Beeing Me Season

There is a strange moment that happens when you stop trying to become someone and realize you've already arrived.

Not perfectly.

Not finished.

Not twenty-five. God no.

Not at your goal weight. Eek.

Just arrived.

I caught myself in the mirror this week wearing a yellow bee shirt, embroidered shorts, oversized sunglasses, and carrying a little woven clutch.

Nothing remarkable.

No special occasion.

Just a hot summer afternoon.

But I looked at the photographs later and smiled.

Because if someone had asked me twenty years ago what happiness looked like, I would have described something much grander.

A smaller size. Slimmer.

A younger face.

A more impressive life.

(I also assumed all those degrees would eventually show up in my paycheck. That remains an unresolved mystery.)

A better version of myself always seemed to exist somewhere just beyond the horizon.

Instead, happiness arrived disguised as a bee shirt and a Sunday afternoon.

The older I get, the more I notice that joy rarely arrives with trumpets.

It arrives with iced mint water.

A garden humming with pollinators.

A dog asleep in the shade.

A favorite pair of shorts.

A shirt that makes you smile every time you pull it over your head.

My T-shirt isn't vintage. It helps fund pollinator plant gardens.

It arrives in collections rather than accomplishments.

For years I treated happiness like a destination.

Lose the weight.

Reach the milestone.

Fix the flaw.

Become the person.

Then life would begin.

But life was never waiting at the finish line.

One version was waiting at a moving goal post on the other side of said finish line.

However, another version of life was sitting quietly on the porch the whole time, waiting for me to acknowledge I had already arrived.

The funny thing about getting older is that eventually you stop looking for perfection and start looking for self-recognition.

You catch your reflection unexpectedly and think:

"There you are."

Not the younger version.

Not the future version.

Not the improved version.

Just you.

And maybe that's enough.

Maybe more than enough.

At fifty-one, I find myself less interested in transformation and more interested in cultivation.

Not becoming someone new.

Becoming more myself.

And perhaps that is what a vintage life really is:

Not a life spent chasing perfection.

A life spent collecting what pollinates the soul.

🐝💛

So here it is.

The old T-shirt.

The old shorts.

The old sandals I found on a beach.

The tarnished earrings that sound like wind chimes.

The scratched bangle bracelet.

And the straw tote splitting at a seam I'll probably repair again.

If you add all the years up, it's vintage.

I'm on my way to being antique.

And for the first time in a very long while, I don't mind that at all.

🐝💛