From Mahjong to Music with a Litte Bowling in Between

 

In my last post I wrote: "Many residents here [at the continuum care facility] have taken on self-appointed roles---social director, mayor, florist, management suck-up, food critic, complainer-in-chief …." and it occurred to me today that I've done the same thing. Some people here call me 'Mahjong Jean' but what I ready am is the self-appointed coordinator of a things mahjong. This is not unique around here. We have the Bingo Ladies who put on a once a month game with cash prizes, the line dancing teacher and the Bridge Director who both manages two sessions a week and the Crackers & Cheese fairies for lack of a better name.

Every since I co-taught mahjong classes last year, increasing our number of players from six to twelve, I've taken on the responsibility of text messaging everyone the day before our Wednesday games to see how many are playing so the next day I'll know how many tables and games I need to set up. I've also created a system to randomize who plays with who that as been very popular and I've established a once a month Sunday skill building game. Our latest skill building involves learning how to score our games because I got the (not so?) bright idea to challenge our sister campus in a tournament this fall. 

I've never been to a tournament except for bowling back in my man-hunting twenties when I was on an all-women's leagues at a bowling alley-slash-bar that had live music on the night when our league played. Back then it was thee place for singles to mingle. It's the place where I met my husband but that's a story I've already told in an old post titled Tall Tales and Little Fish.

I wasn't the best bowler, not the worst either but I wasn't there for that particular game. It was the boy-meets-girl part that attracted me to join the league. I had written a letter to Ann Landers---a newspaper advice columnist in case you're too young to know who she was. I was bemoaning the fact that I didn't think I've ever meet my forever guy. She answered with: “Get out and do things you enjoy doing and it will happen.” So I signed up for every leisure time class I could find and I joined the bowling league. The rest is history. 

When I look back on my life it seems like I spent a lot of time searching for a place to fit in and I rarely thought about the idea that others probably did or do the same thing whether it's at a new school or work place, in new neighborhood or church family. We all have experienced carving out a place for ourselves. For me, sometimes it's felt like I was carving in butter like when I helped form a Red Hat Society chapter and other times it's felt like I was carving in marble like being in my late twenties when I was 'man shopping' Ann Landers style.

Looking for my place in the world is such an old habit that I forget to stop and consider that I may have already found it, at least for this era of my life, in this place. Finding our places in the world means finding our purpose in life and that purpose does and must change as our environment and the people around us changes. It's exhausting---the constant looking, especially if we're looking outward for what can only be found by looking inward.

Change of topic: For a couple of days this week I was haunted by a song on a video that I landed on by chance in a Facebook Short Reel. I thought I would write a post about music in general and that song in particular. But the more I searched my memorial bank I couldn't come up with the reason why it got stuck on auto-play in my head. The song was Lady in Red by Chris de Burgh who is an internationally known British-Irish singer/song writer. In 1986 it hit the top of the charts all over the world. But I was never a fan of Chris's music per say. This week I listened to it over a dozen times and in six versions of the song sang at different points during in his career and I literally felt the sensuality of his voice and those lyrics wrapping around me like a hug. Finally I remembered why it resonated with me! 

I was in my mid forties when the song was popular and I had a red dress that I wore to a special occasion one evening and when we got back home that song played on the radio as Don helped me out of that dress as if he was unwrapping crystal stemware---slow and sensual with the red dress ending in a pool on the floor next to the bed. You can guess what happened next. Hearing that song again after all these years catapulted me back into a state of pure contentment, like when you know you are loved and everything in the world reminds you of that scene in the Wizard of Oz when the film goes from black and white to technicolor. And I have tears of remembered joy pooling in my eyes as I'm write this.

No wonder they use music so much over in the Memory Care building. If we are smart we'd all make ourselves a play list of the special music in our lives for when our brains start shorting out because they claim that our memories attached to music are the last thing to go when people get Alzheimer's and it can help us hold on to those memories. I know that to be true because music often blindsides me with an emotional response and a flashback. Usually instantly. No waiting around for two days like they did with Lady in Red and no embarrassing red cheeks when I finally figure out why that particular memory got buried a little deeper than so many others. ©

Until Next Wednesday.

 

                                       1985 original version