Sheep

Someone I know died recently. I didn’t know her well. By that I mean that we weren’t friends, but we were friendly. She worked down the street from me. She’d stop by the bakery for tea and goodies. Sometimes with her husband, and sometimes alone while on her lunch break. 

This woman had grey hair, a soft smile, and was probably in her early sixties. She retired around the same time I moved north. I know that her hope was that retirement would bring with it more time on the island. She and her husband had a place there and she loved the sea, the flowers, and the peace.

She sent me a Christmas card one year. It made me tear up. Such a thoughtful gesture from someone I didn’t know all that well. When I learned of her passing, I was shaken. 

Perhaps it’s just a story I told myself, but I in my mind I recall her sincere excitement about retired life. It would be a chance to enjoy their place outside of the city, slow down, and focus on what really matters. Her death meant that all that was cut short. Or at least, that’s what I imagine. 

A few weeks ago, some friends and I were talking about being grown-ups. Finances, home ownership, health care, and education for your children, if you have them. One friend shared that he’s devoting his days, most of his days, 12-20 hours of his days, to work. His intention is to work hard now so that when he’s ready for a family, he’ll be able to give them the best of the best.

When I heard the news of the woman’s death, I was reminded that nothing in life is a given. This future my friend is striving for isn’t a given, just as much as toes in the sand, paddles in the water, and afternoons reading were not a given for the woman I knew.  

One could say that all this boils down to the importance of living life in the present. We all know the age-old cliché, but what is left unsaid is that there is so much in the present that is attached to the future. We plan, we save, we prepare. For a family, for a future, for retirement. It’s not realistic, or even reasonable to suggest we forgo all of that in favour of living for only the moment we are currently in. 

While down south recently, I had a conversation with a stranger. A friend of a friend. Our brief tête-à-tête was an incidental part of an evening with friends and my husband. We were in the midst of a ceramics workshop and through laughter and chatter with the group I was with, our conversation began. It started when I told the facilitator how it must feel so wonderful that her passion and work are intimately linked. I told her I really didn’t know what I wanted to do when I ‘grow up’ and then I laughed and said I want to be a sheep farmer. The laughter was a crutch, a buffer against potential raised eyebrows or judgement. It’s easier to play it off as a joke or a flippant comment, but, in actuality, sheep farming is something I’m deeply drawn to. Or at least, I think I am.

The stranger chimed in. She’d done a sheepskin tanning course a few years ago. I took a stab in the dark and asked if the course had been in northern California. She said yes. Then again, thinking there wasn’t a possible chance I knew where she’d gone, I asked if it was Shele’s (Hollow Bone) course. Yes again. Years ago, I stumbled on Shele’s work and was inspired to reach out and tell her of my interest in sheep farming. I was welcome to come work on the ranch or do a workshop, she told me. At the time, I imagined it. I thought about it but discounted the idea almost instantly. Who would look after the dogs? What about work? And the cost? It wasn’t a reasonable idea. But the idea didn’t let go of me.

In the moment, at the ceramic workshop, I looked at this person – a stranger – and without knowing her circumstances, was amazed that she’d had the courage and the gumption to do this. Something that I was deeply drawn to doing, and still just couldn’t do. Wouldn’t. Didn’t. I thought about it: the hard-to-let-go-of belief that this isn’t the right time, or that it’ll be easier or better or right at some point down the road.

This brief conversation, the longer conversation I had with friends about the future, and the woman’s death all came at roughly the same time. They also came around the same time as an appointment with my specialist. A medical appointment in which I learned that my condition has changed slightly, such that it required interferon injections, weekly bloodwork, and more frequent monitoring. It's a livable condition, I tell myself, and then, in the back of my mind, is the reminder that part of this disease is that there’s no promise of longevity. All of this made me think. About time, circumstances, preparation, and really, what we aim to get out of life.

I thought about the concept of retirement. Work hard until I’m a senior and then live out my ‘golden years’. If I think of Grace and Frankie, or the Golden Girls, I find the idea appealing, but if I shift my thinking to the fact that by their sixties, most Americans live with numerous health problems, my perspective changes. I wonder if the societally acceptable life trajectory demanding work and productivity and the acquisition of wealth or at least a pension during one’s ‘best’ years. Sure, ‘best’ is relative and not a given either, and yes there is is a physiological reason we do more, produce more, and work more when we’re young, but what about the idea of the reward at the end?  

This makes me wonder if balance during our working years is more important than I thought it was. And if that balance comes at a cost, a literal cost, how do we reconcile that? Does it mean we work longer, or just that we resign ourselves to earning less. If we work less, maybe we have to be satisfied with having less, too. I guess it all serves as a reminder that the physical objects we possess are nothing in comparison to the time, the moments, and the encounters that we have the privilege to experience. And if fewer things mean more of those, then maybe that’s where the compromise lies. 

I don’t want to be scared of what’s to come. I don’t want to envision a future marked by frailty and illness. But I do want to avoid putting things off for a time that’s “better”. I want to discover and embrace and do the things that interest me today not tomorrow. And I want to give myself permission to lose interest in things, too. Maybe I’ll learn I’m not interested in sheep farming after all, and then so be it. If I don’t try, I’ll never know.

So I guess all this ruminating means I’d better sign up for the sheepskin tanning course.