Now It Can Be Told

Over the past few days, I’ve been part of several Zoom celebrations for Peggy’s centennial birthday with dozens of friends from decades back and some we’ve just connected with in the past few years. All are rightfully in awe of her most remarkable embrace of life and effervescent spirit.

I’ve been blessed by her enthusiasms and capaciousness for over forty years. In that time, I’ve taken meticulous notes explaining the phenomenon of her however since I can’t read my own hand-writing they’re of no use. 

Something was brought home to me as I asked myself what accounts for her longevity and specialness. Peggy has been rescued several times over the years.

Her father died when she was three and her mother five years later in October, 1929, a few days before the stock market crash. The aunt and uncle who took her in and raised her lost their two homes, apartment building and factory during the Depression. Later, she was a mother, without benefit of clergy (as they used to say), at twenty-five and then rescued again by another uncle who flew her and her baby daughter to Los Angeles.

I mention all this not as a hard-luck story but as her good fortune which has become the pattern of her life. If you get through the refiner’s fire you are all the more resilient. Peggy sees the world as a redeeming place.

So now I’m ready to spill the beans. When I hear someone say to live in the moment the words fall limp to my deaf ears. However, in baseball hitters say when they live in the moment the ball looks larger and hittable. Kobe Bryant used to report how the game slowed down and he forgot about yesterday’s loss or tomorrow’s big game. Peggy actually lives this way.

On Friday our friend Phyliss asked me if Peggy was excited about the big weekend coming up. I thought for a minute and reported that she showed no sign of that. She neither rehearses dreadful news nor anticipates good news.

Translation: she trusts her resources will respond accordingly. If the message is burdensome, she knows she can deal with it; if it is exhilarating, she is altogether present to meet it spontaneously. She has been able to retain the face of wonder which I've seen on our great grandchildren as they meet the world for the first time.

She is at home in that space of unknowing, welcoming the unexpected. She walks her walk emotionally unarmored. For all this Peggy leaves her signature and the air is charged.  

She lives with a minimum of what ifs. There is a downside to the Girl Scout motto, Be Prepared. Troubling over the possibility of rain on the picnic takes its toll. Instead she trusts her well-spring which confers empowerment sufficient to carry the day. Peggy has found her way to that bubbling place within. That effervescence has continued to quench her for over one hundred years.