Did you see Maureen Dowd's column this weekend? Check it out: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/opinion/20dowd.html. It's about happiness, or lack thereof, in women over the age of "mid-life." Men get happier, and women get less happy (not to say "sad"). Dowd quotes a few studies, and concurs with their speculation that unhappiness is due to the huge number of options that women have today. The options collection creates a whirlpool of "What If's" and women are exhausted from trying to do everything. I wonder, in addition to the options, if it's The Potent Spell. According to that book, scientists and doctors have been telling women for a very long time that their efforts outside of the home, beyond the hearth, are futile and mis-guided, and -- at the same time -- that their role as mothers is the absolutely most important thing they can do for society, and it is so very easy to screw it up.

Now, with two out of the nest and the other one flying soon, it appears that my re-defined mothering job is to dole out money, send little love-packages, and worry when appropriate (I don't have time to worry any more about kids getting mugged in big cities, and anyway, all the worry in the world didn't stop it from happening). So, now what, for me? If I can claim any success at all at mothering, it may be that my children do not live at home AND still communicate with me regularly. They seem to be able to find friends, make a social life, clean their own bathrooms, feed themselves using kitchen appliances, and earn positive remarks from important people in their new lives (daughter got a promotion, son made the Dean's List). My "potent spell" may be mitigated by my success, but I can't fill my days considering that success or checking up those successful children. I think that if I were left bereft of a purpose in life, I would get very unhappy. So, I'm flopping around emotionally a little bit, trying to see the path that goes on into my older-age. There are a lot of options in existence these days -- but I'm thinking that there are several I can't see yet.

I seek answers from friends, I look eagerly for comments to this blog, I collect various articles about "successful aging." Sometimes I find a clue in what I'm reading. Dear Mr. Jefferson: Letters from a Nantucket Gardener includes this declaration: "Gardening is an undiluted pleasure for me. I enjoy every phase of it from pawing through seed catalogs to harvesting the fruit.... I like feeling the sun in my bones and clean air in my lungs, I like feeling my muscles stretch till they ache.... The act of gardening repays its labors...."

Children may not do that. Wage-Work often doesn't have a recognizable return on your investment. Marriage may have its moments, but it does not have a day-by-day guarantee. If my 101-year old paternal grandmother and her 93-year old maternal counterpart were any indication, living longer just to be "old" is not worth the candles on the cake: it's lonely and frustrating on many levels. So, even growing old "successfully" may not have a return on the labor involved (is our societal obsession with youth a new "potent spell"?). The Nantucket Gardener writes to Jefferson, who said at age 68 "Though an old man, I am but a young gardener," that we are all young gardeners: "Gardeners are ageless and the gardens we create go on forever." I have to figure out, I think, how to be the Best Of Myself, regardless of age, children, marital happiness, or any known measure of success. I want to be like humus: ever bettering and entertaining more worms, and contributing to the rampant growth in those who come in contact with me. The new potting room in the basement now has shelves of canned vegs, a cupboard of seeds, and lots of potential. The piccalilli jars all sealed yesterday, I got the rainbow tulips planted, and I ate a handful of raspberries. What's next?