Memories & Dreams

Aunt Jessie was a woman before her time. Having graduated from college, in 1931, she took up teaching. It was a life-long career she used to take her across the planet. She started her adult life with the expected romance that should have left her as a wife and mother. Religious differences caused them to separate and that part of her life simply ended. Jessie was then relegated to the role of spinster-teacher in the eyes of a judgemental world. None of that slowed her down. After World War Two she taught at government schools first in Germany, and eventually in Japan. During the summers she traveled the world, visiting exotic places in Europe and the Mideast.

When she returned to the United States she had her forever home built on a hill in what is now a ritzy section of Walnut Creek, California. I would go and visit her on weekends. I would spend hours wandering through her house, inspecting rooms filled with memorabilia and memories. I would dream of myself having gone in her place. When old enough, my sister and brother would come and stay as well but I feel that they never really caught the dream fever I did.

Aunt Jessie passed away from cancer when I was 13 but the memories of her life are strong and vibrant. Taking those memories of her life with me, I moved forward with my life living it fully for the next 50 years.

I do not live in her hometown so I was able to separate memories from real life. It has not been so easy for other memories. Two husbands and my beautiful mother are all buried in the town I currently live in. The houses we shared are all within my view as I drive by. My memories are tied closely to my current life. I have thought about this for a couple of years and have decided it is time to take my memories with me into a new lifetime, and elsewhere.

I love where I live and I love my super-duper, fantastic neighbors, but I want to find my new lifetime. A new life that is not so tangled by memories, sweet as they are. Aunt Jessie took a broken promise of her future and turned it into a life of her own making. That is what I want to do at age 70. How many of us get more than one chance at a new life?

My first step forward is to put my home on the market. Here is to the future!