Birthdays, Photo Albums and Old People Nonsense

I like to get up in the morning and start writing before my brain wakes up. That’s when I do my best pondering of insignificant things like why does the dog always take his favorite plush toy outside on his first trip of the day. Does Levi think his duck needs airing out? Does he think the duck will eat his breakfast kibble while he's gone? And why doesn’t the dog ever take the duck outside later on in the day? Mornings are turning me into a one trick pony. I ask a lot of questions but try as I might the answers rarely follow. I think Levi is germaphobic, though, because he never takes the duck down into the barked-over area where he pees and poops. He drops him off on the top step before he goes down to do his duty and then Levi collects the duck again when he comes inside.

All my life I’ve had a problem multitasking. My husband used to tease me with the nickname of ‘one track’ because I get so wrapped up with whatever I do that all else could fall off the face of the earth and I’d never notice. I always considered it to be an asset rather than a liability but I can see where someday it’s going to get me in trouble. Someday, for example, I’m going to have to explain to a social worker why I’m still sitting in my nightgown at 2:00 in the afternoon because some noisy neighbor got concerned seeing me not dressed so late in the day. "Ms. Social Worker, I got lost writing the next great American novel and here’s the proof.” Then I’ll proudly hold up one pristine page of nonsensical writing to show for my morning’s work.

I’m so sick of chasing magenta dust bunnies around the house that I’ve taken to wearing my chenille bathrobe inside out hoping that will contain the little fuzz balls from jumping ship. I’ve washed that robe a zillion times and it still creates those pretty colored dust bunnies. I even find them on my keyboard! I just know this act of wearing my robe inside out is going to be used against me in a sanity hearing one day. “Yes, sir, Mr. Judge. My aunt can’t even dress herself without getting her garments on wrong side out.” The older I get the more I want to write notes about why I do this or that and leave them all over house. If I put a note in the pocket of my inside-out-bathrobe do you think it would save me from getting shipped off to assisted living some day? How many calls from social services is one too many before your family gives up and says, “Take her, she’s all yours!”

Recently I found out that my older brother is throwing himself a big 75th birthday party. The years go by so fast, don’t they. One minute you’re in the prime of your life, then the next minute you’re looking back and wondering where it all went. I thought my half century birthday was monumental but approaching three quarters of a century is on a completely different scale. It’s very weird, indeed, to think of my brother (and me not many years behind him) as being as old as two of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World---the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge. Nearly seventy-five years’ worth of memories, life experiences, book learning, laughter and tears is a lot of data to keep sorted in one tiny little brain. No wonder that data processing gets misdirected from time to time.

I’ve been working on a book to give to my brother at his birthday party. It's titled, The Boy Behind the Man and it’s mostly sepia tone photos that highlight his first 18 years. I also put in some poems he wrote and a few quotes that help describe his childhood. I can’t wait until the book comes back from the printers. Due to a divorce and moving I don’t think he has a lot of photos from his childhood and I know he hasn’t seen the ones my mom gave me a very long time ago. It was a fun project. Next winter when my social calendar dries up due to bad weather like it did this winter I’m going to make more topic specific photo books. I even made a notation in my day planner so I don’t forget.

Well, I’ve got to take a shower. The sun is shining and the roads are good so I’m going off to a Red Hat Society tea. We really should call it a coffee, though, because most of us stop at a near-by Starbucks before going to the community room for the meet-up. We’ll be planning an outing to see a dinosaur exhibit later this month. ©

Note: The photo above is of my brother and me.

Gilda Radner’s Legacy of Laughter

 

I’ve been re-reading my blog posts from last year, getting them ready for Blurb to slurp them up into a hard copy book that I can put on my library shelf and I’ve come to realize that I use the word ‘damn’ entirely too often when I write. At least I did during my second year of widowhood, and probably in my first year as well, Back then, I’m guessing I even used a few more colorful swear words along with the damns. In my offline life, when I’m around “real people” I check myself from saying things that might offend others. I might accidentally slip with the D word on occasion but never the F or P word. Let’s back up here a minute: I’m not saying the people who might be reading this online aren’t real people. It’s just that readers have the option to quit reading at any point. When you sit next to someone out in public it’s harder to just walk away or to tell them that you don’t appreciate their “colorful” language. I’m not a language prude, don’t get me wrong, but on the other end of the scale I also don’t like comedians who depend on blue or crude language to get their laughs. To me, it’s like listening to a band that only plays two notes over and over again. Get a dictionary. Learn something new!

For the next ten days my city is hosting its 4^th annual Laugh-Fest, a festival of laughter that includes over 260 events spread out over 65 stages in the area, half of them free and many of them child-friendly. The whole event is billed as a “Laughter RX series, a prescription for emotional health” and the proceeds all go to the local Gilda’s Club. This year the headliners are Jay Leno, Jim Gaffigan and Lily Tomlin and in past years we’ve had Lewis Black, Betty White and Bill Cosby in town performing their acts. There are amateur stand-up comedy competitions as well as professional acts plus films, bands, open mike joke nights, storytelling and a ping pong competition with some weird twists. Even a 5K race takes place where you have to wear your underwear over top of your running suits to participate. Heck, even I got an invitation in the mail to see a standup comedian doing old people humor at a retirement village.

Gilda Radner, for anyone not old enough to remember her from Saturday Night Live, died of cancer and afterward her husband, Gene Wilder, and her cancer therapist co-founded the first Gilda’s Club in New York City, a place where cancer patients and their families can get free support. The movement to establish a Gilda’s Club to my city was started by one of the pillars of the community after her own bout with cancer and, boy, is it successful. This local club house gave birth to the very first festival of laughter in the U.S.A. and its grown every year. It’s sad that until this year I didn’t appreciate what is going on right in my own back yard. But I do now, and yesterday I read through their schedule of events looking for something free I’d like to see. I found an art exhibit at the local art institute billed as ‘humor in craft’ that I may go to if the snow ever stops messing up the roads. The whole city wants to make us laugh. Even the libraries are displaying books known for their humor.

I love the following Gilda Radner quote: “Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.”

I rarely do that but it sure is a good goal to work towards, don’t you think? In our Western culture we can get obsessive about planning the future and micro-managing our days, and we think we can know where we’ll be in life five years from now, even ten or twenty. But something comes along like cancer or the death of a spouse or a disability and we have to rearrange our thinking in a big, hard hurry. Suddenly, we start lamenting the fact that we didn’t take more time out of our hectic schedules to watch a sunset at the beach, appreciate the sounds of a summer evening, or even to play connect-a-dot with our freckles and an ink pen. 

“Taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what will happen next.” Jeez, half the time I can’t even enjoy my first cup of coffee in the morning without looking over my job list for that day. How do we get to that point where we can quit worrying about what will happen next and just live in the moment, find things to laugh about and love that are right before our eyes? We can all name times in our lives when living in the moment happens spontaneously, or when something grabs our attention and won’t let go like Gilda’s legacy of laughter is bringing to town, but is it realistic to think we can truly maintain living in the moment on a daily basis? Is it even necessary for us to so? Or is it good enough just to seek balance---the yin and yang---the calm after a storm, and laughter to balance out our tears? That darn Socratic Method I learned decades ago in college sure taught me how to ask questions, didn’t it, but it did nothing to help me learn how to sort out the conflicting answers I receive. ©

 French comedians..........

 

Loneliness, Isolation and Dollhouses

In the comment section of a website I visit daily, someone wrote this: “Loneliness, by my definition, is in your head. It's a decision you made that justifies your own homemade isolation. My advice? Don't allow that thought to enter or cross your mind.”

For several days I’ve been pondering this opinion and wondering if there is any validity to it. Is loneliness just a state of mind that we can change through pure willpower and thought control? I do believe in---and try to practice---the power of positive thinking but I don’t agree that loneliness and isolation are necessarily of our own making. Sure, we make the decision not to go out into the world and socialize. But socializing with others doesn’t automatically make you feel less alone or lonely. Maybe it’s just a widow’s point of view but to me, it’s not having that one person in your life who knows you better than you know yourself that makes you feel lonely and isolated. A sea full of acquaintances, neighbors and co-volunteers can help fill the void but it doesn’t replace the closeness you crave. That I crave. I also question if the people who believe that loneliness is all in your head have ever truly had an intimate relationship with another human being. How’s that for judging (maybe misjudging) a person I’ve never met? It takes time to transition from metaphorically walking two-by-two up the plank to the Ark to thinking of yourself as an island onto yourself.

Another person commented on the same article words to the effect that in order to make friends you need to stay current with the daily news so you have interesting things to talk about when you go out and about in public. I’d agree with that. My husband was a well-read person with a high IQ and he could strike up a conversation with anyone on the face of the earth and hold his own on a wide variety of topics. I watched him do it for 42 years. He was the original Chatty Kathy who never forgot anything he’d ever learned, read or saw. I know the technique for engaging strangers in conversation, I’m just not as good at it as he was. I was the observer who threw a wise-crack in from time to time, then went home and wrote about the encounter as an observer, not a participate. I can’t change my whole personality in the name of building new friendships. Can I? Can any of us? Friendships need to be built on honesty, not bait-and-switch techniques. But I am trying to be more outgoing as I interact with the outside world, Jeez, I’m making myself sound like an alien from another planet. I promise I don’t have purple antennas under the hats I wear out in public.  

Changing gears. For the past few weeks I’ve been trying to teach myself how to crochet. I’ve tried other times in my life to learn without much success. My mom was good at it and I still have the miniature hats and doilies she made for my dollhouse. I also have her set of hooks and the smallest one, the size 14, .50 mm, is so small I had to get a magnifying glass out to even know it was a hook. Most of the hooks in her set have prices stamped in the metal of twenty-five cents---that’s how old they are. Now, Jo-Ann’s online store is selling the size 14 metal hook for $9.99.  A few days ago, quite by coincidence one of my cousins posted a crochet supplies website on Face Book and lo and behold it has tutorials for left-handers. Now I’m starting to make progress! I so want a little hand project like this that I can take to the museum when I start volunteering there again in March. Last year I was the only docent who didn’t have something to keep my hands busy when we manned the not-so-busy front doors. I’ve been thinking about volunteering on Sundays when the museum has its peak number of tourists and lowest number of volunteers, but the tradeoff is I wouldn’t be able to pick volunteer days that match up with the people in the Historical Society that I’d like to get to know better. Decisions, decisions.

I absolutely can’t wait until spring! I freely admit to being isolated and lonely this winter but the weather, not a self-imposed mindset, has had me imprisoned for most of the season. And some of you reading this are probably quoting Hamlet right about now: "The lady doth protest too much methinks!” Maybe so, maybe not. We humans are good at judging others we don’t know, aren’t we. ©

Note on the photos. The one up above is one of the dollhouse hats that my mother made when I redecorated my childhood dollhouse in the 1970’s. It measures around ¾ of an inch. The first photo below is of a dollhouse carpet she crocheted. It measures 6 ½ inches square.  She made the pink bedroom rug in the bottom photo as well. My dollhouse is going to be one of those hard things to give up on my next downsizing. The house itself was made before WWII from a pattern that appeared in a magazine and it still has the original stenciled vines, hedges and shutters on the outside. I couldn't bear to cover them up after learning the house's history. My parents found the house at the Salvation Army and it was a Christmas gift from Santa. I found the magazine article and pattern decades later. I have a lighting kit and baseboards for it but I never got around to installing them.