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Self-reliance. That was the keyword, the one thing that could pull you through any crisis fate chose to hurl at you. To be yourself. Independent. Not witless. Still able to make my own decisions and plot the course of what remains of my life. I do not need my children. Knowing their faults, recognizing their shortcomings, I love them all, but I do not need them.
“Richard, do you ever think about luxury?” she asked him. “I don’t crave it, if that’s what you mean.” “Luxury, I think, is the total fulfilment of all five senses at once. Luxury is now. I feel warm; and, if I wish, I can reach out and touch your hand. I smell the sea and, as well, somebody inside the hotel is frying onions. Delicious. I am tasting cold beer, and I can hear gulls, and water lapping, and the fishing boat’s engine going chug-chug-chug in the most satisfactory sort of way.”
A ring was the accepted sign of infinity, eternity. If her own life was that carefully described pencil line, she knew all at once that the two ends were drawing close together. I have come full circle, she told herself, and wondered what had happened to all the years. It was a question which, from time to time, caused her some anxiety and left her fretting with a dreadful sense of waste. But now, it seemed, the question had become irrelevant, and so the answer, whatever it was, was no longer of any importance.
Happiness is making the most of what you have, and riches is making the most of what you’ve got.
