Middle age

Middle age is tough. Okay, all of life is tough, but middle age is the part I'm in now. There are lots of great things about being middle-aged: I know who I am, I know what I want, I know how to get much of what I want, and for the most part I know how to cope with the consequences of not getting the rest. I've been learning my whole life how to cope with some of my friends and family having serious illnesses and dying; it's a set of lessons everyone gets, along with the more personal lessons leading to facing mortality one's own self. It's never easy or pleasant.

Last fall and winter, I was part of a group of friends keeping an old friend company as she died of cancer. This fall, I'll be part of mostly that same group of friends running errands and helping with childcare as another old friend hopes to survive cancer (http://www.anitarowland.com/). It's tricky writing about this; cancer survival is much more a matter of luck than of work. The work Anita will do -– enduring chemotherapy, exercising, eating, and sleeping appropriately to support the chemo – will go as far as it can to help the luck. The work we'll do will go as far as it can to support the work Anita does, and to try to keep her family as cheerful and rested as possible. Still, a lot of it comes down to luck.

So here's wishing for a lot of good luck, in every shape it can take.