I never expected to join with unseen networks of people providing information, support & encouragement to one another. I'm so old that I remember ditto machines & rotary dial phones---and a world without t.v.s in every home. There were no careers for the women in my childhood neighborhood other than mother, housewife, teacher & nurse.

I did all of those careers (plus a few variations on the theme) except "mother" with lots of life & time left-over for this last, most exciting part of all: crone stage & entrepreneur . How exciting to get to combine the wisdom gained of all my past experiences with the technologies and spirit of cooperation of the present. This is much better than going backward to a reunion with the acquaintances of the past!