Dancing through the Decades

Party time! (Photo: Kelly Hunter, Flickr)

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​Put on your party hats—we're celebrating a couple of birthdays. First of all, HeartWood turned two years old on February 10. Can you believe it?

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I am somewhat older now than I was in this picture with big brother Ron

 
And yesterday, I turned . . . somewhat older than two.

​As my birthday approached, I reflected on previous birthdays and the many days between all those birthdays. That train of thought gave me an idea for this post: write about one important lesson learned from each decade of my life.
 

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​Easy enough. Or so I thought until I sat down and tried to choose one bit of knowledge or wisdom from each decade. Not so easy. For instance, how do you select just one essential thing that you learned between the ages of 10 and 20? There were so many—from the practical (driving) to the spiritual (oh, those many, many Bible verses in Baptist Sunday school), with all sorts of others in between, some learned in classrooms, others by experience.
 
So while it may not be possible to pick the essential lesson from each decade, I've tried to select one enduring lesson from each of those time spans.
 
Here's what I came up with:

Decade 1
Ages: 0 to 10
Lesson: Make friends, early and often

With neighborhood girls and others at a birthday party. (That's me in the back row, second from left.)

​Schoolmates, Brownie troop, Sunday school classmates, cousins—kids my age were everywhere in those early Baby Boomer years. As an almost-only child whose sole sibling was already a teenager when I was born, I enjoyed solitude but also treasured companionship. Lucky for me, five girls just my age all lived within a block of my house. That lively gang gave me my first taste of sisterhood.  

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​It was during those years that I first opened myself up to kids who were different in some way from my other friends and me. The sweet-faced second-grader who never spoke; the brilliant boy whose cerebral palsy twisted his body and slurred his speech; the new-in-town girl who stood nearly a foot taller than the rest of us; the kid in husky jeans whose first name sounded unfortunately similar to Lard. For some reason, I was drawn to these kids. Maybe it was only curiosity at first, but over time I found admirable qualities in each of them (especially the time that super-tall girl dangled off a bridge by her ankles to rescue my little dog, who'd slipped through the creek's icy surface). Those early encounters set the stage for some of the richest friendships of my life.

Decade 2
Ages: 10-20
Lesson: Embrace change

​Oh, so many changes. The physical, of course. And as I progressed through the grades and moved up to bigger schools, an ever-changing cast of characters enlivening my days. 

Samoa!

​At least home and neighborhood stayed the same, but only through the first half of the decade. That all changed the year I turned 16, when my parents and I moved to American Samoa. I could write a book about that. Oh, that's right, I did. Maybe someday you can read it. For now, I'll just say that moving from Oklahoma to an island in the South Pacific where people summoned turtles and sharks with song, cured disease by appeasing spirits, and feasted on the reproductive organs of sea worms was mind- and world-expanding. Thanks to the warmth of the Samoan people, the beauty of the landscape, and the élan of the other teenagers on the island, I flourished in that setting instead of moping about what I'd left behind.

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I embraced island life

​Decade 3
Ages: 20-30
Lesson: Balance brain and body

Buckling down

​These were years of hitting the books—college first, then graduate school. All those courses in science and math were exhilarating, but intense. For relief, I got physical. Really physical! I joined the campus dance company and spent 15 to 20 hours a week in dance classes and rehearsals (enough to qualify for a phys-ed minor, which struck this non-athlete as amusing). I hiked in the woods, rode my bike to the beach, walked or biked to campus and into town for errands, swam laps in the community pool, and took up yoga and strength training. By the time I graduated, my health habits were as engrained as my study habits, and both have stuck with me. (But please don't ask me to do a pirouette.)

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Letting go

​Decade 4
Ages: 30-40
Lesson: Go with your gut

30-ish

​By age 30, I had my life more or less mapped out. Then one day I looked at that map and went: Wait a minute—I'm going where?? I don't think so! The problem was, going a different way meant leaving a long-term relationship, stepping off a professional track, moving to a part of the country where I never imagined myself living—in short, heading a completely different direction with no guarantee it was the right one. 

A daring change of direction brought me to Detroit (Photo: Max Pixel)

​​Yet some internal stirring urged me to go for it. I did, and I've never regretted it. That bold move led to a rewarding career in journalism, a new trove of treasured friendships and world-expanding experiences, and eventually, the satisfying life I'm living today.

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​Decade 5
Ages: 40-50
Lesson: There's life after loss

​As my fortieth birthday approached, everything once again seemed on track and moving in the right direction. A few months later, a massive heart attack claimed my husband Brian. A year after that, cancer crept up on me for the third time, sending me into rounds of aggressive treatments that nearly killed me.

​I emerged from all those traumas physically and emotionally scarred and sure that life would never be the same. I was right about that. Life would never be the same. But that didn't mean it couldn't be good in other ways.  

Flower bouquets helped me feel good again (Photo: Pxhere)

​At first, I kept my expectations low. "Good" might mean nothing more than a bouquet of fresh flowers on my coffee table or a walk around the block with a friend. As I opened myself up to these small pleasures, though, I began to see more possibilities and claim bigger chunks of happiness. I met and married Ray, learned to ride a motorcycle, took some unforgettable trips, did volunteer work, and found a new job flexible enough to mesh with the freelance career I also launched during this decade. My forties turned out to be some of my happiest years.

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Motorcycles brought me newfound joy (Photo: Philip Dougan)

So did this motorcycle man (Photo: Emily Everett)

​Decade 6
Age: 50-60
Lesson: Stay flexible

My flowers were thriving . . .

​Hmmmm. I'm starting to see a pattern here. Once more, I was all comfy with my life, enjoying my work and taking pleasure in play. We finished remodeling our house, my flower gardens were thriving, my writing was going well, everything was paid for, and there was little else I needed or wanted. I envisioned coasting through the rest of life just so.

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. . . the house was just the way we wanted it

​Oh, but did I mention I have a restless husband? About halfway through this decade, he got the itch to move. At first, I resisted. I was happy where we were, the house was finally just the way we wanted it, life was good and reasonably easy. Why mess with that? But then I remembered all the other times that venturing into the unknown had paid big dividends, and I got on board.

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​Thank goodness I did, because we ended up here in this beautiful, creative, open-hearted Newaygo County community.

But I'm happy we shook things up and ventured into the unknown (Photo: Ray Pokerwinski)

​Decade 7
Age 60-69
Lesson: It's never too late

Never too late to try something new (Photo: Ray Pokerwinski)

​I'm cheating a little here, as I'm a year short of the end of this decade. But I intend to keep making "It's never too late" my mantra through the rest of Decade 7 and beyond. Whether I'm exploring publishing options for my memoir, traveling back to Samoa, challenging myself in yoga, tackling new writing projects, or venturing into realms I've yet to imagine, I hope to keep going and growing for years to come.

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When you look back at your life, what lessons stand out?