aMusings

I began this blog around 6 or 7 years ago. Back then I idyllically imagined I would use this as a platform for epiphany, revelation or eloquent personal disclosure. Funny maybe, having some depth, but hoping to not become a forum for aging, malady or complaining (whining).

Maybe leave a trail of insight or hope, or just encouraging words.

There are bumps in everybody’s road. Forks on the pathways. Brick walls. Cliffs. Mountains. Brambles. Woods. Wild animals. Hurdles. Chasms. Insurmountables and unfathomables.

And then there’s root canals.

I have never liked dental appointments. So moving to a new place too far from a dentist I had come to trust I had to start over again. For someone with serious trust issues in general it isn’t easy. They tell me what needs work. I make an appointment and soon after I cancel it. I am an adult, this is silly.

So when the dentist said he had to send me to an endodontist my brain shut down. I made the appointment and did not cancel it. I went to the appointment. Exactly one hour later, the lower left half of my face in paralysis  they had finished. The most painful part was paying for it.

The day after an arctic freeze arrived after torrential rains. Thankful rescue dogs Lily and Lulu woke me early to go out or I’d have missed the 5 minutes of snow flurries. The rest of the day was icy cold with brutally cutting winds making walkies a near impossibility.

But beyond conquering dental fears, bitter cold, I think the hardest thing I faced this week was a cryptic phone call from my son. I have mentioned in posts that his girlfriend does not care for me (it’s the only conclusion I came to based on monosyllabic responses, or no response at all). This incrementally alters the relationship with my son each time I encounter them. They have been together about 10 years, living together for 7. I realize it is expected that children grow up, leave home and begin lives of their own. This exclusion though was hard to accept at first. It does not get easier, but I get better at dealing with it. I cannot say whether this arrangement he lives with is right or wrong, but I am sorry I am not a part of it. To say it’s worse than having a root canal, well, it’s an analogy I did not think I’d ever make.

final

My mom passed away 31 years ago, today. It was a Wednesday. When Dad called me all he said, after I said “hello?” was, “your mother didn’t make it.”

Then dial tone.

I called Mom’s closest friend, told her what Dad had said. She had no idea what it meant.

I knew.

Mom was a strong person. Maybe the strongest woman I ever knew. After college, 1943 she went into the Navy as a psychologist in WW II, in charge of a hospital psych wing in San Diego for Navy pilots. After the war she stayed in the reserves, became head of a NY ad agency’s accounting department. She and my father married, then moved to NC because they did not want to raise a family in the city. She was DAR, Junior League, in book clubs, bridge clubs, garden clubs and a scratch golfer. A lot for a daughter to live up to.

I could never.

I miss her. She did not suffer fools, at all, and if I ever went off track she had little patience. If I ever complained as a kid she’d tell me to tell it to the marines.

She was tough. She was smart. She was brave. So when she died I had been a single parent a few years and she and I, once as close as sisters, had drifted apart.

The Sunday before she died she called me. She had just got home from suffering two heart attacks in hospital. We talked about everything and nothing. She said some bulbs I had planted for her had come up, were they narcissus or freesia? Would I like to come visit soon? Yes.

The conversation wound down. “I love you,” she said.

”I love you.” I replied. We hung up.

So when Dad called I was blindsided. But like so many things we just never know.

not sissies

Occasionally as a know-it-all young adult I’d be among older people. They would joke and laugh about aging which I was certain I would either not do or do way better. A favorite thing they’d often say was aging isn’t for sissies.

They were 100% correct.

I am older. At the age I was then I never considered the age I am now. I should have listened.

I have never been what I consider athletic. Not sedentary, just competitive other ways. Like all students I had phys ed classes which I begrudgingly participated in. I learned to play basketball (not well), field hockey (ditto), volleyball (some better), other sports. My favorite form of exercise is walking. There were a few years after I retired and had way too much time on my hands when I ran 4-5 miles every morning. Husky mix rescue dog Lily was a fun companion. When we adopted terrier mix rescue Lulu we stopped. She is not fast-moving.

Any large puddle will do. Water resistance is good exercise. Also thirst-quenching.

So aging. My brain still thinks like it did when I was 17. Not arrested development, exactly. Just filter. Mercifully I have the benefit of several decades of age, experience and  (I hope) subsequent wisdom. But I am now seeing a glimpse of what may be coming. Response time from mental concept to physical action is unsatisfactory. Maybe I have unreasonable expectations. But it’s an indication.

I remember art classes. We learned dimension, spatial thought and perspective. Funny thing, seeing everyday images through artistic eyes. Vanishing point I will never forget. The term for what you see when you stand in a road and look toward the horizon. The point where the lines of the road’s edges come together. It kind of objectified the romantic aspect of a rambling country road but made it easier to draw.

So we move on through the days. Taking what comes, moving things around, some we can control some not.

But, still here. Thankful.

crowds

This was a pretty non-descript uneventful week for me. Tuesday I went to get a haircut. As I parked my car I noted a sketchy guy lurking in the parking lot. I avoided eye contact but as I walked by he said in a slurry voice, “Can you spare a couple ‘a dollars for Wendy’s?” So I turned toward the fast food place replying, “Ok, I’ll buy you a meal.”

“Oh, you don’t have to go over there,” he said. (translate: you can just hand me the money)

“Actually, I do,” I said.

So I bought him his order, asked if he was ok, he said yes, and I went on to get my haircut.

I have no idea why this truck is here. Worried for intracoastal overpass integrity?

Wednesday I stopped at the post office to drop a letter. There was a guy standing near the door looking a little confused at some items in his hand. I walked by, deposited my letter. As I walked back to my car across the parking lot I saw folded dollar bills on the ground. I turned to take them into the post office in case someone asked if it had been turned in. Same guy is walking toward me, still looking at items, confused. I called to him, “Sir? Did you drop something?”

He looked at what I was holding out, asked if I found it by the electrician’s van parked near my car. I had, so it turned out to be his.

I felt rather good about all this, and it came to mind today when I let a crowded grocery store get the better of me this afternoon. I buy local honey because I firmly believe it helps allergies. And I like supporting local businesses. This particular store chain is the only store that sells it.

Rescue dogs Lily and Lulu and I had just enjoyed a nice walk by the river and I stopped at the store to buy said honey. Noting a Girl Scout table loaded with cookies outside the store I avoided buying and quickly ducked into the store, found the honey and went to the self-service registers because- Super Bowl weekend -the store was wall-to-wall people. Don’t get me wrong, I like people ok, but grocery shoppers are single-minded and focused. So I checked out and requested cash back.

Which I left the store without, leaving it at the register.

I have never done this before. As soon as I walked in my house I realized what I had done. I called the store. Customer ‘service’ being what it is these days they did not even look to see if, by some miracle, that money was still there.

I am so careful with how I spend money, believing I am a steward of that which is on loan to me. I may never do this again, I hope, but I have learned a painful, embarrassing lesson.

While someone else won the surprise grocery register ‘lottery’.

Lily and Lulu never worry for anything that is lost. Keep moving forward.

 

WordCloud

This is an odd fad that I have seen people use on social media. Somehow the program will sum up all a person’s posts in a year or some specified time frame into a conglomeration of words. Not sure how the program knows which words to pick out, but the upshot is meant to be a summary of attitude based on words used in posts the person made. There are programs online (WordClouds.com is one) where you can copy and paste an essay or list or whatever and the program will mash it into what you said. Or something.

I remember many times when I worked for my dad’s company training new employees. In addition to my working with them I had fashioned manuals for each position of production, explaining what the job was, why it existed with keystroke-by-keystroke instructions on data entry and submission. This was a painstaking process but greatly facilitated the assimilation of any employee we hired, thus enabling their joining the company a seamless process.

Coast Guard Cutter Returning to Base up the Cape Fear River

It also made my father very happy because if I happened to be out of the office and any questions arose these manuals were designed so anyone who could read could walk in, read this manual and do whatever the task was. Thereby alleviating any awkward “I don’t know” situation for my dad, which was a rare occurrence anyway. This was also how my mother taught me to cook. I once asked her, as a small child, how do you cook? “If you can read you can cook,” was her answer. She was an amazing cook, and I know there was way more to her cooking than just reading.

Life is kind of that way. You have to live through a substantial amount of experiences before any sufficient measurable wisdom is attained in order to see a pattern or theme I think. Some situations I wished I had an operations manual. Like when my son was born. His birthday was yesterday. I was telling him what that day (the greatest day!) was like. I especially recalled the day after when I was being prepared to go home. They brought my brand new baby to me and showed me how to give him a bath. I watched in horror as they slung him side to side in the little tub sloshing him all over with soapy water. Later when he was bundled in his little onesie and blankets they handed him to me. I looked at him a moment, then asked the nurse could they not keep him longer, say till he was ready for school? I was terrified I’d break him.

I didn’t.

Late-blooming Christmas amaryllis

But life doesn’t come with manuals. Which is why some may like being perpetual students. Being in school you are learning, but what does learning something matter if you never apply it to anything? And I know plenty of people who did not go to college and are smarter than many that did. That’s likely more a matter of personality than intelligence. Both help.

Lulu’s wordcloud is always growing

Plants Go To War – A Book Review

Reblogged on friendwise.wordpress.com.

The Herb Society of America Blog

By Maryann Readal

To quote author Judith Sumner in the preface to her new book, Plants Go to War: A Botanical History of World War II, “The war could not have been won without rubber, but the same might be said about wheat, cotton, lumber, quinine, and penicillin, all with botanical origins.” In her book, Sumner documents many of the plants that were critical to World War II efforts on all sides of the battlefield. Indeed, her research is exhaustive in that she covers not only the military uses of plants but also civilian uses as well by the major countries involved in the war.

As the war disrupted supplies of plants needed for medicine, food, and manufacturing, governments had to look for alternatives. Some were successful in growing tropical plants and food crops on their own soil; some began to look for chemical alternatives. A chemical synthesis of quinine…

View original post 432 more words

gangsters of the bird world

Crows have been yelling all week! When it was warm, when it rained, when it got cold. Folklore says crows can be good and bad omens. They are tricksters. They show up in groups or one at a time.

I could never get a picture of one. They were flying around everywhere and I could not capture one.

I have raised orphan birds in my life, doves, starlings but never a crow. They have communities so if a baby crow loses its parents other crows adopt the orphan. Same for cardinals but cardinals don’t go around eating other birds’ babies or steal their eggs.

If you find a dead crow it’s good luck but if you accidentally kill one it’s bad luck unless you bury it. And you have to wear black.

Groups of birds have descriptions that seem to fit their perceived nature: a mewing of catbirds, a cauldron of hawks, peep of chickens, banditry of chickadees, charm of finches, but it’s a murder of crows.

See my point?

Personally I think crows get a bad rap.

weather

This once was considered a safe topic. Now it seems to spur arguments over global warming or climate crisis. I try not to get into hot water at all costs. There is too much unknown and I am always skeptical of proponents of a thing with mega millions, private jets and many mansions.

I remember as a child sometime between late January – mid February hearing the term “false spring”. This was a balmy break in the chilling frozen of winter. Suddenly daffodils sprouted, songbirds sang all day and there was a delicious fragrance on a light, spring-like breeze.  It usually lasted only a few days. No more than a week. Then grey, cold days returned well into March.

This week has been a gift. Mild temperatures around 60-70. I can count on one hand the number of mornings I have seen sparkling frost the entire winter so far. I know, it’s only January. But this has been a milder winter than I can remember in the coastal southeast.

We’ve had rain but retention ponds that normally have water all year are dry. Marshes and bogs are dry. Peeper frogs are silent.

There aren’t as many of these signs here as in Florida, or even South Carolina or Georgia. I have never seen an alligator here, but there is a small pond in the neighborhood where I live and others have said they have seen a gator in there. I am cautious walking my dogs around here. But I have not seen it.

I spoke with a couple we met on one of our walkies this week. The husband was wearing shorts but also wore a light jacket. His wife had on a warm jacket. They both commented that their brains tell them it is winter, and where they moved from to come here that meant weather much colder than we are having. But they were not complaining.

So again, I am learning to take each day as it comes, one day at a time. I learned to slow down last year thanks to Lily and her injuries. This year it is the weather.

Our teachers are everywhere, if we are willing learners.

pinterest

 

beauty

Some things are universal in their beauty. Then there is beauty that is purely subjective. As Benjamin Franklin said in Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1741, “Beauty, like supreme dominion, is but supported by opinion.”

Isn’t this true? Mysteries, complicated things, hard work, puzzles, riddles we tend to avoid. Well, some of us. Many are confident and up to great challenges. Some are spurred on by nobility and justice. Some stand and fight for truth. But we all have something we find as beauty.

Some find beauty in terrible storms. Swirling dark clouds illuminated by jagged, blinding flashes of lightning. Crashing rumbles of pounding thunder. Chaotic whipping winds. The thrill of natural fear that exists larger than controllable events.

And calm. Serene peace. Quiet so profound it has a presence. Pervasive and soothing.

A season of sleep. Rest. Recollection of strength. Deepening roots. Restoration of life.

 

geniusquotes.org

 

 

the unknown

For the most part we are surrounded with that which is familiar— family, friends, hobbies, books, habits, work, neighborhoods. Not much surprises us. Our lives aren’t so much predictable as they are routine. Never boring because our perceptions continually change or adapt.

There are things that happened this year I could not have foreseen. Rescue dog Lily’s two knee surgeries and remarkable recoveries. Political ‘resistors’ in America who violently attacked innocent individuals. New neighbors next door who turned out to be a dear, kind couple. My son calling a few days before Thanksgiving to let me know he will visit me.

Some pathways are clear. There are boundaries to keep us in a safe area. We know to follow this. Well, mostly. I can remember driving home after a day’s work with my free-spirited father who had salvaged a small business in receivership. In the companionable silence he’d suddenly brake the car, saying something like, “let’s see where this goes,” turning off the highway onto an obscure road, not really concerned whether we’d wind up lost. Dad was never lost. He had the strongest centrifugal force of anyone I knew.

Those adventures translated into other life decisions which I suppose taught me no matter what your decision, things can be worked for good.

So though at times the curve up ahead may appear at first to be a dead end, keep moving forward. There are many forces —mostly good— that travel with us.

I wish everyone a Happy New Year.