Cancer Survivor!

.....I don't want to be remembered as a cancer survivor! A guy who "almost got run over by a freight train"! That is such a little story, just a tiny bit of who I am. You may call me "Lucky",

that would be far more defining. I could not have picked a better time to get this cancer and probably not a better cancer to get. It was the worst season in my memory for the garden, the

tomatoes sat in the cold and rain. The economy is mush and I wouldn't have worked much anyway. I picked last year for early Social Security and the checks just keep coming my way!

Last year I "discovered" painting and now have a whole new way to do the art I like to do!

Lucky cancer isn't a cement truck and I have plenty of time to reminisce, think back through my life at leisure, picking and choosing which pebbles to keep and which to throw.

I am especially lucky because I realize that a lot of this wasn't luck at all. It is interesting how two people can have the exact same experience and come to different conclusions. Much like two people, given a hundred dollars will buy different things. One lives, one dies. One loves the other is lost.

Sometimes I think I am like "Popeye", I just am what I am. The truth is most of my life was on purpose. I was the director of this play and this is where I have wanted to be. None of it came fast but with each step I knew where I was going. My house is big and sturdy and paid for and that has always been the central player in this theater. I have my own little island, house, garden, my shop, the greenhouse and the little garden pool. I am surrounded by flowers and tomatoes. I have never borrowed money against my house; it has never been in jeopardy, always there, this place I call home.

I can do anything I like, and spend much of my time without a plan of any sort. Some days I think I will write again and if no story appears I might weld in my shop, create from steel and stone that which I have always been. Other days I might play at painting. That too is fun because I know no rules and do what I want. Spring will be here soon enough and the Earth will call for my assistance. I will spend a lot of time in my garden and the greenhouse. I am picking up old habits and learning to read again, slowly, devouring pages, ingesting paragraphs, looking at the words.

I think back over my life and realize that roads not travelled I could not have gone on. They were not my roads; I would not have been me. The roads I did take and where I had to make my own have lead me to where I needed to be. Free, because I choose to define it that way.

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