I particularly enjoy reading the stories, real or fictional,
of women who shed their daily lives to wander off to other places and in the
process discover themselves. I enjoy
these stories and I hate them. The
jealous part of me becomes positively green-eyed when I see how conveniently
all these women are either writers, able to rely on some great book deal, or
newly divorced with a rich settlement that allows them to chuck life as they
know it and head off on great adventures to find themselves and in the process
find not only inner peace but the love of their lives as well. Sure, I think, it’s easy for them. They don’t have children, or their children
are grown, or conveniently living with their father or some other relative, and
they, the children, certainly aren’t disabled.
I ache to be like these women, to throw away all the mundane realities
of life as I know it and go questing – Charlemagne in search of the Holy Grail. But I’m not and in all good conscience, I
can’t.
My life is about as real as they come. I work to pay the bills, struggle with the
economies of the moment, jettison all but the most necessary to stay
financially afloat, feel stressed and strained by the demands on my time and
energies that come part and parcel with having an adult child who despite her
age is fully dependent. My daughter’s
care requires a stamina and strength I don’t believe I was born with but
somehow I managed to mine. Though I long
to see the world, my quest, of necessity (and integrity) has been an inward
one. I couldn’t explore the outer so I
held a glass to the inner. What a world
I did discover.
