My friend Rose is named after my favourite flower. She is also one of my favourite people. Our friendship has been a gradual one, forged by the dual coincidences of having children who fell in love with each other at a time when our own marriages were ending. Our bond has endured beyond that of our offspring.
Our conversation is as wide-ranging as our neighbourhood rambles, and we take turns introducing each other to new paths, recipes and ways of looking at the world. Rose and I share many things but religion is not one of them. Her faith is a part of her being, as my lack of it is a part of mine, but it has no greater bearing on our friendship than our comparative shoe sizes.
We share a fascination for the human condition and the joys and challenges of being independent older women. Our journeys towards that independence could not have been more different. Becoming single in my fifties gave me a new lease of life and an optimism about the future: for Rose it was a time of grief and loss.
We weathered our simultaneous storms in our own ways, but throughout that time I came to understand the strength Rose found in her faith and her church community. We both felt a benign force at play: for Rose, a sense of not being alone in her travails; for me, an optimism and an unwavering faith in my ability to rise above the challenges.
Fifteen years on, our storms have passed, but a turbulent year marked by the loss of a beloved parent, a move and some questionable life decisions have left me feeling unsettled by the uncertainty of what lies ahead.
Such feelings are new to me. But with age comes greater self-awareness, along with the ability and the opportunity to adapt to changed circumstances. We can work to still our inner critic and be kinder to ourselves; to accept our past actions and let them go.
We are able to identify the people and activities that give us joy: in my case, those that foster my long-dormant obsession with classical music. I have carved out a niche as an occasional music reviewer and have plans to move my old upright piano out of storage and start playing again.
I am not a gardener but I have lately bought myself a trowel, some gloves and a few bags of potting mix to ‘green’ my surroundings. Rose and I meet regularly at the local farmer’s market and revel in the seasonal flowers and vegetables we bring home. When last week’s sunflowers started to droop, I delighted myself and amused my son by cutting off their smiling heads and placing them in a row of individual pots on the dining table.
Gazing at them now, I notice a single yellow tendril in one of the sunflowers slowly unfurl and sway blindly in the direction of the sunlight. Transfixed, it takes me a moment to realise it’s a living creature – a tiny camouflaged worm – and not a miracle of nature that I’m witnessing.
Sunflowers are one of the joys of my life that Rose now shares. I can’t wait to tell her about my ‘spiritual’ moment with the golden tendril. Each in our own way and at our own pace, Rose and I are growing towards the light, at ease with the journey and the company in which we’re travelling.