Make Your Dreams Come True in Whatever Time You Have Left, No Matter Who Says No

I have always been stubborn about doing what I want to do

At age 18, mother didn’t speak to me for a couple of weeks after I got accepted to college three hours away. She also refused to give me her financial information for my application. She eventually caved, and I worked and scrounged my way through the university of my choice.

At age 40, I divorced the husband who wouldn’t have a baby with me, found a man who would, and became a single mother at age 41. My son is now 32.

At age 68, I took my long yearned for trip to Italy by myself. My sister and son didn’t want to go because they said I would need too much help from them. They didn’t expect me to go alone.

I call it my FU trip to Italy. Never expect that I won’t do what I want to do.

I had a bad knee, which is why they thought I would need too much help. I also packed too heavy, so I left clothes and anything else I could spare in hotel rooms in Florence and Mariposa.

If I could have thrown the entire suitcase and its contents out the window I would have. I did drop it down stairs at the train station, yelled for everyone to get out of the way, and a nice Italian man retrieved it for me. Embarrassed, but determined, I continued on.

However, because of the bad knee, and walking five miles a day through Florence and Mariposa, and the lugging of suitcase and backpack, I ended each day in full body pain. It was entirely worth it.

I broke both my ankles at the same time two years later

Slightly over a year after breaking both ankles, enduring surgery and physical therapy to learn how to walk again, I took another dream trip to Cuba to attend a Salsa dance convention.

While not entirely alone, as I was with a group of five people I barely knew, I stubbornly did my own thing most of the time. Which included hanging out more with the Cuban dancers than the Europeans, Canadians and Americans.

When I travel, especially to an unusual place, I get to know the locals and as much about their lives as I can. It’s more difficult in Cuba, as citizens are not allowed in hotel rooms of foreigners, and there are other restrictions. If they take you to their homes, they or a relative often cooks a huge meal, then asks for money from you after. Cubans are transactional with visitors, since the U.S. has cut them off from not only commerce with us, but also commerce with companies based anywhere that are American. Still, I made friends and danced five hours each day.

My latest dream adventure has been to move to Santa Fe

Santa Fe, New Mexico is my spiritual home. I’ve had an overwhelming desire to live here since I was 23 years old. On that first visit, I got out of the car on the mountain, stood in a stand of aspens, listening to their quaking music, and cried. I was home.

I was stopped at every opportunity to move here, either through fear, responsibility, or the men I was with. At 23, I applied for a teaching job there during my first visit. They hired me. My husband didn’t think he could get work there, or maybe just didn’t love it like I do, and wouldn’t move.

Another husband left me for another woman, as the first one had. After they married he moved to Santa Fe briefly, and couldn’t understand why I cried when he called to tell me.

I met my son’s father on the Santa Fe Plaza. Plazas in New Mexico are Spanish in nature, and form a circle within a square in the middle of town. People gather there daily, and all the festivals are held in them. I was there for Indian Market and Fiesta in 1992, when his father walked up to me and flirted. I was in pain from a separation, high on the very air of Santa Fe, and vulnerable. Especially to a man who, three months later wanted to have a baby with me. No other man ever had.

I’m still ecstatic that I got pregnant and have my amazing son. His father and I didn’t stay together though, so I didn’t move to Santa Fe then. My family and friends in Texas were the village I needed to raise my child. We visited his father consistently until he moved back to Philadelphia. There’s more to his story, but he is irrelevant to the rest of this story.

When my son reached high school age, I attempted to move. My son, though, is a basketball player, and he didn’t see opportunity in playing in Santa Fe, so we didn’t move. I wanted him to have every chance, both academically and athletically, and Santa Fe public schools were notoriously bad then. When he was college age, he got accepted into the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, an hour from Santa Fe.

I had hight hopes, as did his father, who unexpectedly moved to Albuquerque thinking, I guess, that we would all be a family. Too little too late.

UNM has a world class basketball team, but my son wouldn’t have made it as a walk-on. He didn’t have his height yet at age seventeen, but grew to six feet, five inches his first year of college in Texas, where he became a star player.

In 2024, I got breast cancer

I had the “best” breast cancer you can have. Zero grade, and small enough to be completely removed. The chances of recurrence are so low, I don’t have to take Tamoxifen or get radiation or chemotherapy.

Still, surgery which included a breast reduction was tough enough to make me think about whatever time I have left. Did I want to spend it anywhere other than Santa Fe?

All my relatives, like most of my exes, are in Texas. My son lived with me recently, partly to take care of me. He is now on a path to return to his dream state of California. I won’t stand in his way, and he didn’t stand in mine.

I had surgery for breast cancer on January 15, 2025. I bought a house and moved to Santa Fe April 12, 2025. I live alone, with two cats, and am the happiest I’ve been since the day my son was born.

Full circle

My son and one sister were here with me for Christmas. She was with me as my birth coach, and says she is the only real father he has had. She’s not wrong.

I took him to many of the places we frequented during his childhood. Some things have changed of course. The bowling alley his father would take him to now houses Meow Wolf. They kept the bowling pin sign, but the rest is an artists’ wonderland.

We three wandered the Plaza, through trees brightly lit with Christmas lights. On Christmas Eve, we joined the throngs to walk Canyon Road, filled with art galleries, lit with luminarias campfires, buildings and walkways outlined with farolitos. Santa Fe IS Christmas.

I even began my writing journey here Christmas of 2018.

From standing in the first stand of Aspens and crying, to sitting in front of my own kiva fireplace many years later, writing this story, has been quite the journey. Nearly an entire lifetime has passed. My dream has come true. My stubbornness paid off. I’m finally home.

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This post was previously published on Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age.

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