Are You a Thistle or a Rose?

 As I sat here in my frumpily bathrobe trying to decide what to blog about I got to thinking about how much we change through out our lives. My skin, for example, is as leathery and “full of character” as a pair of alligator shoes I bought back in the 1960s. God, those high heels had the power to turn on my sexy side and I felt great when ever I wore them! I don’t even remember the last time I wanted to look sexy and it amuses me that my favorite footwear, now, is a colorful pair of chunky Crocs. Today their little crocodile logo smiling up at me seems to say, Hey, old lady, you’re wearing rubber and that’s about as fashionable as wearing a paper sack. There were a couple of decades in my life when I cared about such things but that gave way to caring more about comfort and I’ve never looked back---and apparently not in a mirror either. I need a make-over.

Outward appearances aside, the internal changes we experience in our lifetime are much harder to critique. Taken as a whole, I am happy with the emotional, intellectual and spiritual grown and progression I’ve experienced from my toddler days to these toddling old-person days. I’ve had many ‘aha moments’---moments of comprehension, inspiration and realization of what life is all about. And as most of us do as we age, I’ve made a mental catalog of all the opportunities I’ve grabbed hold of and those I’ve let slip through my hands. I also know the points in my life when I could have done better, made better choices and I comfort myself by knowing that if I had known better at the time, I would have done better. Wouldn’t we all?

Where is all of this reflection leading to? Damned if I know. I guess I’m trying to decide if I’ve gotten to the point May Sarton was at when she wrote the following in her memoir titled, At Seventy.  “I love being old,” she wrote, “Because I am more myself than I’ve ever been. There is less conflict. I am happier, more balanced and more powerful.” If I take widowhood out of the equation and the temporary (I hope) sadness that comes with it I would agree with what May is saying here and I would chime in, "me too!" Old age comes with a lot of intrinsic advantages if you’re open to embracing them. In the same book she also wrote: “In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing---the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, give me food for thought, food to grow on.”  I guess I would reshape the idea by saying the more pain and lows we’ve experienced in life the more opportunities we have to evolve into an empathic, thought-provoking and wise person as we age. Of course, it could go the other way, too, and we could let life beat us down and become bitter, resentful and crotchety. Somewhere along the line we all have to make a decision on how we process our pasts and use them to drive the rest of our lives. What’s your choice? Do you want to be a thistle or a rose?  ©

“We have to dare to be ourselves,

however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.”

May Sarton

One Week in the Life of a Water Logged Widow

SUNDAY: I couldn’t have gotten through last Sunday (or the rest of the week) without my handy Crocs rubbers. My basement was covered with three inches of water----every square in of it---and that’s how I know that Mother Nature has a sense of humor. She decided if I was going to bellyache about feeling guilty over my good fortunes in life (see my April 24th post) then she’d give me something to cry about. The sump pump that I often wondered what it did in the basement besides scare the bejesus out of me out failed while trying to keep up with the 100 year flood and record rain falls in my township. The guys who came today to pump the basement out couldn’t keep up with the water coming in from the broken sump pump so they packed up their hoses and left me standing in the water saying they’d be back at 8:00 AM Tuesday, assuming I could arrange for a plumber to install a new sump pump by then.

MONDAY: I woke up at the crack of dawn, so I could get a hold of the plumbing service where I left an S.O.S. late yesterday. Their White-Knight-to-the-Rescue showed up at 2:00 PM and left an hour later after handing me a bill for $275. The rest of the afternoon I spent behind a push broom, creating a series of mini wakes in an attempt to help the water find the new sump pump.

TUESDAY: I was back in the Crocs rubbers this morning so I could alternate between watching the water extraction guys work in the basement and worrying that it wasn’t going as fast as I wished. After four hours of sucking up the standing water, they placed industrial fans and a refrigerator-sized heater/dehumidifier in the basement and together they sound like I have a couple of jet airplanes warming up down there. (I don't even want to think about what this will do to my electric bill.) Then the crew made a series of appointments with me before leaving, for them to move their equipment around each day. I guess you could say they’re my new best friends. After they left, an old friend who owes a clean up service came over to help me get the worst of the wet and ruined stuff out of the basement.

WEDNESDAY: It was back in my Crocs rubbers to work in the basement where the Mold Prevention Patrol showed up to do a treatment. So far this little flood zone has cost me roughly $3,500 and the bills aren't all in yet. The landscape guy was here today, too. He added a 50 foot temporary drain extension at the end of my sump pump pipe to drain the water farther away from the house and my soggy yard. Now, my house can correctly be described as the one with a river running towards the storm drain. When I wasn’t downstairs I was hauling stuff to the deck in an attempt to dry it out in the sun.

THURSDAY: The ‘fans and giant dryer’ guys came back in the morning to move their equipment round down in the basement. This afternoon I was able to breath easier and go on a tour I’d signed up for weeks ago through the senior center. It was to the 911 dispatch center that handles all the 911 calls for 4-5 counties. It was an interesting tour but it brought some unexpected bad memories to the surface of times when I had to call 911 for Don. At one point those old “flee” or “cry in place” widow feelings washed over me, but I toughed it out and did neither one.

FRIDAY: When I wasn’t working in the basement I was thinking about the damage down there. My basement wasn’t a finished basement so my flooding could have been far worse. There are people in town who still can't live in their houses due to water damage---several weeks after the river crested---and other people in high rises who just this week were given permission to take their insurance adjusters in to see their water logged cars that were in the underground parking area. Due to electrical issues those people living in high rises still can't move back home again either. The most important things I lost---at least to me---was an old leather suitcase full of Valentines from the 1800s and my artwork dating back to my college years and after---four decades worth of folders full of drawings, etchings, lithographs and painted canvases. I’m telling myself that losing the artwork can be a blessing in disguise, a gift from Mother Nature. When I get around to taking up art again---which is on my Bucket List---I won’t have to compete with the talent of my youth. I can start fresh with no expectations or mourning over skills I might have lost in recent years.

SATURDAY: I got a break from the flood zone and went to an outdoors wedding in the country.  It was a beautiful, sunny day and I was so happy the couple didn't get the 40% chance of rain that was in the forecast. The reception was inside a near-by barn and it was a fun way to end an exhausting week. As often as I saw the water extraction crew this week, though, I should have asked the crew leader to be my date for the wedding. (He really liked the 'art studio' I set up in the basement and if there hadn't been a forty year age gap between us, I would have called it flirting.) Oh, well, I’ll see him and his crew on Monday, I hope for the very last time because that will mean the "jet planes" are no longer needed in the basement.  I want to get my basement put back together again and to put all this behind me over the next week or two!! ©

I Left My Heart on Blueberry Hill

If you’re ever going to drop a full pint of blueberries on the floor it helps if you do it within hours of mopping the kitchen floor. That’s what I did today and they rolled every where within an ten foot radius. The dog heard the box hit the linoleum, came running and carefully picked one berry up at a time and carried them to the living room to eat them on the carpet. I would have closed him in another room while I gathered up the fruit but I couldn’t take a step without squashing berries underneath my Crocs. I was trapped.

While I was picking up the berries it brought back some great childhood memories. In those days we spent the summers at a cottage and this time of the year the surrogate grandfather to all the kids on our road would go out early in the mornings to pick wild blueberries on State land. He would come back with five gallon pails of berries and the women and girls on the road would gather at picnic tables in our front yard to sort and clean the berries. Later on in the day the smell of freshly baked blueberry pies or cobbler would fill the air. As the blueberry season went on some of those berries made their way in to batches jam or came back to town to put in the freezer. Maybe it’s just my memory playing tricks on me but those wild blueberries were more flavorful than the factory farm berries produced today.

When Don and I first started dating one of his favorite songs was Fats Domino’s I Left My Heart on Blueberry Hill. It was the very first song he ever sang to me. Now you might be thinking he was copying Richie Cunningham (aka Ron Howard) from the Happy Days sitcom because he would often sing, “I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill” when he’d see a pretty girl he either dated or wanted to date. But Don sang it to me four years before Happy Days made its first appearance on TV. Over the years Don accumulated a copy of Fats Domino’s version of the song in every media that came along---45 records, 8 track tapes, cassette tapes, and CDs. When I sold his classic Vette with an 8 track player in it I included his 8 track collection in the deal and, yes, ‘blue berry hill’ was on one of the tapes.

“I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill, on Blueberry Hill when I found you.” Did I mention that one of the first times Don and I made love was on a summer night and this song was playing on a portable radio? We were at the local lookout hill---a beautiful cityscape view at night, but we managed to pick up a good case of poison ivy in the process. Some of the things we foolishly do when we’re young sure can make you shake your head in amazement when you’re old, can’t they.

I often think I’d like to buy an i-Pod to download the music that has become the theme songs of my life. One of my fears of the future is about going to a nursing home and having to listen to someone else’s idea of what old people want to hear. I envision having a nurse’s aid who’ll flip the radio to the ‘50s Classics’ station every day and that would drive me crazy. I’d have songs from my youth on my i-Pod that have meaning to me, of course, like I Left my Heart on Blueberry Hill and Happy Trails to You but I’d also download stuff like Toby’s Keith’s I Want to Talk About Me and I Should Have Been a Cowboy, Michael Buble’s Sway, Grandpa Elliott’s Stand by Me, Joe Cocker's You can Leave Your Hat on, and Natasha Bedingfield’s Take me Away. The only thing stopping me from getting an i-Pod is I’m not tech savvy enough to know if they’re in danger of joining 45 records and 8 tracks on the obsolete shelf soon after I buy one. I hate when that happens! i-Pod? Or i-phone or i-Pad with music apps? I wish that decision was as easy as sorting blueberries on a lazy summer afternoon. .©