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

The Great Closet Project Part One

I’ve fallen off the discipline wagon when it comes to writing blog posts. The one I posted earlier this week about my dreams was one I wrote and originally scheduled for the week after my hand surgery but I didn’t use it because my recovery was faster than I anticipated and I wrote a post in real time instead. I’m totally off my sync for when I write and when I play and partly that’s because I’ve been doing something a few of my blog followers have been laying a quilt trip on me for not doing sooner. Yes, someone out there in Bloggerland shamed me into starting the Great Closet project. Thank you. I needed the kick in the posterior.

The photos below might not look like they have much to do with a closet makeover but they do and it took me a three day weekend to swap that short bookcase in the living room out for the tall one in my closet. And I moved them all by not-so-little self…with the help of my handy dandy E-Z Movers pictured above. Living in an apartment house, means I had to get my E-Z Mover kit out of storage and put it back down there again which involved an elevator ride down to the underground cage storage area that is attached to our underground parking lot. 

Nothing is easy when it come to storing items you don’t use often when you live in an apartment building. For one thing you have to be fully dressed to make the trip and if you get creeped out easily you won’t be going down there after dark. It doesn’t bother me---it’s well lite and we’re not in a high crime area---but some people think they’re going to get mugged in those lonely hallways. Those are the same people who avoid underground parking and storage after dark who also keep their second and third floor deck doors locked because presumably some mastermind could rappel off the roof down to their decks to steal their family silverware. Not going to happen. I’m on the ground level and I didn’t even close my deck door all summer long, let alone lock it. With twenty-five apartments and the security guard’s desk having a clear view of my deck, I feel completely safe and the only action out front of my apartment during the middle of the night are the geese that are fooled by the bright lights. They think it's daylight and they walk around like they own the place.

Since we’re talking storage areas I’m proud of the fact that I don’t have extra boxes littering up the floor in front of my car the way about ten people do. Management is starting to lean of them about it and I don’t blame them. It’s been a year that we’ve all been living here and if you can’t find room inside your apartment or cage storage for 10-30 boxes of stuff it’s time to let go. I understand it though. If you don’t want to donate it, we’re limited on how to sell stuff.

Anyway back on topic: The first picture below shows the way my living room looked with the short bookcase and the other picture is of the taller bookcase taking its place. And if you're wondering what the heck they have to do with overhauling my clothes closet. Quite a lot, actually. With the lower bookcase now in the closet it frees up the wall above it up to get maintenance in to put a shelf and clothes rod, giving me three more feet of space to hang hangers. The tall bookcase was full of boxes and folded T-shirts, etc., and paring that stuff down involved making another elevator ride down to put some donation bags in my car to drop off at the Salvation Army. The back seat of car looks like a storage unit, by they way. It’s filled with toilet paper and paper towel. The last few months when I’d look around my apartment to make a grocery list I’d put those two items on the list, forgetting I didn’t have room on my cart to bring them upstairs the last few times I’d been shopping. Once I remember the back seat of my car looks like the paper products aisle at Meijer I won't have to buy those items all winter long.

Anyway, now that I've made the swap of the bookcases I was able to  put in a work request to Maintenance for the new bar/shelf combo. He’s also going to replace the tension rod with a regular rod. Both will cost me under $75 but worth it not to have clothes that are wrinkled from hanging too close together or being folded up on the bookcase. I though about having the closet designer company come out, gut the closet and start over. I’ve seen their work and know it would look better but it would cost over $1,500 and I’d rather spend that money elsewhere…like on new clothes. I’ve already started by making a trip to Land’s End where I bought the first part of jeans I’ve own since the last century. 

While I’m in a holding pattern waiting for Maintenance I’m starting part two of the Great Closet Project---trying on everything to determine if it stays or goes. I'm terrible about holding on to things I don't like wearing or that doesn't fit right---not a good thing if I ever get moved over to Memory Care or assisted living and I have to depend on a caregiver to help dress me. What a frustrating mess that would be for both of us.

Part three will be the fun part of making a few purchases to fill in the gaps when I get rid of some thread-bare pants and tops that have seen better days.

The short book case now in the closet

---boxes hold, purses, hats, scarves and mending.

The swap will also have an added benefit of bringing music back into my life…as soon as the maintenance man comes and can drill a hole to pass a plug through the back of the bookcase in the living room. I had the CD player on the short bookcase but I couldn’t keep my CDs out where they were easy to get at---they were under my bed---so they never got played. I really miss country western music. I realized that the other day when I sat in underground parking listening to my car radio. I would have stayed there all afternoon except that I had ice cream melting in a grocery bag. Songs like in the video below make me happy. For my writing group (update in my next blog post)  I've been writing poems like this song---the concept being to take a simple idea and turning it into a mini slice-of-life. ©

Music that Comes with Tears and Laughter

I’ve got to stop listening to old music from the ‘50s through the ‘80s. Once a month they have a birthday party here at the continuum care complex to celebrate everyone who was born in that particular month and the party usually includes a singer/musician. Many have been singer/song writers both young and old and they have something else in common. They try to sing songs fitting the age of our residents. One guy missed the mark and did too many songs from the ‘40s which on paper to a young person probably sounded good since most of us were born in the ‘40s but the music most old seniors like us identify with is the decade of songs from when we were teenagers and young adults. The ‘50s and ‘60s songs usually have us all singing along and having a great time. And I can have as much fun singing as the next person but those songs often make me teary-eyed as well. 

For example when the guy above in the photo ---John D. Lamb sang “Each night I ask the stars up above why must I be a teenager in love?” I felt like I was right back in high school, encamped in my converted attic bedroom with the pink cabbage roses in the wallpaper. I’d lay on my moss green carpet and play that record over and over again until my mom would yell up from the bottom of the steps for me to, 'Turn that damn thing off." I learned it from her---playing records over and over again the way she did when I was a toddler. She had a collection of WWII records that she played over and over again. The Andrew Sisters singing the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy is tattooed inside my head. 

I can’t hear a WWII, gun-ho-to-support-the-war song without remembering the day my dad and I cleaned out our basement and we took her record collection to the dump. We had a good time sailing those records across the field of garbage and trash. She hadn’t played them in years but she was so mad when she found out what we did that it took her a week before she spoke to either one of us. As an adult looking back I know there was a story there I’m missing, probably a love story about a boyfriend who joined the Air Force and never came back. She had a pair silver U.S. Air Force wings in her jewelry box and a photo of her with a guy she dated before my dad that she never talked about or rather I was too self-centered to ask about. Mom’s are moms. We don’t see their lost dreams the way we see our own.

At the same birthday party John D. Lamb also sang Anta Lucia in Italian. His ancestry is Italian like my dad’s was and hearing that love song sang that way reached so far back into my memory vault I had nearly forgotten about all the Italian weddings I’d been to as a young kid. My three great uncles were still alive and they spoke their native tongue and always sang that song to the bride while one or two of them played the accordion.

Another song that nearly brought me to tears was the theme song from Ghost. Remember Demi Moore’s character at a potter’s wheel while Patrick Swayze’s character/the ghost was behind her and the theme song played: “...I've hungered for your touch, A long, lonely time, And time goes by so slowly, And time can do so much, Are you still mine?” Corny, I know but to quote a line from The Holiday “I like corny.” I liked it enough that day to have trouble holding back the tears. But I did. 

Until John D. Lamb pulled out a Tom Jones song. I’ve told the story before but briefly its of the triangle dating thing I had going between me, Don and his friend who looked like he shared the same gene pool as Tom Jones. His first name was even Tom and he was playboy type who took full advantage of looking like the famous singer. “It's not unusual to be loved by anyone, It's not unusual to have fun with anyone’, but when I see you hanging about with anyone, It's not unusual to see me cry, I wanna die.” It was Don who had the staying power, as long time readers here know, who wanted to cry when he saw me out with the Tom Jones look-alike. Cornball, I know but it's my story and I'll tell it the way I want.

At lunch the next day someone remarked that I was having a good time at the birthday party, that she was sitting behind me and could see me getting into the music. “I was,” I told her, “but along with the happiness I fought back a few tears. Old music does that to me.” Others at the table said the same thing happened to them at this birthday party. So either John D. Lamb knew how to play to his audience or all of us had our emotions close too the surface that day and our tears needed a place to escape. I suspect it was a combination of both because the world outside that room, was filled with nothing but bad news. All I really know for sure is by the time the hour was up I was crushing on John D. Lamb and I left in a better mood than I came.  ©

The video below is of John singing a song he wrote about two friends who went to the capital January 6th. He didn't sing this at the party but I love how song writers can turn anything into music. He holds an annual Retreat for Song Writers and is on his 28th year doing so. The second video is a humorous song he wrote and did sing for us. It's for all of us who know what it's like to drive up north in Michigan.

Laughing in all the Wrong Places

 

Look Out for Deer