The Unit

There are - and stay with me on this - two set of sisters, a mother and two daughters, and an aunt and two nieces in four people known as "The Unit." The name came to us after what seemed like an exhaustive attempt to find a title suitable for the four of us.

We were/are what we consider unique. The Unit comprises 2 1/2 generations, sort of, and we can mix and mingle in any number of combinations while together, and still have all of us included. We'd celebrated  several New Years by hiking to waterfalls, or eating hearth baked bread while we explored Flat Rock NC, or sweating it out on a broken down train stalled in the countryside of France on an overnight jaunt from Madrid to Paris. We've whitewater rafted to celebrate making it through chemo, and stood side by side at funerals, so a name befitting our  relationship was needed.

It was in the dark caves and tunnels of Gibraltar where I feared we might lose each other, that I, as the matriarch of the group, could be heard whisper shouting, "We must stay together. We must move as a unit." I heard a little giggling from the far reaches of a tunnel, then a shout out of, "The Unit! That's it. That's the name for us!" And so, The Unit we became.

The Unit is a somewhat exclusive group. We don't really mean to be, but we are. We're bonded by love and birth in an ageless gathering of women. Me and my daughters and sister, they and their sister and mother and aunt. We are bound. We have expanded our numbers in an honorary fashion with marriages and births, but, I guess until you wear the Red Shoes you may not be fully a member.

They're at least a decade old now, those Red Shoes, but, like us, they're classics. They been shared around among all four of us when only Red Shoes will do. Those Red Shoes have been on dates, and in weddings, and have been to church, but mostly they're pulled out when there needs to be an extra punch in our step. The inquiry goes out periodically among the four of us as to who has the Red Shoes and "can I have them for" ... well whatever the special occasion might be.

The Red Shoes have been shared freely within The Unit ... so freely that I'd almost forgotten about them, until my sister pulled them out for a 2017 Eclipse party. It seems those shoes were raved over all anew. When my sister told me recently that the New York crowd had loved the red shoes, I'd asked, "the old red shoes?"

Yes! But not the old red shoes. THE Red Shoes. Still in action, still making a statement. Still raising us all a little higher with their high-rise, open heels and that classy peep toe. Kinda' like The Unit, doing that raising up of each other with class and style. We rock.

Grace through Maybe

"Maybe! She said maybe!" My young children danced around the living room shouting over and over, "Maybe! She said maybe!" I'd grunted a maybe from a deep, heavy nap on the couch. My son and daughter, about 5 and 3 at the time, had leaned in close to me where I could feel their sweet breath on my face, and whispered, "Mom, can we ..." Well, that part I don't remember, but it was a request for something my kids loved for me to agree to. Swimming, chocolate chip cookies, a trip to the playground, I don't know exactly. But what I do know is that "maybe" set joy in their hearts and set them to jumping up and down with excitement. A simply "maybe." It's become an "inside story," and family members of all ages still get the same thrill when I utter "maybe." She said maybe! It's followed me for 29 years, so far.

I've personally disregarded a maybe as being too vague, and allowing for too big a chance of "probably not." I like things as definite as I can get them, even if it means waiting to the last minute to pull out a firm yes or no.

That was until yesterday. In the shower. Again, in the shower. I don't know why my most profound awarenesses and God moments can be tracked back to the shower, but they can. Perhaps it's the life giving water rushing over my body, the warmth, the seclusion from the rest of the world where my thoughts can be their loudest, and their most quiet. A place where mental cleansing accompanies physical cleansing.

Regardless, so it was there that the power of maybe came pressing into me. In my father's final days locked down in immobility, it fell to me to tend to his hospice medications. There was the one mediation that would cause him great relief, but which also signaled acceptance that his breath was no longer his own. A medication that eased the body's struggle between this world and the next. Those of us who were with him put on the proverbial encouraging, assuring, and happy face, but sadly, I've always felt his eyes told me he knew.

With each dose, even as I offered assurance that this would ease his breath and help him rest, I felt his eyes asked me "why." I felt his luminous eyes, still full of the quick soul that was his, ask me "why," and plead "No. No. Not this." My soul was crushed, and yet I continued, knowing ...

And then, these two years later of my carrying that weight of his deep, pleading eyes, came the words through the muted world of the shower, "Maybe his eyes weren't pleading with you to stop, or accusing you of forcing him out. Maybe his eyes were saying he understood. Maybe he was saying thank you, Rhonda."

Those words, prefaced with that powerfully hopeful word maybe gave me a new hope and new relief I'd previously dared not even approach, or ever thought to approach. Maybe? Really? Maybe? I cried that word over and over and over. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe flowed over me like the cascading water. Like that oil flowing over Aaron's beard. Then maybe became probably, and probably became Yes. And Yes became Grace. Oh, wondrous Grace. A rite of passage into Grace through maybe.

Sustentations after Sixty

A list of "Firsts after Fifty" came to be as a celebration of seeing my fiftieth birthday. That day could have been one of despair over aging out of a generation of vigor and contribution and into a phase of possible disregard and decline. But, I chose to fully celebrate being in my fifties, knowing that many people never get to experience that phase of life, and knowing that it was no small thing that I had survived to see it.

That list served me well as a reminder of newness of experience even as I aged. I drove a stick shift in Spain, went white water rafting, built a house, lived as a vagabond on the kindness of friends and family, became a grandmother, started a non-profit ... all sorts of things.

Then, the Big 60 approached. Of course, "Firsts after Fifty" includes firsts after sixty, but I felt I needed an appropriate identifier for special markings of this new decade of life. Especially since the last couple of years of my fifties had left me feeling like I was orbiting on the outer edges of validation and visibility in the world. My goal became seeking out places to be and work and live and serve that valued my age and experience. I defined this as following a call to where I could give and receive the best of life. Following a call elsewhere, however, meant exiting familiar and comfortable settings, but ones where my gifts and wisdom were not seen, and where I felt I was seen as an aging woman with little to offer.

Though there was a degree of terror involved in letting go of the familiar, doing so allowed me to be free to seek out new experiences. I've been granted the opportunity to develop the life that taps into what I feel are my best gifts and offerings to the world.

In return, I'm finding I am receiving gifts that nurture and sustain me in the ways I most need. I've led my first "Beyond Just Tryin' to Live" retreat at my family's mountain cabin, and have a flurry of ideas for future retreats. I've spoken French in France for the first real time in my life, leading the way where English failed for me and my travel companions, and been complimented, by French speakers, on my accent. Even my quirky mouth was complimented as being quite suited to the language. I'm finishing up a devotional book that's been 12 years in the making, and a realization has come to me that I am being sustained and expanded in new ways that go deep within my soul. I name this "Sustentations after Sixty."

Sustentation is a word I'd not known until my sister helped me find it in a synonym search of any number of words related to affirmation. Sustentation means "maintenance in being or activity; the sustaining of life; provision with means or funds for upkeep; and, means of sustaining life, sustenance." All these seem quite fitting for what I find I'm receiving in this new path I'm taking as I receive sustentation from friends, family, strangers, husband, and from God. I am grateful.