More often than not, my battles are with myself, with the person I want to be and the one I am. I've lived too long to tolerate the overwhelming stupidity and rudeness of the general public, worked too hard to be bullied no matter how reasonable and soft the voice may be, and spent too much time and effort trying to quietly fade into the background. The old woman who wears purple no longer peers out from behind her garden gate - more and more often she swings it wide open and invites you in for a cup of arsenic-laced tea. Would that I had the will to be more like the roses, swaying gently in the chilly November wind and lifting their velvety petaled faces upward. I would hide my thorns but keep them sharpened - for self defense only in the event someone tried to pick me.
The old woman who wears purple, however, is more weed-like. She's a little faded, her roots go a little deeper, she has a long memory and a short temper. Her thorns are stubbornness and impatience and an overall world weariness. Somewhere along the way, she's lost her faith and replaced it with cynicism and doubt. She's on the road to isolationism, with any luck, to a small house with locked doors overlooking an ocean in a country she's always wished she'd been born to.
Friends will be welcome - provided they bring American cigarettes, eat sparingly and don't stay overlong - but mostly I imagine retirement as another word for retreat, a time to sort myself out and revel in the remaining years. I'd like to think that the anger that has sustained me all my life will drift out to sea and harmlessly dissipate. I'd like to think that I can do without it and live quietly with my animals, my camera, my books.
Maybe I'll even plant roses.
Although I'm leaning toward poison ivy.
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