As I write this on October 1, 2024, I imagine you reading this October 1, 2034. I hope that you are well and happy. I hope that some things haven’t changed for you, and I hope some things have. I hope that, as you read this, you’ll remember some of the things I am describing, that your memory is still as strong and vital as mine is.
I hope that in the ten years that separate us you have remained as healthy as I am today. I am currently a little overweight, I hope that in the intervening ten years you’ve been able to keep that in check. Maybe you’ve conquered the “stress eating” that has dogged me so much of my life. I’m doing a lot of things right currently to help that happen, such as watching that I eat less, daily exercise, getting to the root of my recurring depressions, being kind to myself. I hope you have seen the benefits of this. I also hope, though, that you can still enjoy some of the treats that make me feel better. In moderation of course. If I had to pick my favorite two foods, one salty, one sugary, my favorite “salty” food has always been potatoes in all forms. Mashed, roasted, French fries, scalloped, potato chips, I love potatoes! In fact, as I write this, I have some baby Yukon gold potatoes roasting in the toaster oven. And my sugary food is cake. I love cake. However, I’ve become a bit of a cake snob: it must be good cake, made with great ingredients like real flour and real butter. I don’t like most of the cake I find in our local grocery stores but when I am in a cake mood, I’ll eat it anyway.
Perhaps you’ve graduated to a different kind of cooking. Perhaps you live somewhere that you don’t have to cook anymore. Cooking isn’t a favorite activity of mine right now but when I do cook, I enjoy it. I know several friends who’ve moved into assisted living so that they don’t have to bother with cooking anymore. Assisted living doesn’t grab me, at least not the kind of assisted living that I can afford. Meals there, when I’ve visited, remind me of school cafeteria food, overcooked and mushy. Which brings me to the subject of money.
We, Richard and I, well, mostly Richard, have done all that we can to be balanced between living now and being prepared for the future. I have been very much an “enjoy life while you’re alive” person; I’m glad that Richard reined me in several times over the course of our 26-year marriage. We wouldn’t be in the good position we are in right now although I must stick my hand up on my behalf and say that I was the one that pushed to buy our current house. Our current financial analyst tells us we are well set up to live comfortably into our 90s. If things stay relatively the same. We bought our house seven years ago, for a reasonable price, on a 30-year mortgage. It’s currently worth twice what our remaining mortgage is and has become a kind of nest egg on top of the retirement savings we have. We’re doing okay.
The way that I feel right now, I hope you are still living in this house. Richard and I tried living in so many different places and this one, despite it being in Podunk Arizona with not a lot of history or great restaurants (or bakeries) has seen the most peaceful time for us in terms of day-to-day living. The stress of moving from place to place, buying, selling and losing money on properties, that’s one thing I don’t miss at all, and I hope that you’ve been able to avoid that stress as well.
I hope that if Richard is still alive and well, that you have a happy relationship. I hope that neither of you has had to become each other’s caretaker—yet. You’re only 82 and by today’s count, that’s not all that elderly. I currently have friends in their 80s who are traveling. If Richard has died—if I’ve died, this letter is moot—I hope that you’re continuing to have a close and happy relationship with Laurie and the family. That you’re not alone. CJ will be retired from his current career in ten years, he and Laurie often talk about what they’ll do in retirement but they’re 27 years younger than I am/we are, they will have changed their minds multiple times in the next ten years. The youngest grandchild will be 23. I hope you’ve enjoyed watching them grow and spread their wings. There will have been tears as well as laughter but, mostly, I hope there have been wonderful memories.
Most of my memories in the past decade have revolved around traveling. I’m getting tired now though and traveling is becoming so complicated. We’ve been gravitating toward cruising on ships but even that’s becoming more problematic getting to and from ports, crowded ships and illnesses, travel warnings, wars in so many parts of the world. In the next decade I wouldn’t put traveling top of my wish list for you but, at the same time, I’m infamous among my friends for suddenly taking off. I hope that if that happens in the next ten years, the memories made will be as happy as the last ten years have been. If photographs are still as important in your world as they are in mine, I hope you have thousands more.
Mostly though, I hope that the place you are in is as safe as it is for me right now. I feel shadows building both environmentally and politically. I hope that our world hasn’t imploded through climate change. A lot of good people are trying very hard to mitigate the devastations but even today, even as I write this, the second worst hurricane in US history has sent Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee reeling.
I hope that the US has reverted to the kind of democracy we had in years past, and that the election you are facing—if you are still living in the US—is a far more honest one than I’m facing. That your election has trustworthy candidates on both sides who have the good of all of the people of the country in their platforms. I hope that the US socio-political sphere is one that enables people of different beliefs and politics to live side by side, mostly peaceably.
We’re not currently as kind and open a society as we used to be. Maybe we never were, and I lived in a kind of bubble. Certainly, events over the past few years have shocked me, people that are my friends parroting vitriolic comments against other people and ideas that I personally find rational and essential for peaceful coexistence and, on the other hand, accepting people and ideas as “truth” that I find dangerous and at times downright illegal and unethical.
All this said, I’ve tried to avoid contention for contention’s sake. Blessed are the peacemakers, which I believe means that we should avoid to the very last the temptation to resort to violence and anger instead of reasoned conversation and activity inside and outside the polling booth. That we should be careful of our conversation. I realize that just as I am impassioned in my way, others are impassioned in theirs. I try to keep my most impassioned opinions to a circle of close friends partly because they will kindly listen, moderate and fact check or else they will let me blow off steam. (See above about stress eating.)
I have hope that there are enough rational people in the world who still believe in the principles, the laws, the civility, that have kept this world from imploding throughout my life. Civility is a theme for me right now, a book I recently read—The Soul of Civility by Alexandra Hudson—is a book I’ve been returning to when I feel like I’m about to blow a gasket. I hope you still love reading too, such an escape and a comfort. But what I really hope for you is friendship.
Which is my closing. I hope that you have had and have close friends. I hope that the friends I have now are still around you; they have encircled me with arms of love so many times. I don’t know where I’d be without them. I know I will lose some, well, truthfully I might be the one to go in the next ten years, but I hope it will just be a passing through the veil, not a sharp break. Losing friends over ideology is tragic. Perhaps you will have made more friends, how lovely if you have.
I must not forget faith and spirituality. I have gone through a faith journey this past decade. My faith today is somewhat different from what it was ten years ago. Within it, however, I have remained open to the Spirit’s voice. It has been a comfort and a strength. I participate in faith services right now in the Episcopal Church but over the next ten years, you might take a different path. You might return to a former faith. You might find a new faith. Whatever road you take in this next decade, I hope that you have made time for the spiritual part of your life whether it be by faith services, by reading, listening to podcasts (are there still podcasts in 2034 or have they, like radio shows, morphed into something different?)
I wish you all the very best and may we one day meet,
Your past self
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