I could use a map

I could use a map. Do you know how to get where I want to go?

I keep seeing a cottage in Nova Scotia, where I settle down in my golden years. I’m alone, or I’m not. Either way, I’m content. I’ve learned long ago that happiness comes and goes, waxes and wanes, and contentment is a far truer friend.

I keep seeing myself there, at this near-magic cottage, at 70. I’m laughing and chasing my chickens around the cottage, hunting for eggs. People from all walks of life and love come and go, bringing casseroles, making themselves at home, sipping wine and having soup (I somehow know how to cook soup by the time I’m 70).

Elderly dogs of all sizes wander about, looking for head pats and belly rubs and snacks. Cats slip in and out of the loose screen door. I make art. I make magic silver amulets that I send my visitors back into the world with. My daughters come to visit with their friends and lovers and babies. They laugh and shake their heads, but they are proud of me nonetheless.

The melancholy, the insane, the anxious, the lost, the wounded, the sullied, the absurd—everyone knows they are safe at my cottage. There’s no judgment there, just warmth and acceptance and forgiveness and touch. I rock babies all the time—maybe my grandchildren, maybe not. Every baby is my grandchild.

I am the wise woman with gray hair down to my bottom. I go skinny-dipping at night, under the moon and stars, on the slippery rocks below my meadow. When I get back to the cottage, chilled and dripping, there are bright quilts and comfy couches and woodstoves and wonderful books and real people everywhere. Tears and wine and laughter flow like three streams coming together to form a river.

The air smells like salt water and lavender. I have what I need. I am not restless. Selling a book has long ceased to matter. It has all long ceased to matter—the getting, the doing, the becoming. I look in the mirror and I see beauty running through me, rivulets streaming down, pooling in the wrinkles, the sunken skin. I am not the endpoint, and I finally know and believe that there is no endpoint for this beauty. I smile, because it will go on long after I’m there to see it.

I need to get there.

If you have a map, let me know, would you?