Thinking more about the Tom Hanks interview.

These are scary times we live in. Threats from other countries, impeachment hearings in our own country, bombings, fires, floods, more fires, more tragedy. Yes we have a good economy and low unemployment but we also have a joker as POTUS and all that entails. And it entails a lot. It means we often wake up at 2:15 a.m. wide-eyed and afraid and we can't sleep until 20 minutes before the alarm goes off. It means we no longer trust anyone or anything except that stupid alarm clock and sometimes not even that. It means we are sad and marginally depressed.

It means we need to find something that will let us peer over the foxhole we have created for ourselves and not think we will be shot in the forehead.  Grim, yes, but just saying.

Thinking about Tom Hanks makes me feel better. Don't ask me why. He is just a guy, just one more person in the universe but when he said this about being a parent, I cried:  "Somewhere along the line, I figured out, the only thing really, eventually a parent can do is say I love you, there's nothing you can do wrong, you cannot hurt my feelings, I hope you will forgive me on occasion and what do you need me to do?  You offer that up to them. I will do anything I can possibly do in order to keep you safe. That's it. Offer that up and then just love them."

Of course, that's what I have been doing for the last 46 years but it's so difficult to know if that's enough and it is never enough. There is no way to keep anyone safe, we simply try to do our best.

Another reason the article hit home was because I am in the middle of packing all my crap again, moving again. Right now, in Santa Rosa, this is the 7th place I have lived in (not counting the week or two here or there in a friend's place or in a motel) since 2011.  This next move will be the 8th. Is it any wonder I feel dispassionate about the move and displaced? Hanks mentions that he moved a lot as a kid, he has nothing of his life when he was 5 or 6 years old. I can totally relate.... I have nothing much from my 20's or 30's, not to mention my childhood. I don't miss that, but I do recognize that it's odd. Sort of like a huge part of my past is covered with barely see-through white-out, foggy, not clear but there.

I pride myself on not having a lot of junk, not carrying much along the path, but having to pack it all up, finding small reminders of my late friend Martha, of my past vacations with my second husband, finding photos of my first marriage, it's dissembling in surprising ways. Did I fail at that part of my life? Did life fail me? Was I a good friend, am I a good friend, can I just shut the lid on that box and move on?

Ah, the vagaries of life. Maybe it's just my unsettledness of life right now that makes me cry about almost any and everything. But I still think that having Tom Hanks as my neighbor would be sweet.  As Mr. Rogers said, "Please won't you be my neighbor?" 

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