Widows and Little Girls with Issues

I wish I had the courage to be as open about my political leanings, thoughts on current events and opinions on social issues in my blog as Ronni is over at Time Goes By. She’s my new blogging hero. But given her long career as a TV producer for shows on 20/20, PBS, CBS and the Barbara Walters Specials I suspect she’s been seasoned well to take more heat than chicken me has ever taken for speaking up in public---if, in fact, she does get nasty, defamatory or hateful emails from people who disagree with the opinions she blogs. Her comment section is not moderated and I don’t see any signs of her getting disrespectful feedback so maybe it doesn’t happen? I find that fascinating. I don’t even see occasional spam in her comments which my moderator function catches from time to time. I mostly use the moderator function, though, so I don’t miss a comment because I feel if someone takes the time to leave one I want to acknowledge it.

Part of the problem with me being more open on certain topics is I’ve learned from early childhood not to talk about religion and politics in public because there were very real repercussions. For example, I had a friend in early grade school tell me on the playground that she couldn’t play with me anymore because I didn’t go to her church. I’d been to her house the day before and her mother had asked The Church question that I would hear often in my life. Have I mentioned that I live in an area once proudly labeled the City of Churches? I had a guy in high school tell me---after meeting his parents---that he couldn’t date me anymore because I didn’t go to the right church. Growing up and well into my 20s, “What church do you go to?” was the second question most people asked. Heck, even today it comes up often when I meet someone new. Early on I learned to lie and name one of the four “approved” churches in my neighborhood. I don’t lie anymore when answering that question but I’m very skilled at giving non-committal answers to the you-should-try-my-church comments that follow. During the Feminist Movement in the ‘60s (my awakening into the world of politics) the people I worked with were so anti-anything that didn’t involve women being subservient that I kept my involvement in the movement top secret. I remember once sitting in the coffee room and listening to a conversation and thinking, “God, these people think people who think like I do have horns growing out of our heads!”

Another part of the problem with me getting more open about the my thoughts on current events and politics here is the title and original purpose of my blog. It started out as a way to deal with my newly minted widowhood and it has evolved from there to a blog about one woman’s search for something elusive---new friends and contentment. I just don’t know how I can make politics and current events fit into my unwritten mission statement for The Misadventures of Widowhood but I somehow think they are connected. I have spent my entire life not being totally honest and open when I meet new people and that is standing in the way of forming anything beyond surface friendships. I'm tired of pretending! How’s that for a new revelation? They think I’m a nice, sweet and agreeable pin cushion and inside I feel like a phony who wants to scream, “I might not go to the right church but I still have good values and a code of ethics that has been intrinsic in every civilized society that has ever walked on earth!” I’d even settle for being able to say to someone face-to-face, “I don’t agree with you because….” I can do it on-line and with four people in my life, but that’s all. The little girl inside is still afraid if I'm honest about my liberal politics and Humanist-as-opposed-religious leanings people will say, “I can’t play with you anymore.”

This isn’t my first blog. I have/had seven others that cover different stages of my life. I could start another where I introduce the “me” that is striving to be more like Ronni at Time Goes By but it’s such a hard decision. My five blogs that are still available on-line plus my Yahoo articles have a combined view count of over 450,000. I think I’m afraid that a new blog would rack up a 50 or so before drying up. Okay, confession time. I’m addicted to my view counter. It’s like validation but the 64 million dollar question is: “What does it validate?” Maybe that a dyslexia, left-handed little girl who had trouble learning how to read, spell, tie her shoes and tell time didn’t deserve the “stupid” label she heard as a little girl? Or maybe that I am worth playing with out in the big scary world? I’m not sure which, but if there is a moral to this post it would be to be careful what you say to kids because they carry labels with them forever. Do you have a label buried deep inside of you? ©

My Widow’s Week in 596 Words

My Red Hat Society chapter had a walk-about this week. We went to a neighborhood near downtown where a cluster of antique shops are located. They cater to young professionals and people looking for shabby chic and their stock was slightly different than what I’m used to seeing when I go antiquing. One store had a laundry basket full of faces from old pocket watches. It made me sad to think about all those past century pocket watches that were obviously melted down for their silver or gold, saving only the guts to sell to crafters. Those hundreds of tiny little roman numerals on ivory colored clock faces with ornate embellishments cried out to me. Needless to say I didn’t buy any of those $6.00 little gems. It would be like buying the bones of a once beautiful child. I have a dozen or so pocket watches slated to go up for auction on e-Bay and I came home wondering if I couldn’t somehow put them in a shadow box to display. But if I put everything in shadow boxes I’m having trouble parting with my walls would probably fall over from the extra weight.

Also in the same neighborhood was an old style deli where we ate lunch. The food was super flavorful and there was never a time while we were there that there wasn’t a line out the door. Dessert---Red Hatters never pass up dessert---was at an equally old style bakery. I can’t even remember the last time I’ve even seen a bakery and the cream puffs and éclairs shouted out: “Hey, I’ll look good on your hips!” The bakery had high shelves lining the walls with more antique cookie jars than I’ve ever seen in one place and I’ve seen a lot of cookie jar collections in my travels. I would never drive to this part of town alone which is probably a good thing because I’d be in that bakery way too often. I really do wish they’d outlaw sugar. If I had to buy sugary products under the cover of darkness I might have a chance of staying on a diet. I don’t like to drive after dark. My eye doctor, today, said I have the beginnings of cataracts and that’s what gives us old duffers the halo around street lights and headlights, making night driving so annoying. My cataracts are not big enough for him to start nagging me to let him remove them---his words, not mine---so I have a few move years of staying home after dark.

‘Old style’ seemed to be this week’s theme. At the senior luncheon I saw one of the best bands I’ve had the pleasure to see in a very long time. The music teachers who made up the band played six instruments between the three of them including a bass, fiddle, acoustical and regular style guitars, banjo, and a washboard. They played what they called “porch music” which was a blend of mountain music, prohibition era songs and stuff you could picture yourself singing if you were living in the book, The Grapes of Wrath, dirt poor and on the way to California to look for work. What made the show doubly good was in between the songs the teachers talked about the history of the genres they sang, their instruments and old time singers and song writers who influenced modern music. And all that for $6.00 including food.

It was a busy week but I’m starting to bore myself writing about it, so I’ll quit while I’m ahead. I want something big and exciting to happen it my life. Something bold and good that will cause me to wear the letters off my keyboard as I tell the world about it. Maybe next week.....maybe then I'll invent a 'years eraser' and I'll be twenty-two again and singing on stage with Taylor Swift. ©

From Boring to Macabre

I went three days without speaking to a living soul other than the dog and he’s not much of a conversationalist. Levi’s favorite sentences are: “I want a treat. Right now!” “Let me in!” “The rabbits are attacking the house again!” “Let me out!” and “Oh, boy, I really get to go to Starbucks with you?” Today I finally broke down and called a friend and after a half hour conversation I was ready to go back to my exceedingly-boring-at-the-moment life. Have I mentioned that my friend’s conversations are as predictable as the dogs? Aches, pains the rising cost of everything and grandchildren.

Then I called the service department at the electric company to arrange to get a radio transmitter device put on my meter so their meter readers won’t have to walk through my dog pen anymore. I’m getting old-lady cranky and I’m sick of them leaving the gate open. Last winter when the gate was frozen in the snow one of their guy’s climbed over the fence, broke the top off one of the pickets and it was the last straw, today, when I had to go to Lowe’s to buy a special glue to fix it. The electric company couldn’t have been nicer about my request. Friday someone will be here to install the new device free of charge. And for a bonus I'll get someone new to talk to while he/she is here.

Coming up soon I'll have other opportunities for conversation: a haircut and eye doctor appointment, a trip to restock my mall booth, the June luncheon at the senior hall, and a tour of the back rooms at a funeral parlor. Sounds macabre, I know, but haven’t you ever wanted to ask a funeral director questions at a time when you’re not seriously mourning a loss? Well, I know I’m not the only one because our senior hall was able to fill up a whole bus load of curious people like me. I plan to ask some questions about cremation but I’m not sure I want to hear an honest, truthful answer. Like, “How did the unburned twigs and two dried leaves get into my husband’s box of ashes?” “If those ashes were tested would it prove they were ashes from a common, backyard fire pit or that of human origins?” Trust is such a big issue when turning a loved one over to a funeral home, isn’t it. When I first found the twigs and leaves I should have marched that box of ashes right back to the funeral home, slammed it down on the director’s desk with a force that propelled a ghostly cloud above the box and demanded an answer then and there. But how much stuff can a newly minted widow take? So here I am nearly 2 ½ years later with the courage to finally ask those questions and the universe is giving me an opportunity to do it.

The funeral home is going to feed us lunch, too. That might be a little creepy, eating in a funeral parlor. I’ll let you know. I just hope I come home with some satisfying answers and a free ink pen. I’ve finally run out of working pens from all those that my husband used to collect where ever we’d go. Guys in wheelchairs with flirty, baby blue eyes and missing vocabularies can con a lot of ink pens from office girls, nurses, doctors and waitresses. Everyone needs a hobby and that was his post-stroke hobby. May he be resting in peace where I left his ashes and that his body was not sold off for God knows what. In past centuries would-be doctors and artists would buy dead bodies so they could study the muscles and bones under the skin. What macabre uses would the black market find today if their agents of evil and vice gave a widow fire pit ashes and sold her deceased husband off for cash? Now, aren't you sorry you read this all the way to the end and learned about my burning---no pun intended---little mystery. ©