Busy LIttle Widow

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on Sunday. Snow was coming down fast and furious and I could barely see the pine trees twenty-five outside my kitchen windows. Everything was blanketed in white and I learned later from the news that the last time it snowed here this late in May was in 1953. It didn’t last long or stick around for more than a few hours but it stayed cold and got even colder inside the house when someone hit a power pole, knocking out our electricity for the next five hours. On the good side, I had just put the outage app on my new smart phone so I was kept well informed which cuts the stress level that comes with the unknown. I put a sweater on the dog, gloves on me, burrowed myself under a blanket and spent the time reading Nicholas Sparks’ The Longest Ride. The movie was ten times better. I won’t have a bit of trouble donating the book to the senior hall where it will get sold for a quarter a zillion times over. I couldn’t find a single sentence in the book that I wanted to mark to savor later unless it’s the one that gave the book its title: “His voice, even now, follows me everywhere on this longest of rides, this thing called life.” I do like looking for those lines that sums up what a title means to an author. The line was delivered by an elderly man talking about his father---the lessons he taught---and I could identify with that as a daughter and a widow both. 

Mammogram day came and went this week and I learned something about implants. I don’t have them, by the way, but I wanted to know how they do a mammogram with ladies that do. The technician said they have to do two sets. One with the implants riding in their normal place and a second set where the technician has to pull the implants off to the side so they can get good shots of the breast tissue. “Ouch,” I said, “that sounds painful!” and she replied that they don’t feel a thing because all the nerve endings are cut inside when the implants are put in place. So now I’m in the waiting pattern where you don’t know if you’ll get the call-back because the radiologist wants more images or you’ll get the post card that everything is normal. I usually get the call-back because I have scar tissue from decades old biopsies.

After getting the mammogram I had some time to kill before I was due at the senior hall for a lecture about the local zoo’s 125 year history so I stopped for lunch at the Guy-Land Cafeteria. I like to people watch there while pretending I’m John Steinbeck writing my version of Travels With Charlie. He was taking a trip across America with his dog when he wrote that book and it describes the people he met along the way, capturing all their regional mannerisms and foibles. Unfortunately, my travels are confined to a 75 mile radius and the Guy-Land Cafeteria, that day, only held on a collection guys who were far from eye candy. Some had potbellies. Some were bald. And some sported both potbellies and bald heads. One old gentleman who didn’t fit in those pigeonholes was so pasty white he looked like he belonged down the block at the funeral home. Only one guy caught my eye in a he’s-cute-for-an-old-dude way. I loved his Santa Claus glasses and his easy smile. So what if he was wearing navy suspenders to hold up his mom jeans. I was wearing orthopedic shoes and I needed a manicure. We all can't be Brad and Angelina. 

At the “zoo lecture” we heard about the first animal they had on exhibit, a bear who loved its beer and got excited when he’d hear the beer wagon coming down the cobblestone street for its daily stop that kept the animal thoroughly happy and drunk for many years. We learned how early zoos were “encyclopedia zoos”---striving to have one of everything---but today they have fewer animals but try to keep them in family groups with the goal of preserving the species through breeding programs of animals that may not survive in the wild due to their natural habitats being encroached and poached and interbreeding weakening the lines as a result. By the way, one of the Chimps in the photo above is diabetic and is trained to pee on a stick each morning followed by presenting an arm for an insulin shot and a sweet treat. 

The next day I had to go back to the dermatologist to have the cancerous moles dug out deeper than he did on biopsy day---and just when the dime-sized holes were healing up. I’ve got to go back in two weeks to get the stitches out. Moles are troublesome and expensive little buggers!

I'm so over scheduled this week that by Saturday night I'll feel like I’ve worked a full time job. Still to come: a travelogue, lunch out with the Red Hat Society, a field trip to a lamb farm, my Movie and lunch Club and the dog’s date with the vet after which he gets to go shopping at Chow Hound. ©

Mister Rogers and the Widow

 

I woke up this morning wishing I could hear Mister Rogers singing, “It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor, would you me mine? Could you be mine?” But in my mind all I heard was Elvis singing, “I’m so lonesome I could cry.” Well, that’s going to change, I thought. I have places to go and things to do.

I took a two minute shower then played with my hair for a zillion minutes before calling it a lost cause. My hair dresser recently put low-lights in my hair and she made me look like a skunk. (Mercy me, there are so many anonymous older women on earth I need to apologize to for my wicked thoughts. It never dawned on me until I became a skunk myself that other women don’t necessarily request their salons give them coal black hair that doesn’t go with worn out skin. I thought they were just trying to recapture their youth.) But I wasn’t going to let my hair keep me home. I had a date with a snake. Literally. The senior citizen hall was hosting a presentation put on by the zoo’s outreach program. Besides, I knew there’d be a few ladies there with Easter egg pink or blue hair and maybe even another skunk-like do. It isn't fair that when you’re young and have “unique hair” it’s called cutting edge but when you’re my age people just think we need an intervention from a make-over squad.

I actually got to touch a half dozen animals and reptiles I’ve never touched before. Not that it was on my Bucket List to do so, but I do what I have to do fit in and it was interesting hearing behind-the-scenes stories about caring for the animals. Each day at a certain time, for example, a brown bear at the zoo beats on the metal door to the enclosure where their food is left while the other bears in the habitat keep right on doing what they’re doing until they hear the door open before they mosey on over. Isn’t that a lot like what we humans do? Some of us rush ahead trying to mold things to our timetable and liking while others among us wait for the future to unlock its door and then we walk through it.

I don't know if I'm a door-banger or a waiter but I wish I’d check myself in the mirror more often when I’m rushing off in an attempt to make new friends in the neighborhood. When I got home today I realized my sweater was buttoned up wrong. I went all day like that and no one told me! I suppose there is an etiquette rule that dictates one is not supposed to mention transgressions like these to the transgressor. But I’d rather be told so I only spend half a day---instead of all day---having people think I’m a few mistakes short of being shipped off to an assisted living facility. “Put another punch in her Old Person Card. Only seven more and off she goes.”

The senior hall is a god-send for widows, though, even if they don’t tell you when your sweater looks like you let the three year neighbor button you up. The summer newsletter was available today and I’ve already signed up for four day trips, three luncheons and three life enrichment lectures plus I have the monthly cooking-for-one lessons as well. I keep thinking I should do some of their drop-in exercise classes---yoga, line dancing, zumba, or pilates but contrary to popular belief not all old people like getting up at the crack of dawn---at least I don’t. Instead, I’m thinking of finding a beginner dog dancing or agility class or maybe another summer dog training class. I’ve got this four-legged creature living in the house and he needs something to look forward to besides having me follow him down the nature trail stealing his poop deposits.

Aside from working hard at trying to find myself a social life, I don’t know what else to do about the loneliness widowhood brought into my life. It’s starting to frustrate me and I’m having a terrible time controlling the impulse to stand on a street corner and sing like Mister Rogers: “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, won’t you please, PLEASE be my friend!” Well, he didn’t beg like that but he was such a beloved educator, songwriter, minister, author and TV host I doubt he ever got so lonesome he could cry. ©