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Ramblings by Rose Mary (column archive May-Jun 2007)
Please refer back to the
Ramblings by Rose Mary main page for columns published in other issues. Rose Mary can be contacted via e-mail at
rwclarke@mibor.net.
Artists and Writers Have No Real Choice
“One of the good things about modern times: if you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.” – Kurt Vonnegut
How true! Vonnegut died a couple of weeks ago. It’s a sad commentary on society’s values that so little was made of the passing of this man who made people think. Obviously, he had little entertainment value.
They maundered on hour-after-dreary-hour about Anna Nicole Smith, whose main claim to fame was an outrageously large bosom, a vague resemblance to Marilyn Monroe. Thank goodness we’ve learned the parentage of her baby! I have nothing against her, you understand. She did the best she could with the material at hand!
I mourn the deaths of great writers because there will be no more books by them. Others may try to continue their sagas as did J. J. R. Tolkien’s son, but there was only one Tolkien, only one Margaret Mitchell, and only one Daphne du Maurier.
Just as painters and composers have an individual style if they’re really good, writers have an authentic, personal voice. William Faulkner, Clyde Edgerton, Harper Lee, Carson McCullers and Truman Capote are all southern writers, but their styles are nothing alike. (Have you read To Kill A Mocking Bird? Or Capote’s story about the fruitcakes? You can even find Capote’s story on the Internet. Oh, are you in for a treat.)
Just as good teachers are born and not made, great writers cannot be imitated. Unless one reads their biographies, one doesn’t realize that writing is hard, day-in-day-out drudgery. A fine piece of writing is not a random act. It’s a purposeful activity where every word is carefully chosen.
“The practice of art isn’t to make a living,” Kurt Vonnegut said. “It’s to make your soul.”
Artists are driven to practice their craft. Studies indicate that the brains of musicians are wired differently. I think that this may also apply to painters and writers. Monet stood in the snow to paint his marvelous snowscapes such as “The Blackbird” while icicles formed in his beard. How many of us would be willing to do that?
Ernest Hemingway, unable to stand the noise of his wife and baby while he worked, rented a chill room in Paris that was heated only by a few faggots of wood a day. They were so poor that in the afternoon, he would wheel his little boy in a baby buggy to the Luxembourg gardens where he’d lay a trail of corn to tempt pigeons to come ever closer. He’d wait for the pigeons with the brightest eyes, grab them, wring their necks and hide the under Bumby’s blacket. There would be squab for dinner that night! “Real” readers like old Granny and I have to read, and “real” writers must write, cannot stop writing and write every day. (Perhaps Hemingway’s single-mindedness explains why Hadley, Bumby’s mother, was the first of four wives!)
Some of them, such as Jack London, Rosamunde Pilcher, Daphne du Maurier and Maeve Binchy, are wonderful spinners of stories. Their writing reads like cream, as Robert Ruark put it. Others do more than write a “good read;” they say something of import about the world and the human condition. Shakespeare was not only a great poet, his plays lay bare the mechanisms and machinations of humanity. Dickens exposed the poverty and injustice of his society, as did Zola.
Being truthful is of the utmost import to great writers, even if it brings down disapproval on them or costs them friendships. Everything is grist to their mill. One of Hemingway’s friends took to her bed for three days after the publication of The Sun Also Rises. Truman Capote lost his best friend for what he revealed about her.
Old Granny said, “Their writing and my reading make our worlds match up!” This it is with Clyde Edgerton’s Lunch at the Piccadilly, which is about the residents of a southern nursing home. Edgerton cleverly depicts the tragic-comic human condition from a rather skewed perspective. He says that in one part of his mind are the real people whom he knows. Sometimes he reaches into it and deposits snippets of them in the part where his fictional characters live.
Edgerton is one of those writers who hold up mirrors for us to look into and see ourselves. Lunch at the Piccadilly is a funny but poignant story about the residents of the Shady Rest nursing home who have had to give up their homes. It’s also a perceptive account of the people who look after them. It strikes uncomfortably close to home and makes me think about my own rapidly-approaching old age. Some would call me old now, but I assert that I am just nicely ripe!
Mother's Day Rooted in English Custom
We humans seem to need special days: birthdays, anniversaries, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, July 4, Labor Day, Memorial Day, Presidents’ Day . . . I wonder if our lives would be boring without these spikes of excitement.
Thoreau sought to live seamlessly without subdividing his life into days and months, but I have not done so. Some months cause me to dip into my inner pool of reminiscence where everything that I ever experienced is stored. May is freighted with memories: the elders of the neighborhood hoping that the irises and peonies would bloom in time for Decoration Day; listening to the Five Hundred radio broadcast . . .
Come the first of May, I’d count my slender horde kept in a cigar box to see what I could spend for a Mother’s Day gift at Florys or Danners. I had little money. Grandpa’s weekly dime formed the foundation of my savings. Daddy paid me to clean his work shoes that became filthy when he worked at the greenhouse or tromped around in the mud while fishing. During canning season, Mother hired Wanda and me to wash jars.
My fastest source of cash was the pop bottles that I’d turn in for the deposit. One year my enterprising Jones nephews and nieces went all over town and collected so many bottles that the merchants wouldn’t take any more. After I started babysitting and working at the “Knightstown Banner”, I could afford more expensive gifts than a handkerchief or a tiny bottle of Blue Waltz or Evening in Paris. I still have statuettes of a shepherd and shepherdess that I gave Mother.
Mother’s Day started in England when one Sunday a year, Mothering Day, was set aside so that live-in servants visit their mothers. In America Anna Jarvis agitated until Woodrow Wilson established Mother’s Day as the second Sunday in May in 1914. She also started the custom of wearing carnations to church in honor of one’s mother. Females wore red carnations to honor living mothers, white ones if their mothers were deceased. Today Mother’s Day is supposedly the most popular day to eat out.
The dictionary definition of “mother” as “female parent” is inadequate. Everyone’s mother is a complex, unique blend of many ingredients. My mother has been gone for nigh on to twenty years, but she is still present in the innermost core of my being where I see her in my mind’s eye or hear her in my mind’s ear as if it were yesterday.
Random images from my internal album rise up before me like a slide show: She’s telling me my favorite bedtime story about Brer rabbit and Mrs. Ledhulce and the gals . . . She’s rolling out pie crust . . . She’s ironing stiffly starched shirts or sewing while listening to “Stella Dallas” on the radio . . . She’s chiding me for having broken my glasses again . . . She’s yelled for me to come into the bathroom after her shower and help her with the old-fashioned corset that’s stuck halfway up because of the humidity . . . She’s tending her flowers or hoeing the garden . . .
A devout Christian, she preaches one of her sermonettes: “No one who is prejudiced against people of other races or religions will have an easy time getting into the Kingdom of Heaven. There’s a bunch of bigots who are going to be surprised--mighty surprised--when they stand before God!” . . .
She’s moaning, “Don’t look, don’t look!” after prematurely laying down her Canasta hand . . . She tries to console Daddy after he loses his sight . . . Exhausted, she’s fallen asleep while reading the newspaper after a hard day’s work at the greenhouse . . . She’s sobbing because Granny has died . . . She’s talking about a favorite book . . .She’s fighting back tears as I leave for college where I receive whatever she can afford to send each week from her meager earnings . . . She’s loudly singing Christmas Carols to keep Vicki from hearing the whining of the Christmas puppy that’s hidden in the basement . . . And, at the last, she faces her approaching death cheerfully . . . I understand what Abraham Lincoln meant when he said that he owed everything he was to his angel mother.
As Mother did every year, I’ve been waiting to hear the silvery trill of the wren. Yesterday a pair of cardinals was at the feeder. Every now and then he’d hop over to her and feed her a seed. This is part of their courtship ritual. Not just human guys take their dates out to dinner! Mother would have loved to see that just as she would have liked to know my grandsons whom she never saw.
She is no longer here physically, but she lives on within everyone who loved her, and something of her will be passed down to generations yet to come.
Technology Changes Just About Everything
I’m going to share a droll story that I heard at a party at Vicki’s home. It doesn’t fit in with a series of columns that I have in mind, but that can wait!
One of the pleasures of writing for Eric and Jeff is that I can write what I choose so long as I remain within the parameters of the community standards that the Editors of The Banner follow. The structure of one of my essays is similar to one of my days. Every morning I start out with a to-do list and a plan. However, by day’s end, random events sometimes sent me off in unforeseen directions.
The little story makes me think about how much computers are changing our daily lives. Take writing, for example. Unlike Hemingway who wrote by hand, I use a powerful laptop that performs all sorts of editing chores, counts my words and even provides a thesaurus.
The spellchecker is a double-sided blessing: On the one hand, it catches all of your typographical errors. You can even tell it to insert the correct form of a word that you choose from of a list of words that are spelled similarly to the word that you have misspelled.
Once I’ve finished an essay, I spell check it and paste it into my e-mail. A touch of a key fires it off to The Banner. Once that electronic wizardry has happened, there’s no calling the message back. Therein lies a danger! If you accept the first choice in the list without looking, you can end up with some bizarre results.
Vicki’s friend who works in a bank’s computer division told the following story. They had had computer problems, and he sent an e-mail to the bank’s executives and employees: The spellchecker corrected a typographical error in the word “inconvenience.” He didn’t pay attention to the replacement word that was inserted and sent the note onward. His letter of apology concluded, “I do hope that this problem has not caused you too much incontinence.” An executive replied, “So far, I have noticed no change in my bathroom habits!”
Newspaper publishing has also changed from the days when Tom Mayhill clacked away on the noisy linotype machine. Now powerful computers run quietly and smoothly. Out-of-towners who read my columns and wonder what the paper is like can find The Banner on the Internet.
The Internet is having an impact on education. You can even take classes “on line.” Vicki just finished an associate degree that involved several on-line classes. I read with great interest the thoughtful and thought-provoking letter by student Sarah Tabb about conditions at the Knightstown High School.
The physical plant of the old buildings where I went to school would be rated substandard in contrast with the modern building out on Road 40, but I look back with admiration on the education that we received back in the 1950’s. It was a small school with only thirty-three in my graduating class. The curriculum was modest compared with that of many modern schools such as the one attended by my grandsons who took college classes in calculus and something called discrete math at Tri State.
The Internet is probably perfectly adequate for some classes, but I can’t imagine learning an experimental science that way. Our science and math classes were taught face-to-face by Earl Blemker, Claude Sipes and Mabel Trotter, all of whom were intelligent, no-nonsense teachers. I remember that if we got stuck on an algebra problem we could call Mr. Sipes who’d talk us through it. There were English, social studies, Latin, Spanish, speech, chorus, band, bookkeeping, typing, shorthand, shop, agriculture, home ec and art classes.
Ms Tabb says that she doesn’t feel safe at school because of the behavioral problems that have become endemic in American schools. How sad. I talk with enough teachers that I know what one cause is. Our society teaches children everything about rights and nothing about responsibility and morality. Too often a blind eye is turned to the conditions in our schools. Few administrators and school boards are brave enough buck society, establish firm disciplinary policies for their schools and back up their teachers.
We had little personal freedom in the old school. Our teachers and we knew that teachers had the backing of the school officials and the entire town. A teacher who is not backed up and supported soon becomes jaded and fatigued.
Perhaps it's time to re-evaluate what’s happening in America and turn back the clock. Fancy buildings and electronic gadgetry cannot replace talented teachers, and teachers cannot teach in disorderly classrooms. If you read this column, ask yourself who taught you to do so.
Next week we see exotic places through the eyes of young people.
Some Answer the Call of Far Away Places
Far away places with strange sounding names, far away over the sea . . .
Oh those far away places with strange sounding names are calling, calling me.
I’ll go to China or maybe Siam—I wanna see for myself
Those far away places I’ve been reading in a book I took from a shelf.
I start getting restless whenever I hear the whistle of a train.
I pray for the day when I can get underway and look for those castles in Spain.
They call me a dreamer. Well, maybe I am, but I know that I’m longing to see
Those far away places with the strange sounding names calling, calling me.
The above golden oldie was written by Whitney and Kramer in 1948. Strange isn’t it, how one remembers a song that one hasn’t heard for fifty years, but forgets the name of a person one met a month ago? Tell me that rote learning doesn’t work!
We played it and songs like “I’d Like to Get You on a Slow Boat to China, all to Myself Alone” on a record player that belonged to my sister, Beverly Gard. (No, not the one who’s a State Representative, although her husband and we are probably related, although not closely.) There was no such thing as I-pods and all the newfangled stuff we have today.
Seemingly unimportant poems, songs, reading and events help shape our lives. At night I’d lie in bed and listen to the steam engine’s hiss and whistle as it chugged through town on the Big 4 railroad tracks by the poultry house and wonder whither it was bound, and if I’d ever be lucky enough to ride on a train.
It was a big deal when our senior class took a train to Washington, D. C. and New York. All kinds of people showed up to see us off when special arrangements were made, and the train stopped to pick us up at the Pennsylvania R.R. tracks on the south side of town. Man, what big shots we were! I thought, “This is the life when we lurched our way to the club car for Cokes, toured the White House, gawked at the skyscrapers of New York City and ate in restaurants.
The Banner masthead that you can see in color on its website is a picture of the old Academy building’s roof whose twin towers are surmounted by a globe and a telescope. “From the Earth to the stars!” was the message conveyed to me when I was a student there so many years ago.
Also, it reminded us to look beyond our individual selves and reach for our dreams and the unknown. It’s easier today. During my childhood even air travel was slow, compared with today’s jets that fly Bill and me to Paris overnight. Just think: during my lifetime, space exploration has gone from being a spark in someone’s imagination to a reality. Most of us will never fly in a spaceship, but at the rate that technology is accelerating, space travel will be probably be ordinary during my grandson’s lifetime.
My father never got farther away from Knightstown than Ontario, Canada. He never saw the ocean, never flew in an airplane. Some of our elderly neighbors probably never even went to the City as we called Indianapolis. Other than those who fought in the world wars, very few people went to Europe, let alone the Orient. It was big news when Mike and Jenny Schatzlein went to Germany. It was huge news in my family when I went to spend a summer in France.
I was fascinated by the wonderful TV series, This Planet Earth, that took seven years to film. If you didn’t see it, do rent it. It carried me to exotic places that I know I shall never see. My travels are forays to places that I’ve visited before such as France, Italy, the eastern seaboard and the western mountains because I like the feeling of visiting in depth rather than just looking at the surface from a tour bus.
There are people who delight in exploring the unknown. I’ve written before about adventurous people. I admire them because they’re such unafraid risk takers who think “outside the box.” Some of them turn their lives topsy-turvy and strike out in new directions as did the painter, Paul Gauguin, who ended up in the south seas and Lady Hester Stanhope who skedaddled from Victorian England to live in the high Lebanon.
I greatly enjoy living their lives vicariously through the pages of a book while sitting in my armchair. “Bravo!” I say to them. “Bravo!”, but I have no desire to see first hand the huge spiders of the jungle, freeze on the polar icecap or live in the forest primeval la Anne La Bastille.
Wallowing Merrily in a Sea of Books
I love books! It’s a wonder that I do because I was a dunce during first grade. Pointing to words in the big Dick and Jane book on an easel, the teacher would say, "Read, Rose Mary. Read!" I couldn’t even see the words, let alone read them. During second grade it was discovered that I was extremely near-sighted. When I put on my first pair of glasses prescribed by Dr. Carl Harris who was to be my beloved ophthalmologist for the next thirty-five years, I entered a brand new world.
I made up for lost time very quickly. When I was eight, Mother was reading the Wonderful Wizard of Oz to me. One day she was too busy, and I said, "All right, I’ll read it myself!" Thus started my compulsion to read.
A famous philosopher said that the most priceless gift a mother can bestow upon her children is to read to them. This tradition was passed down in my mother’s family. My great-grandmother read to old Granny; Granny read to Mother and my uncles Ivan and Nolan Kelly; I read to Vicki; and she read to her boys. The wife of one of Bill’s nephews who grew up on a farm wrote sadly that her grandmother never read and strongly opposed time being taken from farm chores to read.
The daughter of a Civil War veteran, when Granny was about nine years old, they strapped her down and removed juvenile cataracts--without the benefit of anesthesia. (Brr!) Afterwards, she became a voracious reader.
Later in life she lost her eyesight again because of glaucoma. The pain in one eye became so great that she demanded that it be removed. She refused to get a glass eye, saying, "What the Hell do I want with a fake eye?" One of our family treasures is a quilt that indominitable Granny stitched by hand after becoming blind.
A few years ago, Bill gave me a $150 Borders gift card.. Oh the delight of being able to walk into Borders, knowing that I could buy any book I wanted! Some months I just browsed after attending a Chautauqua book discussion group and bought nothing. Other months I’d buy one carefully chosen book. I was as parsimonious as Grandpa with that gift card as if it were a bag of gold dust--which, indeed, it was to me.
Along about August, Bill said, "I sure won’t give you any more book cards. Obviously, that wasn’t a good gift because you’ve bought almost nothing." I explained what fun it was to savor leisurely the choosing of just the right books. My friend, Phyllis, felt the same way about book cards that her family gave her. Bill gave me another card this past Christmas. Oh dear, I’ve been profligate and have only $40 left!
Not to worry. I am positively wallowing in a sea of books. I volunteered to help with the job of sorting the thousands of books that people donated. The only problem is that I get too caught up in looking at the books and reminiscing about them--sort of like reading old magazines when one is cleaning the attic.
Oh the treasures I’ve found! I picked up about 75 yummy cookbooks that were left at Dufour’s Restaurant in Irvington. I brought home Toulouse Lautrec’s Table to peruse. It’s a marvelous mix of biography, art, photos of beautifully presented food and recipes from the belle epoque era. I must buy it. How can I resist the art of one of my favorite painters combined with delectable food? I’ve already set aside Elizabeth von Armin’s charming book about her garden that belonged to our beloved friend, Phyllis, who died recently. Oh, how I wish I could call her for a good "booky" talk.
I’m also lusting after a two-volume set about the Angel archeological dig in southern Indiana. I may never read it, but what a satisfaction to own it and leaf through its pages! Perhaps only a "real" reader would understand that.
Now I must find more books to donate to the sale to make room on my shelves for the treasures that I shall buy.
Even Young at Heart Feel Gravity's Pull
Oh, oh, oh! By the time this appears in The Banner, I’ll be seventy years old. Think of it: seventy! Surely it can’t be true. Inside, as long as my arthritic body doesn’t ache too much, I feel no older than I was in my fifties, forties, even twenties. How did I arrive at this station in my life's journey so soon? . . . Too soon, too soon . . . My train is drawing ever closer to the terminus. Much better not to speculate on how many stops remain.
There’s no denying that the old bod has changed. Gravity’s pull has caught up with me. Everything is inching downward. I was shocked when I was dusting a little mirrored table and saw the ravages that have been wrought on the underneath of my chin. My legs have become crepey. Sic transit gloria.
Someone said that we should think as life as a journey, rather than a destination. All of us must shuffle off this mortal coil as the Bard put it, but I understand what Henry David Thoreau meant when he wrote that he did not want to come to die and realize that he had not truly lived. Auntie Mame Dennis said it best with her one-word dictum, "LIVE!"
"Fight, fight, fight the coming of the night." Dylan Thomas
Growing old teaches hard lessons in the school of hard knocks. There are two extremes of dealing with it: to simply resign one’s self to it or to pretend it hasn’t happened and exhaust one’s self, trying to keep up with the self that one was twenty years ago. There have been times when I’ve been like a trapped butterfly beating its wings against a windowpane. I need to find a golden mean where I can grow old with dignity as did Knightstown’s beloved Jessie Nay Wagoner, yet still enjoy life.
Age has taught me is to put away the foolish pride that causes us to put limitations on ourselves so that we enjoy less and less of this precious life. As Steven Hilbert said, "This is not a dress rehearsal!" For all our medical miracles, the end cannot be postponed forever. However, we can make conscious choices to live as well as possible with what we have and to use the wonderful technology that makes life easier.
In nature, a mighty oak will come crashing down during a tempest while the willow bends and survives. Each stage of life requires accommodations. At least, I don’t have to wear dentures! Most people aren’t even aware of my state-of-the-art hearing aid that is so well crafted that I forget about it and must be careful not to jump in the shower while wearing it.
Next week we shall be in Paris with our twin grandsons. This will probably be our last trip with them as they will be entering engineering schools this fall. What fun it will be to watch them absorb the glories of that magical place.
Paris is designed for the pleasure of human beings. I feel sorry for those who take tours where they visit eight countries in ten days. I see the tourists in the buses with their noses pressed against the windows. Paris is beautiful to look at, but I want to do more than merely look: when I travel. I want to experience the place.
There’s no hiding my rollator which even has a seat that I can rest on. I hate having to use it because it brands me as week and old. However, it permits me to continue being active rather than sitting at home in a lounger watching the world via television. To savor Paris properly, one must go out and walk. I could not do this without the rollator.
Chris and Tony don’t know yet that they’re going to be the ones who have to haul Grandma’s walker up and down the stairs of the Metro! They also don't know yet that they're going to be sent off on a mini adventure by themselves--an overnight tour of the Normandy landing beaches and Mont St Michel. Bill and I shall have a gastronomic fling while they’re gone.
The boys' palates aren’t ready for pate de foie gras, breast of duck, mussels cooked with white wine, garlic and butter and raw oysters. Instead, we'll introduce them to the Crocque Monsieur (a yummy grilled ham and cheese sandwich), wonderful crepes sold by street vendors who cook them on griddles while you watch, and mouth-watering French fries. They love good bread. Breakfast in France consists of crusty bread, flaky croissants and/or pain au chocolat--rolls with a chunk of dark chocolate in the center.
I must dwell upon what remains rather than mourn what is lost. I’ll leave the strenuous stuff such as climbing to the top of Notre-Dame to them while I sip a glass of wine at a sidewalk cafe and absorb the beauty spread out before me. Life is good!
Old Age OK Compared to Alternative
"I don’t know how I got over the hill without getting to the top." - Will Rogers
Sometimes life is like a range of hills--you just keep seeing more hills to climb in front of you. I’m in an introspective mood where I look back at the long distance I’ve traveled even though it seems as if I just set out yesterday. When someone asked the French star, Maurice Chevalier, how he liked being seventy, he replied, "I do not like eet, but ven I conseedair zee alternateeve . . . " Ditto!.
The last of seven children, I feel fortunate to be alive. Two babies who came before me during the Great Depression didn’t survive birth. Mother though that this was because she was so ill nourished.
She considered it a miracle that I survived my difficult birth. Her doctor told his fellow physicians that he had just had a delivery where the placenta and umbilical cord came first. One of them said, "I’ll bet you delivered a dead baby, didn’t you?" "No," he said. "This one lived."
Mother said, "It took so long for you to be born and then to cry that I figured you were dead." The world might never have missed me, but I sure would have missed one heck of a good time!
Since then, enormous strides have been made in saving babies who once would have died. Our neighbor, Auntie Ida Kelly, earned her living by taking care of women and babies following childbirth. In those days, women spent a couple of weeks in bed, recovering. She told how she once kept a preemie warm in her oven. One of Bill’s great-great nephews weighed less than two pounds at birth and is now a healthy boy.
"Being young is beautiful, but being old is comfortable." - Will Rogers
Bill offered to throw a big party for me as he has in the past. "No," I said. "Not this time." When I went to the kitchen to make my first cup of coffee, I found a bottle of champagne, two glasses and a charming card suggesting that two is sometimes the right number for a celebration. Yes, two is all that is needed when one has a companionable spouse. My colleagues also gave me a bottle of Perrier Jouet, one of France’s finest champagnes. What riches!
One of the Nine Nifti Nicitinos, my high school chums, sent a card that I suspect is closer to my reality than my ideal of aging gracefully as did the dignified, gracious, willowy Jessie Nay Wagoner who was still lovely at eighty. On the card’s front is a snaggle-toothed, tough looking old woman who’s wearing a helmet, bomber jacket and goggles. The message reads, "Aging gracefully means different things to different people."
Actually, I’ve always rather aspired to becoming an eccentric because eccentrics are so interesting. My old granny was at the top of the class. She didn’t give a snap of her fingers about appearances or convention. When Grandpa, who was notoriously thrifty, refused to give her spending money she got a job in a restaurant. During that bygone era when it was considered "fast" to dye one’s hair, she decided to dye her unfashionable auburn hair. Alas, it turned purple so that she had to wear a hat for several months.
When she was old she smoked cigarettes in a black holder and drank beer before going to bed, claiming that it helped her sleep. One time she took a sleeping pill along with the beer, dozed off while smoking and singed her easy chair.
One of my favorite poems is “Warning" by Jenny Joseph. It’s the musings of a woman who is looking ahead to the future. She’s been good: She pays the rent, wears correct attire, sets a good example for the children and reads the newspaper. She will make up for the sobriety of her youth by becoming an old woman who wears a purple hat with a red dress, spends the butter money on satin sandals, summer gloves and brandy and gets fat from eating three pounds of sausages at a time. She’ll gobble up store samples, pick other people’s flowers and learn to spit.
My dear friend, Nancy, and I planned a private 70th birthday celebration where we’d do something naughty and daring. Oh how we used to chuckle about our plan.
And then she died . . . too soon . . .
Fun should not be postponed. Naughtiness requires someone to share it with.
Better we had been naughty sooner.
Don't Judge the Day till Evening's End
Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck , cluck . . . . fuss, fuss, fuss, fuss, fuss .. . . squawk, squawk, squawk, squawk, squawk . . . Well, I never!. I went for Doppler tests on my arteries, and the two, cute, young technicians were wearing SHORTS up the there! It said "Abercrombie" across the butt of one. What ever happened to professional attire? Those were my ARTERIES they were testing.
My dear sister, Virginia, would have been scandalized. A 1940 graduate of the nursing school at the old St. Vincent’s hospital, she believed in a pristine, white uniform, cap, hose, and polished shoes. I still think that those nurses were lovely.
As I lay there, I realized that perhaps this was a wake-up call advising me that I’m in danger of becoming one of those bad-tempered old biddies who dwell on trivia. I gave myself a talking-to: "This is a different world, Rose Mary. Get used to it."
I abhor prejudice whether it be religious, racial or social; yet here I was, judging those professional of the basis of their youth and attire. Even if I think it’s unprofessional, their appearance has very little to do with their ability to perform. I may become old in body, but I don’t have to have an old mind or an old spirit.
Some people are so secretive about their ages that their birth dates aren’t in their obituaries or on their tombstones. I see no reason to hide my age. I agree with Will Rogers. "Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me. I want people to know why I look this way. I’ve traveled a long way, and some of the roads weren’t paved."
The "Big Seven Oh" catapulted me into an introspective mood.. The decade birthdays cause one to look backwards and forwards. Some of the decade milestones are fun, but I see little reason to rejoice about my 70th. Seventy is just an unpleasant reminder that if you’re not elderly yet, you’re going to be so very soon. Here's one of the quotes that my niece, Cynthia, sent for my birthday:
"When you’re dissatisfied and would like to go back to youth, think of Algebra." - Will Rogers
I’m like Father Tim in Jan Karon’s wonderful Mitford Chronicles. He even kept a mirror with which to examine the top of his head to see if he’d lost any more hair. He reminded himself of examples of older people who succeeded late in life such as the Grandma Moses. He resisted retirement, telling his Bishop that he was too tired to run and to afraid to quit. I understand that perfectly.
"Eventually you will reach a point where you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it." - Will Rogers
When one achieves eighty, ninety or one hundred, perhaps there’s a sense of triumph at having survived for so long. Bill and I have four friends who are ninety-five. Three of them still drive, and all of them are sharp-witted. Then there’s Knightstown’s own centenarian, Willard Avery.
"Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment." - Will Rogers .... Amen!
I blush to think of the stupidities of my youth. I have learned from them, but I must remember that growing old does not automatically endow one with the wisdom of the ages. Hopefully, I will continue to grow rather than becoming narrow. "The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for." Will Rogers
I hope that I’ll learn better what is important and what isn’t. The week before we left for Paris was difficult. I came down with a horrible bug during the Benton House Book Fair and spent three days in bed. That ruined my to-do list. Then people started calling about business as always happens when we plan a trip. I couldn’t find a pair of my pants. Bill found them. I needed new underwear. I was frantic.
I called Vivian Forst (ninety-seven) to chat. Just because one is old doesn’t mean that one is obsolete. She’s still as smart as a whip and cheerful even though her life has become restricted. "I read that you’re taking your grandsons to Paris." I replied, "It’s going to be horribly expensive because of the air fares and exchange rate." "It’ll be money well spent. You and those boys will have wonderful memories the rest of your lives.":
She’s right. So what if we eat bean soup forever? I can hardly wait to watch those boys the first time they see Paris. I’ve seen so many people deny themselves, store up for their old age, and then die or become too ill to be able to do what they would have enjoyed. Carpe diem! Sieze the day!
"One must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been." - Will Rogers
Air Travel Leaves Little Room for One's Pride
Oh dear! It’s only 4:30 a.m., and I’m wide awake. Actually, my body’s telling me that I’ve overslept, that it’s 10:30 a.m. because it’s still on French time. At least I didn’t wake up even earlier as I’ve often done after past trips to Europe. Last year friends Bill and Jean called at 6:00 a.m. after our return and said plaintively, "We’ve been awake since 3:30!"
The problem is caused by the rapidity with which we pass through time zones. In the old days, people traveled leisurely by ship. Now there is no time for one’s body clock to adjust. Also, spending seven hours in an airplane is an assault on the nervous system.
Some people find air travel exciting. I consider it to be merely the fastest distance between two points. I’m sure that Orville and Wilbur Wright did not deliberately set out to create an instrument of torture when they invented the airplane. When I first started flying I worried about whether this thing was going to remain airborne. Now I wonder how miserable am I going to be?
One of my visions of Hell is to spend eternity crammed like cattle in the middle seat of a jumbo jet with a minuscule amount of leg room near a baby who squalls throughout the flight and with seat mates who continually wriggle and squirm and nudge me with their elbows. I envy those who are rich enough or have enough frequent flyer miles to sit in first class where the spacious seats recline.
My one goal is to sleep as much as possible so I can forget how awful it is and avoid flashes of claustrophobia. Last November a Frenchwoman took pity on me and gave me earplugs which are like a disc of wax that fill the outer ear. During our trip home this time I was ever so grateful as there were three screamers on board. I also use a sleep mask. Other people watch movies to get through the time.
Then there’s some mediocre food. Breakfast reached a new low. I didn’t think that anything could be worse than the frigid muffins that one airline serves, but it was. It consisted of yogurt, a "tropical" fruit salad of hard bits of fruit in an over-sweet juice and an egg biscuit that Bill called a "doughy lump that sank like a stone to the pit of the stomach." We’ve agreed to pack our own breakfast the next time we have an overnight flight.
Our trip home was hectic. Getting around at the huge Charles de Gaulle airport was complicated by the construction of a new terminal. One of the smartest things I ever did was to forget my pride several years ago and start asking for a wheel chair in large air ports because the distances are so long. Also, the wheelchair pushers know the ins and outs of getting there. Bill and the boys loved it when we were sent to a faster customs line.
It’s a good thing that we asked for a wheel chair at Charles de Gaulle because we would never have found the plane in time. A charming young woman rushed me through the labyrinth of corridors with Bill and the boys hurrying behind. Instead of getting on a tram to go out to the plane, the young woman pushed me onto a truck whose bed was like a big cage. She refused to accept a tip and wished us bon voyage.
We drew up next to the plane. The cage was actually a lift that raised us to the level of the plane’s door. One of the grandboys said, "I don’t believe this!" I replied, "Stick with me, kid!"Two by two we were sent across a gangplank into the plane. The crew met us there and cleared a way through the passengers who were boarding conventionally so that I felt as if I were being treated with as much pomp as Franklin Delano Roosevelt might have been.
When we arrived in Detroit and went to check in we were told that our flight to Indianapolis had been canceled. They would have flown us to Chicago to catch another flight, but we chose to be put up in a hotel and fed at the airline’s expense rather than sitting half the night in another airport.
Oh, oh, oh! The last thing that I did before leaving home was to put my wallet in a safe place as I take only essentials over seas. I don’t have the foggiest notion of what I did with it. Welcome home!