Romance and the Power of Forgiveness

 

Someone made a comment on one of my blogs that it sounded like I was romantic in my younger days and I was thinking about that on the way to meet my Movie and Lunch Club yesterday. I was writing in my head how I would answer that, if I was inclined to explain how I happened to become a bridal consultant in the floral industry. It’s not what it looks like on the surface. I didn’t and still don’t go gaga over weddings, I wasn’t drawn to them like a bee to honey. It all came about because of my mother’s raging hormones when she was going through menopause. Her doctor told her she needed to get a job. That was his prescription, can you believe that? So off she went to work at a large wholesale greenhouse when I was 12 or 13 and suffering from my own raging hormones. My poor father, what he must have gone through back then.

Fast forward a few years and one holiday the greenhouse wanted some teenagers to come help out with the rush. Entry me. I worked there all through high school and my first three years of college. One of owners was a crusty old man that a lot of workers were afraid of and they didn’t stay around. Not me. He liked my work ethic and I liked the challenge of keeping up with his barking orders. It was like a game to me and with my interest in art, I was good at the game we were “playing” which at that time was dressing holiday plants and making planters that were shipped out by the hundreds to places in five states. And in between wholesale orders, I was a ‘runner’ for the floral designers in the retail division. Thus when I dropped out of college at the end of my third year of college and needed a full time job I didn’t have to look hard to get an offer. And that is how I ended up spending two summers at floral design school, the second year for advanced wedding design.

I had all this on my mind when I sat down in the movie theater. I hadn’t read any of the reviews of the film we were seeing so I had no idea what The Railway Man would be about. It started out with a chance meeting on a train of a couple and when the lead character, Eric, asked Pattie: “Are you romantic?” I thought, Ohmygod, it’s a sign! I really DO need to write about this question! I was thinking the movie was going to be a romantic comedy. I couldn’t have been more wrong.  

For the next 116 minutes I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. The film is about a true story of prisoners of WWII who were tortured in a Japanese labor camp while building the notorious Thai/Burma Railroad. Eric had been traumatized and shut down emotionally for years because of his experiences and the story was told through a series of flashbacks after he and Pattie were married. She was determined to help him put his demons to rest and when the news came that his veteran’s group had tracked down the prison’s camp interpreter---who the prisoners hated and blamed the most for their torture---Pattie encouraged Eric to go confront his tormentor. The guy was a guide at the former work camp that had since been turned into a museum. So Eric packed a knife fully intending to kill the guy and extract vengeance but instead---spoiler alert---they ended up becoming good friends. It’s a true story about the power of forgiveness, but in a way it’s also a love story about a woman who believed so much in the goodness of the man she married that she was willing to do whatever was necessary to help him make peace with his horrible past, and a story about a man who loved a woman so much that he was willing to finally put his past behind him to hold on to her. But the "love story" part of the film only took up about 6 of 116 minutes so don't go expecting much romance on the screen. It won't be there.

Needless to say, I liked the movie. I like films that make you think and that are based on actual events. The atrocities of war are hard to watch but I feel strongly that we need to bear witness to them IF they are presented in a responsible way and not just showing violence gratuitously. I had similar feelings about watching the opening ceremony of the 911 museum this week. I didn’t like having my emotion churned up by what I was seeing, but it was important for me to stay tuned in to it---to honor those who suffered and are still suffering. And often times you can get glimpses of hope seeing ceremonies and movies of this kind and I am stuck by the resilience of human beings. That people can go through that kind of stuff and come out the other side finding that all import power of forgiveness that lets them move forward is amazing. I guess I really am a romantic because I truly believe and hope that someday the powers in charge will throw a war and no one---NO ONE on either side---will show up to fight. ©

What Old People Do For Fun

Have you ever seen a band that was so bad they were fun to watch? I did recently. They were playing at the senior hall monthly luncheon---four scruffy looking brothers, all old enough to collect social security. The lead singer/guitar player came hobbling in on a peg leg. He was wearing Bermuda shorts, a Hawaii shirt and a straw gambler’s style hat and his unruly, gray hair was longer than any woman’s in the room. But he had the most expressive, dark eyes I’ve seen in a long time and they twinkled with mischief the entire time he performed. He even danced a jig to everyone’s laughter that reminded me of a pirate from a Disney movie.

His twin brothers didn’t look much alike but you could tell they once did. One was bald and skinny and he played the keyboard. The other was fat, had a ridiculously long, white handlebar mustache and a long ponytail but no hair on the entire top of his head. The latter played the flute and a saxophone and the top of his head turned beet red when he was playing. A few times I worried he might pass out from the effort.

The forth brother, you could tell, though he was still pretty cool but he needed to ditch his Mom jeans and to learn not to blush so much at his brother’s teasing. Every time one of the guys would screw up a cord or the lyrics Mr. Peg Leg would wink at the crowd and say, “That’s the way we rehearsed it” and once he remarked, “Wow, we got through that whole chorus without a mistake!” which made the blushing brother red enough to match the top of his horn playing brother’s head. At one point they were all laughing so much they stopped playing, and one of the guys waved a hand in front of his face while saying, “Be at one with the song” and then they’d continue on playing as if nothing happened.

At another point the lead singer wanted us to sing along to a song that turned out to be a tribute to Amelia Earhart. If you shake my family tree she’d come tumbling out but surprise, surprise none of us knew the words…not even me. That didn’t matter to the band. Next they invited us to sing along to Knight in White Satin which I vaguely remembered from the ‘60s. They had better luck with audience participation with Old Time Rock N’ Roll. Obviously there were a few old Bob Seger fans in our group because we were belting that song out with the best of them. The last sing-along was You Are My Sunshine and you'd have to be brain dead not to remember that one from our youth. The sequence of sing-alongs was a good example of the band's quirky sense of humor.

A few ladies at my table of sixteen were wadding up Kleenex to stick in their ears and a couple ladies experimented with taking one or both of their hearing aids out. When the band asked if they were playing too loud, half the crowd yelled “No!” and the half yelled, “Yes!” so they didn’t change their volume one little bit. The whole show was so campy and corny and I had a great time and all that for five dollars including the food and door prizes which I never win. Once in awhile, though, I'd feel sorry for the band because hard of hearing people tend to talk too loud and I was worried the guys heard some of the negative reviews their music was getting. For me, it was fun watching the guys have so much fun and the screw ups didn't matter.

A nice thing also happened at the senior hall that day. Another widow asked me for my contact information so we can “do lunch” sometime. She’s a down-to-earth type and easy to talk to. Her husband died more recently than mine and she’s been fighting with her kids over purging the house of her husband's things. They want to go at it faster than she does which makes me grateful that I had/have the ability to set my own pace without pressure or input from anyone. ©

Dreams and Rain Storms

At the risk of turning this blog into a dream diary, I had another weird one last night. I was lost in a large city with a storm approaching and it was the middle of the night. After searching narrow streets bordering on the ghetto, I finally found my apartment (one I’d never lived in in my non-dream life). It was like a tunnel---long, windowless, dark and bleak with brown cement walls and I was telling a niece-in-law who was with me that it “grows on you.” That's when I remembered that I had left my car on the other end of town and I had to go back through the city again to get my car. I woke up then to a thunderstorm beating rain on the windowpanes. It was six-thirty and the alarm would ring at seven. I had an early morning appointment with the irrigation people to turn on my system, so I got up.

Caves in dreams can mean you’re exploring your subconscious mind or it can symbolize the womb and thus be a place of concealment or protection. In my case I’m going with door number one and I believe the cave-like apartment was a self-discovery thing and I was discovering potted plants at every turn of my apartment, too many of them! They were everywhere and I was wondering how they survive without natural daylight. Okay, that’s not too hard to figure out that plants are all about fertility and potential---growth---and in my wake life I’ve been worried that I have too many irons in too many fires as I try to rebuild my post-widowhood life. I need to purge some “irons” and nail down what I want to do with the time I have left on earth. Where do I fit in? What’s it going to take to make me truly happy? When is some of the stuff I’m doing going to start paying off? These questions are tucked in the back of my mind and won’t go away---apparently not even when I sleep.

Dreaming about forgetting where you parked your car can signal a dissatisfaction or unhappiness with your waking life according to the dream dictionary Duh, I didn’t need a dream to tell me that but still I was surprised. I already knew that dreaming about cars in general can symbolize ambition and your ability (or inability) to navigate through the various stages of your life but there are tons of dream interpretations based on what is happening to your car. I’m just glad my dream car wasn’t under water, crushed or overheated. Parked on the other end of town? It would have been doable to get it back if I could have slept a little longer. At least that’s what I want to believe now that I’m awake and sitting here waiting for the no-show irrigation guys.

I blame/credit fellow blogger, Bella, from Cul-de-Sac-Chronicles for reviving my interest in dream interpretations. (She has the most interesting dreams! I’m especially jealous of her latest encounter with Joe Biden.) Dream interpretation was a hot and heavy hobby of mine for many years and I worked hard at honing the art of remembering my dreams. I stopped doing that when my dad was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and he literally could not separate his dreams from reality. After spending one too many hours trying to convince him that people were not having a party in his living room, that he’d left the TV on again and incorporated the sound into a dream, I gave up keeping a dream diary. It scared me to think someday I might not be able to sort out what is real and what is not. When my husband died my ability to remember dreams came back full force---with a lot of encouragement from his guest appearances during my nights. Now, it’s rare that I wake up without a dream lingering on the fringes of my mornings. If that's good for my mental health or not, it is what it is.

I have a nice week of activities ahead. I have a luncheon to go to at the senior hall, my Movie and Lunch Club later in the week, a vet appointment with my favorite guy, Levi the Schnauzer, plus two showers---one on each side of my family. But now, I have to brave the stormy weather and go to the grocery store. ©