"The sound of anything coming at you—a train, say, or the future —has a higher pitch than the sound of the same thing going away. . . I would like to hear your life as you heard it, coming at you, instead of hearing it as I do, a sober sound of expectations reduced, desires blunted, hopes deferred or abandoned, chances lost, defeats accepted, griefs borne. . . I would like to hear it as it sounded while it was passing."
Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

Whenever I go quiet for a length of time, I worry. Writing is one of the ways I process life. I don’t know what it means entirely, this silence right now, but these words from Stegner capture me when I happen upon them again. Perhaps I am not writing lest my aging, grieving voice be yet another “sober sound of expectations reduced, hopes abandoned, chances lost, griefs borne . . .” Writing to an Insta friend I’ve never met in person a few weeks ago, “I think God saves the hard part for last.” I’d read that statement years ago, unable now to find who to give credit for it. How do you stay you, the deep down you, all the way to the end? Her words in a summer card in my mailbox had been an encouragement, a balm, and I wanted to thank her. Isn’t that the best part about social media, this thing we love and hate, the unexpected connections? We take turns encouraging or carrying each other. Perhaps all I need to do is keep telling it “as it sounded while it was passing,” while there is still time. Be a faithful steward. What still matters? Yes, faithful to that. For as Buechner reminds, “My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours.”

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
life is  broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
-Langston Hughes, Dreams

Unless you’re Langston, talking about dreams can feel “fluffy,” like deciphering images in clouds or chasing fairy tales. Yet somehow these wide-awake dreams mysteriously remain a part of us, even shape us in very real ways. Perhaps Cinderella in all her fluffy fairytale-ness said it best after all. “A dream is a wish your heart makes.”

The girl sitting on the old porch steps looking up into a canopy of white lilacs, captured by their heady fragrance and heavy glowing clusters, knowing they will be part of her wedding someday. The twenty-year-old, raised on her parents love story, looking into the eyes of a gentle man and claiming him before they spoke. The young mama in a granny dress, baby on her hip, seeing herself in a classroom sharing her love of words, dressed like her favorite college professor in her long skirt, boots, and dangly turquoise earrings. The fifty-four-year-old English teacher with glasses resting on her bosom dreaming of writing and baking Cranberry Orange Scones in the old church at the end of the lake when she retires. The sixty-seven-year-old writer walking slow circles through the old cabin, soft knit hat covering her bald head, picturing herself well with new short white hair, jacket zipped to her chin, standing at an easel in the wind, painting the fields of tulips outside of Seattle. The seventy-year-old grandma planning writers’ weekends on the cabin porch above the water, sharing her love of words and the beauty of this place, with those Cranberry Orange Scones and good strong coffee, of course. Ah yes, these dreams and more. Some have come true. Others wait, still, in the wings.

Then there were our shared dreams. We had a few of those, one simple enduring one that never left us—living in this place, the old log cabin on the lake when we retired, caretaking it, repairing it, sharing it in our generation. We always knew deep down, even before we came, that we would need to build a little cottage on the property, too, that would be easier to live in when we were old, tight and warm with everything we would need on one floor. We were young when we came, fifty-seven and sixty-three, still hardy, enthusiastic, challenged by “making do.” Willing to dress warmer, rise through the night to feed the fire, turn our feet sideways to descend the attic bedroom stairs, foam and re-foam the spaces between the logs and floor where the little critters and the cold got in. Looking ahead, growing old looked like us at this age, but probably with a bit more gray. It felt miles away.

Rex is gone now, but for eighteen years, living in the cabin on the lake was even better than the dream. Despite the inconveniences and hardships, despite when the idyll met the real time and time again, it was always a grand adventure. The beauty fed us. The physical work healed us. After losing our big retirement project, we could afford to do only what we could do with our own hands. Our grand plans for restoration and building that cottage were gone. We lived in the cabin as the generations before us, on its terms. In the day-to-day living, the relinquishment to circumstances we could not change, there was a “purifying” of sorts. We discovered what was necessary and what was not. What fulfilled, what did not. What was bearable, and our limits. Somehow, that was a gift. We discovered that we would still choose each other, and that was enough. We grew older and gentler. Across our supper plates, we’d look at each other and feel content. Even in the last hard years Rex might turn and say quietly, “I love our life.”

A new granddaughter asked me her first summer visit to the cabin, “What advice can you give us having been married fifty-some years?” I had nothing profound, only the truth. “We were as happy when we had barely enough as when we had a lot.”

I’m at my computer looking out at this big blue lake, “working.” This beauty still feeds my soul. My new cabin is tight and warm, modern yet charming, light-filled and beautiful. Big enough to share, magical enough to inspire dreams. I must let myself love it as I loved the old. The girl who slept in a winter hat January and February in the old log cabin is the same one who climbs into her warm high bed in the new with a sigh of contentment. Grateful. I will never pretend to be anyone else. My only wish . . . that he were here to share it, to see how well our kids have taken care of me. He would be so proud.

 I’m seventy-seven. Gasp! It’s just a number. Do I still need to “hold fast to dreams,” keep dreaming? Absolutely. Dreams remind us who we are, move us forward every day, challenge lethargy and despair, tell us we believe in tomorrow . . . and yes, that it all still matters.

Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand, precious Lord
Lead me home.

-Thomas A Dorsey