I feel good...really good

On Tuesday, I will magically switch decades in my life, with the ticking of a clock move from one stage of life to another, or so they say. I don't really think our lives are arranged in decades, but popular thought seems to tend otherwise.

In a way, I can't wait to leave my thirties behind me. Looking back, it was a decade of spinning wheels, indecision, and wasted time. Okay, so I had all three of my children in my thirties. They are the best blessing anyone could have, but so much else was going on that they didn't get the perfect, planned childhood I had dreamed of. Life gets in the way.

For one thing, we moved. A lot. From Minnesota to Missouri back to northwestern Minnesota, to my old neighborhood in suburban Minnesota to a remote valley in northern California, to here, but almost back to California. To here, finally, the place where my dreams live. I'm going to move away from the new house when they drag my cold, stiff body out of it.

I realize now I was depressed a lot in my thirties. Not suicidal depressed, (okay, maybe once, but luckily I was too chicken to cut my own flesh) but just not into living. And that's a terrible thing to give your children.

I have not felt depressed for a long time. Today the sun was shining, and while I was washing dishes Calvin asked if I would come outside and play lacrosse with him. My stepdaughter had just given him a lacrosse set, two netted sticks and a plastic ball. So I did, and he had me going into the woods fetching the ball far too many times, but we had fun. Spontaneous, outdoor fun. I could not have done that three years ago. Or maybe two. Or one.

Then, after I got the dishes done, I felt like a little walk in the woods. It was there that I saw the spores of the cinnamon ferns, pictured above, standing over the snow. It doesn't take a lot of effort to find something here that really moves me.

So it is coming up on spring, I am going to move into my dream house this summer, I am going to have my best garden ever, and even sell at the farmers market and play music there. Who could ask for anything more?