I had a thought tonight while pondering mid-life as my family has faced quite the challenges of late:
If life were a poker game, what card would I love to trade?
I can just see it now. All my 40-50ish (and beyond) aged friends would be sitting around a round table. Some of us would be drinking mojitos. Others would be drinking Ginger ale on ice. Some of would be smokers, the others vegans. Fat ones and skinny ones. All are welcome here! Some would be staunch conservatives, and others would be die-hard liberals. Some of would be married, some widowed, some never married. Perhaps some would be “questioning” all that.
We’d swap stories of our current status in life, trade success and horror stories of our marriages, our kids, our parents, our careers, our faith, or lack there of (any of the above). And we’d talk about our health. The entree to the former appetizers we’d linger on now for a while.
It’d be like a poker game for the post-menopausal mid-life crisis club. Except that for us it’s not a crisis. It’s standard fair for this stage of the game. Mid-life. Not young anymore. But young enough to really want to LIVE still. Tender enough to still cry. Strong enough to perservere when we’re done.
We’ve seen some tragedies. Some have lost parents. Or breasts. Or ovaries. Or our homes. Our marriage. Our jobs. Our sanity on occasion…sometimes we simply lose “it”! In spectacular fashion even (the icing on the cake!) Because it’s all just so much to keep up with:
Jobs, responsibilities, family members with issues, trials, health, chores, endless ways to communicate, finances, weight, and the ever-present thought:
My TIME is running out. Not yet God. Not yet.
So we’ll sit around the table and play a little game of poker, trading stories:
“Oh, I can top that! I tell you what, I’ll trade you my leaky silicone tatas for your surgically stolen ones thanks to your BRACA results!”
“Ummm, no I think I’ll trade w/Sue over here because she said she’d give me her perky pets if I’d take her husband with the wandering eye and since I don’t need a man, that’s fine with me.”
“Oh yeah,” says Emmy who lost her husband at 47 to a sudden heart. “No, I’ll give you my somewhat deflated tatas AND I’ll raise you one and give you my nice house that is paid for free and clear from the insurance settlement. I miss Fred so much, so very very much.”
“Are you kidding?” Jane pops in who at 57 is back to where she was fresh out of college, renting an apartment after her husband became disabled and couldn’t afford to support the family after 30 years of valiant efforts. A stay-at-home mom all these years, she now finds herself working at Target, grateful, that she is able to help out at all. She is so tired, but doing the best she can. “I’d give up my tatas to have a home, and especially to just rest some times. I’m so tired!”
“Um…I don’t know” Linda says. “That might be a bad deal!” She’s thinking she could trade her paid for home, and may consider consider trading her husband, okay only for a moment. After all, Phil drinks way too much, has a red hot temper and at least Jane’s man is so loving, so kind to her all the time.
Round and round we’d all go. Sometimes pining for the good graces we weren’t privileged to receive. Grateful for the trials we were spared. But at the end of the night, there’d be no winners. No losers. We’d simply fold. Together.
We’d be the way we were when we first sat down to play this game. All those years ago. Before the botox. Before the bankruptcy. Before the cancer. Before the addiction. Before the coffins and the good-byes that came too soon…parents, spouses…..a child. That one trumped everything.
And yet we are all still here. The fortunate ones, anyway. The blessed ones already left us. And they are waiting. Smiling. Willing us to go on one more day. Endure one more trial. Wait patiently on that which you can not possibly know, see, much less understand. Consider the joy set BEFORE us as we suffer. And trust. God has us! He is for us! Oh, how we get to practice that, lest we lose our minds totally.
And keep on loving our families, each other and counting so many blessings as we bet our chips on the tales from our lips. With dignity, grace, and strength, we keep on keeping on at Poker Game of Lifetime!
Deal me in!
LIZ LOGIC 