Peg Kerr's Journal

This month I will be celebrating a very particular birthday. With my new health insurance, I am now eligible for a program that enables me to go back to the YWCA.

I am absolutely overjoyed about this. I had to give up my Y membership when my job was cut in half with the pandemic, five years ago, and I've missed it dreadfully. I dug my Y membership card out of a drawer (I even had an old towel card that still had some punches left on it) and presented myself at the Y membership desk with my new Silver Sneakers number and was duly reinstated.

Now I regularly use the treadmill, rowing machine, weight machines, and especially—oh joy—the sauna. I am sore, because I have not been diligent as I should about using weights, but I am determined to do so now.

This is definitely one perk that has come with growing older.

Background: a sauna. Underneath the sauna light are the words "Eliminating racism, empowering women, YWCA. In front of the sauna bench is a rowing machine. Hand weights rest on the sauna bench. Lower center: A silver sneaker.

Silver Sneakers



Click on the links to see the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

I read a Facebook post essay this week that gave me much food for thought. The writer recounted his experience going through his possessions as he and his wife were downsizing, and his realization that he achieved peace and satisfaction at his discovery that what he had, in the end, was ENOUGH. Someone in the comments recounted the tale of Joseph Heller the time he went to a party at the home of hugely rich hedge fund manager. Another guest told Heller that the host had made more money in the past year than Heller had made from thirty years of his royalties from his book Catch-22.

Heller retorted that on the contrary, he had something much preferable that his host could never hope to have. He had enough.

The essay made me think about the line I discovered in a list of life goals that Rob wrote out in his twenties. He wanted to be not poor--but not rich, either. He just wanted enough.

That impressed me. I thought it was rather wise.

I realized over the course of this week that in fact, I have been mulling this concept over in a number of different aspects of my life.

Of course, I have been posting quite a bit over the past few years about culling possessions in the aftermath of Rob's death. What is the right amount of things, of stuff, to have around? How much is enough?

What is the right balance to strike in things like my diet? My exercise program?

I have been thinking about my neighborhood, because there has been, unhappily, a rise in crime in my area, and I have been thinking about personal security. How much of a sense of safety is enough? (I have in the past jokingly described myself as a Gryffindor with high security needs).

I have always said that part of the appeal I find in tarot is that it emphasizes and guides toward moderation.

Edited to add: see also my comment about the children’s book The King’s Equal.

The thinking I've done about this helped determine the design of the card: back when Rob was alive, when I was most exasperated with the glut of his possessions, I used to say that if it were not for his insistence on keeping so much stuff around, my bedroom would ideally only contain a simple bed and a vase with pussy willows.

Enough



Click here to read about the 52 card project and see the year's gallery.