Stick Horse Cowgirls

I am a baby-boomer/sixties-to-eighties-rock-lovin’ old person.  I am sitting at the computer listening to my Pandora “Dire Straits” Station.  (I have an opera station, too, so don’t judge me too harshly). Along came the old Journey hit, “ Don’t Stop Believing .”  It made me think of a post— inspiration !  You just never know how the Muse will strike, right? Journey said: She Took the Midnight Train Goin’ Anywhere Wow . These lyrics made me think about advice I wish young women everywhere would heed.  It is advice borne of my longish life, tinged with sorrow now softened, and of my very-long work as a divorce lawyer.  Ahhhhh , if only they would listen to me. As I age I am learning the importance of living life intentionally…making conscious decisions about what I like, what I want from life, how I want to live it.  So many of us, women especially (hang with me, here), just drift through days, taking life’s midnight train to anywhere....

Hearken back to your Greek-mythology/literature-study days.  Do you recall Cassandra?  She was the daughter of King Priam and his Queen Hecuba of Troy (Remember?  Iliad ??) A stunningly-beautiful woman, she caught the eye of the god Apollo; and it’s always a dangerous thing to catch one of those gods’ eyes. Apollo, so infatuated was he, bestowed upon Cassandra the gift of prophecy, of foresight.  And, then, when Cassandra did not react to Apollo in the way he desired (can you spell S-E-X?), he put a little twist on his gift to her.  He cursed the gift so that, although she was unfailingly right in her predictions, she would never be believed.  Her life was not good… This picture is supposed to be of Cassandra.  See how she’s tearing her hair out?  I thought about Cassandra the other day and wondered if the literary figure might be a metaphor for the wisdom of age. I sat in my office just this week, listening to a very wise older-than-...