Strategic Plan

When I am an old(er) woman,

I shall wear yoga pants with impunity and t-shirts of the softest Pima cotton and flip flops every day.

I’ll pull my coarse white hair into a ponytail without combing it.

Or make a thick braid to fit under the sloppy straw hat I’ll wear when I garden in the mornings, after having my fill of strong coffee and bird watching on a porch.

I’ll take time to think deep, complex thoughts and scribble with a pink or purple pen in the margins of difficult books that will take days or weeks to read.

I’ll write essays and 10-minute plays.

I’ll paint and knit and strum silly songs on my beautiful ukulele.

My mind will grow so large from intellectual and artistic activity that, for balance, I will have to take on quotidian tasks like sweeping the sidewalk, but in my nightgown for humor.

The neighbors will say Oh god she’s at it again, I can see her underwear through that rag.

I’ll refuse to hurry.

I’ll eat potato chips for breakfast and hang over the sink sucking on a mango pit with juice running down my arms, but it won’t matter because there’s nowhere I’ll need to be.

No workaday frustrations to spoil my mood, no meetings to attend, no reports to write.

I’ll count the stars at night and I’ll always know if the moon is a luminous ball or a slice of iridescence or something in between.

Then I’ll sleep the sleep of the unstressed and rise refreshed to don my dirty yoga pants and relish another day.

(With apologies to Jenny Joseph)