Bob the Cat, a member of our household enjoying extensive lap privileges during our stay-at-home time, is said to enjoy the gift of nine lives.  I might guess that her adoption from a pet shelter represented the transition from one of her lives into a new one, perhaps even salvation.  Currently the only risk factor in her life is a mild swat when she treads across the keyboard or nudges the shift key with her elbow, creating typographic chaos.

I’ve been thinking about the possibility that I, too, have received the gift of more than one life.  This is the sort of thing that comes to mind in the vast leisure hours of voluntary quarantine.  Let me explain how I’ve imagined my three distinct lives.

Life Number One:  birth to age twenty.  These years established the fundamentals of my physical, mental, moral, spiritual, and educational being.  Unique to this time, for me, was being a part of a nuclear family on the move.  Following my father’s military career, we traveled around the world.  For the first sixteen years of my life, I encountered languages, cultures, cuisines, and customs out of the mainstream of America. If nothing else, I learned adaptability, curiosity, and how to count to ten in Arabic, Japanese, Spanish, French, and German.  The capstone of this First Life was a liberal arts education at a distinctly non-elite college where I thrived in intellectual adventure.

Life Number Two:  Age twenty to age sixty-two.  The unique feature of the longest period of my life so far was my employment, immediately out of college, as a writer at Hallmark Cards.  This extremely stable and creative environment provided a dependable income, “career rewards” for the future, enjoyable work, and in short order, a husband.  Clearly there’s more to tell about these forty-two years than I can even begin to discuss here.  Suffice to say that in a cocoon of privilege, my creative and spiritual self evolved, my literary life flowered, and my roving nature found fulfillment in travel, further educational challenges, and a certain amount of career achievement.  Life Number Two concluded with the death of my husband after thirty-eight years of marriage, and retirement.

Life Number Three:  Age sixty-two to the present.  At the beginning of this time, with the severing of ties to the past (leaving a lifelong job, selling my only ever home) I couldn’t help feeling a sense of freedom and autonomy.  Nobody was telling me what to do with my time, my financial resources, or my feelings.  I liked that.  After a period of grieving in unpredictable ways, while managing a great deal of change in a very short time, I felt just fine, thank you.  Many new choices, and a sense of contentment, gave me a rosy view of a happy and independent future.  Then…I fell in love.  What happened to “never again”??  After five years of postponing the decision, Bill and I got married.  Without intending insult to the previous husband and the earlier marriage, this new person and everything about what’s happening now is 180 degrees different.  It’s Life Number Three.

You’ve heard the quote, “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”  From the sketch above, you can guess that my essential disposition is “happy.”  In addition, during each life, I’ve had remarkably good luck.  I’ve also made reasonably good choices—at least choices I could turn into “happy” one way or another.

Do I anticipate Life Number Four?  Yes, I do.  As with Lives One through Three, there’s no possibility of predicting what the circumstances will be.  Gratefully, I have both reasons and resources not to feel fearful.  I hope that part of my confidence rests in the admonition of St. Teresa of Avila printed on a card I keep at hand all the time:  “Let nothing disturb you…all things are passing away…God never changes…God alone suffices.”  Meanwhile, as chaos rages in the whole world, I sit here with Bob the Cat in my lap, reaching out as best I can in hopes that my life, whatever its details, will always count for good.