Casting Fate

Still reflecting on my thirties   Lived in the Twin Cities during this entire decade   The day I descended on this metro area, Vince Guaraldi's Cast Your Fate to the Wind played on the radio   I remember how pleased I was to have a jazz station for the first time ever in my life   (indeed this might challenge my increased longing for a pastural setting, once again; a less than urban dwelling   still, there is now streaming audio over the Internet, provided my country living dream comes complete with wireless)  This same song played this morning as I drove west across I-94  Dean Magraw's version coming up on shuffle on my iPod  Dean, this treasured Minneapolis musician whose own life was put on pause this past year   signs that he is beginning to emerge from his battle with cancer   There are times when you have to just cast your fate to the sound rushing tree tops   and times when you must actively work to create the life you want   So my thirties were mostly spent blowing in the wind   Though I did divorce early in the decade   Was that a choice or a necessity   the writing already on the wall that first day in St. Paul, listening to Vince   My mother bought me a sewing machine for my 30th birthday  I thought I was entering a new era of domesticity   Instead the sewing machine was boxed up and moved with me to my single-parent town home the following year    It followed to the attic of my one and one-half story tudor-style cottage, where solo I raised my now-teenaged children    and to a colonial home with my new husband   still to be unpacked   I want to unpack the sewing machine in my forties   I will not leave that fate to the wind   I want to have full movement of my left shoulder back  (I realized today that I assess my shoulder's condition based upon how much it hurts to reach the ticket machine through my car window each time I enter the Children's Hospital parking ramp; which is, in fact, far too often but that is a fate I must leave to the wind)  I will not leave my shoulder's fate to the wind   I will own more colorful pieces of vintage Fiestaware and will resume my former favorite pastime of antiquing (all but lost throughout my entire thirties)   I will learn sign language    Now know: ball, balloon, and, or, feel, happy, sad, sleep, eat, drink, hungry, thirsty, cry, laugh, nice, clean, dirty, bird, dog, cat, fish, apple, pear, banana, share, friend, mom, dad, baby, grandpa, grandma, boy, girl, you, I, cold, hot, sit, stand, all done, no, yes, milk, juice, thank you, please, go, and stop as well as the alphabet--but I do not yet know the sign for love   perhaps once I do, I can compose a poem in ASL   I will make a difference in the lives of the disabled children lost or ignored in this world   These children whose fate is left, everyday, to a cold, unkind wind or worse, a hot, relentless one   Was it the wind that brought them to my attention   blown in front of my nose I too once ignored, as easily as most Americans ignore the war that has carried on since the beginning of my thirties  Always walking the tightrope between awareness and apathy   between artisan and corporate manager   between urban and natural worlds   between living small and spending large   between love and indifference   I walk   I reflect   I lift my hand into the wind, throwing up seeds