The Color Tour, Minimalists and Missed Opportunities

The director of our senior hall listens to her members. Last year I made a comment that I wish the center would offer a shorter color tour than the annual one that takes twelve hours. My dog’s kidneys are good for seven hours but I’d have to put him in a kennel to go on the longer trips and I’ve missed seeing the colors on country roads. This year she offered a half day trip and it sold out five times, meaning she was able to set up four additional days to take people up north for lunch, tree peeping and stops at an Amish bakery and a cheese factory. To my surprise, while on the bus she acknowledged the shorter color tours was my idea and I got a round of applause. I wish we could bottle up her expertise at running a senior hall and distribute it across the country. Her guiding principle is that we older people are no different than younger people; we enjoy life learning experiences and don’t want a center than only offers aging related stuff, bingo and trips to casinos.

The color tour took us around the summertime stamping grounds of my best friend growing up. They’ve got a growing Amish community going in the area now but back in our teens they could have been there and we wouldn’t have noticed. The summer I stayed at my friend’s cottage we were so boy crazy we only noticed guys in cars and bathing suits. I loved how all the Amish kids waved at our bus and how they were working out in the fields with bare feet and straw hats as if the temperature wasn’t in the 60s. I loved seeing the old fashioned corn stalks that reminded me of an old master’s painting I can’t name the moment. Seeing the horse drawn buggies go up and down the roads had the same effect on me as my listening to my Buddhist meditation app. Maybe it was the reminder that living a simpler life is possible and it had me romanticizing about what life would be like if I’d let go of my attachments to worldly goods and more importantly, if I let go of wanting something so vague I can’t even name it. But the truth is, being a minimalist seems like the scariest thing in the world and going off in that direction before I’ve put a label on the vague wanting inside me seems foolish. 

From time to time I'm drawn to reading about minimalists like a gawker who can't look away as a man strips naked in the street. On a minimalist website it says, “The entire minimalist lifestyle promotes individuality and self-reliance. This will make you more confident in your pursuit of happiness.” I get the self-reliant part but how does it promote individually when you live in a sterile environment void of anything that sets you apart from other minimalists? Lifehack.org also says, “When we cling onto material possessions we create stress because we are always afraid of losing these things.” Well duh! That one-size-fits-all bit of rah-rah-you-can-do-this logic might work for younger people who are still in the workforce and can afford to buy stuff back if they regret their minimalist choices, but it doesn't work for this child of depression era parents. Younger people also don’t have to shake the feeling that downsizing is preparation for the end of your life. I’m still here! I still love my art and antiques and having a forty year old Faberware indoor grill in the cupboard that I only use once a month. It can’t be replaced. I’ve tried and the George Foreman and Cuisinart grills both ended up at Goodwill.

Back to my leaf peeping color tour: The landscape color palette was spectacular with its scarlet, merlot and cadmium reds; flaxen, banana and ochre yellows; tawny, tortilla and burnt sienna browns; juniper and pine greens; and fire and ginger oranges. The sky bounced between coin and cloud gray as the sun tried its best to shine and its failure to do so took the frosting off the vista views but it did not spoil the cake. God, I must be hungry with all the food and drink colors that came to mind here. Which is a good lead in to the Amish bakery that ran out of black walnut bread by the time I got to the front of the line but I scored a pumpkin roll and resisted the best looking caramel and nuts rolls I’ve ever seen. 

We had lunch in a resort/lake community and I was bookended by two ladies who always order gluten free. I’m glad I don’t have to do that. The year I had to avoid yellow dye #5 in food in an effort to figure out if it was giving me hives made me appreciate how hard it is to label-read everything that goes in your mouth, not to mention the fact that gluten laden foods are simply the best in my book of forbidden pleasures. One of the gluten free ladies was my seatmate on the bus. She was raised in Kentucky and she is always a pleasure to be round because our sense of humors match. She asked me to co-chair a luncheon with her at the senior hall, but I turned her down. Ya, I know, not a smart move for a person claiming to be looking for friends. I miss enough opportunities for bonding deeper that I wonder sometimes if what I say I want is remotely near what is written on my heart. ©