Balancing the Books

After a week of birthday celebrations, I'm ready to admit that I have moved the clock forward by one, and am certainly grateful (as always) for friends and a bit more time. While some years I've been brought low by acknowledging middle age, this year appears to be more in the new resolution mode, but the simple resolutions that I'm after to achieve this year are balance and peace. Part of it is a physical wish: there have been too many medical scares among loved ones lately; and part of it is sheerly spiritual: I want to take time to truly show myself to others in a way I have yet to do.

It isn't easy. Brought up to be appreciative of privacy and the importance of secrecy (in part because of shame and insecurity) revealing my true feelings and trying to be more open has never been easy. But part of this year's mission is to simply let go of all of analysis and try to live in the moment, not in a Zen-crazed-meditation-flower-child manner but to try to appreciate what I have and want what I own.

For several years now, we've lived on the financial edge. Having been brought up on the financial precipice, it wasn't that unusual, but as a child of the fifties and sixties, I did bring along expectations that everything simply got better as you went along. And while it did for a bit -- there were trips to Japan and England and Italy and the beach -- it didn't ever feel like it would last, and even more importantly, that it was not quite 'it'. That 'it' - the life that I saw out there, fantastical and other, was going to finally appear before me, the escalated dream of my imagination that was better than anything that had come before.

Sort of on a white horse, for you romance fans.

But what happened was that in the past weeks, as 401K's and IRAs and pension funds and every other security blanket has evaporated, is that I have begun to realize that this is 'it'. That it's quite possible that there will not be a pot at the end of the rainbow, that living with what I have is what I need to learn to do -- forever, or at least for now and for the next day and the day after that.

What divided us from the upper middle class was more money; what divided us from poor people was access to credit. And now that that has flown, we are struggling in much the way we always have, but maybe with a dollop of more sense and for me -- a bit more self-awareness.