Old and new, again

Interesting thing, this facebook revolution. One old timer is going onto World Poker Tournament, some are having babies, families, life changing incidences that we sweep through in two words, rocking their universe, leaving grown men and women shaken and sweaty. A few die, already. Some I feel green meanies growing in my gut, they are living lives I envy and have achieved things I dream about. Others, well, not so much. I look at my little people, sleeping, windows open, and wonder where I'd be without them...Botswana, drinking red bush tea? India, eating curries and picking fruit from the trees in my yard? Lonely? Impressed with all I have achieved, or dismayed at all that I haven't. It's a fun way to kill a few quiet minutes...there are so few, why not really enjoy them!

In reconnecting to people from the past, I have come to appreciate so much more all that I have here, now. My friends, without whom I have no idea how I'd make it through each week. My husband, who has stuck by me think and thin, who was there for the birth of our children, next to me, touching me, connected. To my children, who have learned how to annoy me like no other beings on the planet, and who bring out such joy, pleasure in the moment, and searingly deep love. In an instant it can, it will, all be gone. But for this moment, I have depth of appreciation.

An old car, junk or parts or a home for rats, or sold, rebuilt, repainted, dents removed and retamed, it can sit idle after having driven dutifully for an eon of miles. Loved or not, it becomes part of a landscape of history, same as a dirty diaper or an empty soup can. It doesn't much matter how useful it was (diapers, nothing more useful to the mother of a baby!), or even how much it as loved (my old dolphin necklace is somewhere out there). It is a member of the heap. It is part of a historical clan and, memories not withstanding, it is part of the future, not the past or present. I found out on Facebook that a friend of mine's old car has finally bit the dust, a car I traveled in cross country, up and down the coasts, camping in Yosemite, and across the Mexico border for cases of Tequila.

Luka Benjamin was born the other day, a new old soul. He's part of this heap of today, though he is all about tomorrow - in a tomorrow he will be five, swinging the bat, begging for new cleats. In a tomorrow he will be 16, singing on the rooftop and emulating Kenneth Grahame's Frog. In a heartbeat of tomorrows he will find love, dance between trees, find cures or write interesting things or make beautiful sculpture. Right now he wakes long enough to find a nipple and fart. I found out he was born checking into Facebook.

And so it goes. Game scores, births, deaths. They're all on facebook, where old is new and new is old and it's just plain living to check in and say I'm still here, too.