Category: Life

family · Life

A Story in Pictures

Sally1 Comment

I had put out a request asking for seniors who would be interested in playing games after school with the children who come to the facility where I work.

A man stopped in my office. “I’d like to teach kids to play chess,” he said.

He had a magazine that showed a large group of children playing chess on the cover.

“In a lot of places,” the man said, “kids start learning chess at the age of 6.”

I immediately thought of this series of photos of my two older brothers. It’s from 1963 or 64, which would mean my brothers were probably 6 and 9.

Can you tell who won?

Blather · Life

Crazy Little Thing

Sally5 Comments

Twice a week for the past few months I’ve been leading a walking workout up on the track at the facility where I work. The walking workout is for our seniors, and my goal is to get them to walk for 30 minutes. We do it on Mondays and Thursdays. I’ve got a small but dedicated group that attend.

Here’s how it works: I make a playlist and assign exercises to go with the different songs. We do grapevine, or side-steps, or bicep curls with weights while walking, etc. We even walk backwards, which is great for balance!

On Thursday of this week, I decided to look for love songs with an upbeat tempo for my playlist. The warm-up song was “Walking on Sunshine.” Afterwards, one of the ladies told me that was one of her favorites. “It’s the song I used to use as the first song when I would go running,” she said.

She doesn’t run anymore, but she be-bopped around the track and sang along as she did. It made me smile.

Now, as I explained, I have the walkers do different things while walking. I’ve tried having them do lunges (only four at a time!) which isn’t popular. I had them balance something on their head while walking. (I thought it might help with posture.) I thought about having them walk backwards and toss a football to a forward-walking walker who then would have to walk backwards — but it seemed complicated and I wasn’t sure if the idea was workable.

For the second song on Thursday, though, I tried out a new cock-a-mamie ideas.

The song was The Proclaimers’ song “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” (see below). I wanted them to try walking at the same pace as someone else. I explained that when I was taking care of my father, one of the hardest things for me to do was to walk at his pace. I also explained that it was a drill I used to use occasionally when I coached swimming where I had the swimmers try to swim in synchrony with another swimmer. I’m not sure that it made them faster, but it did make them aware that they were not the only person in the world, which is a better life skill than being a fast swimmer.

Anyway, I explained this to my walkers and then I watched them as they tried to walk in step with someone else. The more I watched, the more I thought about my father and how hard it was to walk with him through those last years but how he had set the example by walking with my mother through her last years.

Mom and Dad — 2015

I wouldn’t trade any of it for anything.

The next song that came up was Queen singing “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” We did the grapevine to it.

In my head I was still back at how walking with another person at their pace is an act of love. I would walk 500 miles like that. Crazy little thing called love.


This is my response to Linda Hill’s Stream-of-Consciousness Saturday prompt: Love..

aging · books · elderly · Life

Morning Reading

Sally3 Comments

I start every day with reading. I’ve done that for most of my adult life, although what I read has changed over time.

These days I have four different books that I’m reading. It’s a weave, pulling threads from four different sources, and letting them intertwine. Sometimes it’s amazing how it works sometimes, the similarity between two disparate books.

This morning I was especially struck by that. I’ve been reading William Willimon’s book Aging: Growing Old in Church. I finally finished a very long chapter called “With God in the Last Quarter of Life” which was subdivided into topics like Grief, Church Participation, Being a Burden, Economics, etc. The last section was on Memory.

I cared for both of my parents as their memories shape-shifted and deteriorated. This section of the book hid hard and hit home as I remembered that period of time in MY life. Here are a few quotes:

One reason the aging remember is to preserve a now disintegrating sense of self. We remember selectively, even desperately, defiantly, having lost a job and some of our friends and family. Remembrance is an act of defiance against injustice, recalling the lives of past victims in order that their witness may not be lost. …

And yet some of our feverish attempts to hold on to our memories may be a sign that we fear we are being forgotten. We may have bought into the widespread American notion … seeing ourselves as the sum of our efforts rather than as a gift of God’s love and vocation. …

The elderly… can be living bodily reminders to us all that our lives are not the sum of our attainments, never our sole possessions, but rather, from birth to death, God’s gifts.

Compare/contrast/weave those words in with these words from Brian Doyle. I’m reading his collections of essays called Eight Whopping Lies and other stories of bruised grace. Today’s essay was “What Were Once Pebbles Are Now Cliffs” in which he remembers his sons when they were the size of pebbles; now they are cliffs.

Time stutters and reverses and it is always yesterday and today. Maybe the greatest miracle is memory. Think about that this morning, quietly, as you watch the world flitter and tremble and beam.

It’s good to be reminded that I am not the sum of my efforts, my attainments, my possessions. Every day is a gift. And memory is also a gift.

This post is brought to you by Linda Hill’s Stream-of-Consciousness Saturday, William Willimon, and Brian Doyle.

Life

Cinnamon Rolls

Sally3 Comments

I started cooking again in the last year.

In order to do that, I had to stop cooking several years ago.

Life’s twists and turns had taken the desire to cook right out me. Occasionally, when I did cook something, digging out an old tried and true recipe, it didn’t necessarily turn out right.

I think it was around last Thanksgiving when one of my children mentioned cinnamon rolls. I used to make cinnamon rolls for almost every holiday. Sometimes for birthdays. Sometimes just because. But I had stopped making them.

So I pulled out the recipe and tried it again. The cinnamon rolls turned out meh. Just meh.

I made them again.

And again.

Something about kneading dough is therapeutic. I’d say that it scratches an itch — but that doesn’t really describe it. It’s the rhythm of push-pull-fold-turn. It’s the warmth of the dough and the way you can feel life starting to happen. It’s such a good feeling.

Then, when that lump of dough rises to double in size, it always feels like a miracle. Little things thrill me — and that’s one that does.

Rolling out the dough, spreading the cinnamon sugar filling, rolling it up again and cutting the neat rolls — well, that’s all fun too.

The dough rises again.

The rolls bake and smell amazing while doing so.

A little frosting goes on top when they come out of the oven, so the frosting melts a little right into the roll.

They are so good.

Last weekend, I made a batch of cinnamon rolls. The big snow was coming. While they were still warm, I brought some to the maintenance shed where I work, where the guys who plow the parking lots and driveways for the facility go inside to get warm.

My co-worker looked puzzled when he saw me at the door there. “I made cinnamon rolls,” I told him. “They’re still warm. I think it’s going to be a long couple of days for you guys.”

His face broke into a huge smile. “I just came inside to get warm,” he told me. “These will be great!”

I laughed and told him to be sure to save some for the other guys.

Then I took about a dozen cinnamon rolls to the county highway department. I told them the same thing I had told the guy at my workplace. They were so appreciative.

It’s a win-win for me. I love making them and I love sharing them.

I’m glad I started baking again.

This post is in response to the last two JusJoJan prompts. Yesterday’s was “cinnamon” and I ran out of time. Today’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt was “scratch an itch” — and I thought I could make it work for what I had been thinking about for cinnamon.

I should have taken pictures of the cinnamon rolls last weekend. They turned out perfect!

Life

Interdependence

Sally2 Comments

The fond fantasy of the elderly is to remain independent. Yet networks of interdependence sustain human usefulness and purpose.

~~ William Willimon, Aging: Growing Old in Church

Diversity: the art of thinking independently together.

~~ Malcolm Forbes

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.

~~ Mahatma Gandhi

The further human society drifts away from nature, the less we understand interdependence.

~~Peter Senge

Life · poetry

Life’s Labyrinth

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In this labyrinth maze called age
I walk with care
The twists and turns engage? enrage?
No stage seems fair

If I am young I may be strong
In old age wise
Will my next choice be right or wrong?
I agonize

To quickly choose or take my time
Hingeing on what?
Whether I’m young or in my prime
Life’s not clear-cut

This is my response to today JusJoJan prompt: labyrinth. It’s an Irish poetic for called a deachnadh cummaisc:

  • Four-line stanzas.
  • Eight syllables in the first and third lines.
  • Four syllables in the second and fourth lines, which both end rhyme.
  • The final word of line three rhymes with the middle of line four. (<—- I didn’t do this one well)

The photo is my brother walking a labyrinth in Bayeux.

Life

I don’t understand

Sally4 Comments

The prompt for today is transmission. I groaned.

Even though I grew up in a science-y medical family, where my first thought should have been disease transmission or something like that, I thought of a car.

I don’t understand cars, specifically car engines.

When I was in high school, I found out I could miss classes one afternoon by taking the ASVAB (Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery) test. It was for kids who were looking to go into the military. I wasn’t looking to go into the military, but I was looking to miss a few classes.

I’ve always been a good test-taker – very logical brain and all that. I was good in English, had taken a year of French, and was taking Latin. I had always been placed in advanced math classes. However, the ASVAB had questions that were so puzzling to me that I was flat-out guessing on.

The question I remember best is “What is the function of a carburetor?” I had no idea.

After the test, I asked one of the boys in my class about carburetors. He immediately answered — because he knew — but I was no better informed on carburetors than I was before the question or the test for that matter.

Over the years, I’ve told that story and asked many people what a carburetor does.

I know the answer, but I really don’t. The answer that I could now correctly choose in a multiple guess situation on a test is that the carburetor mixes air with fuel. The fuel needs air to burn.

To be clear, those are just words that I’m saying. I don’t know what they mean.

When I coached swimming, I would get in the water before giving the swimmers a new drill to do so that I knew what the drill felt. I knew from my own experience what their arm should feel like or how their legs should be kicking.

Carburetors? I don’t know.

Transmissions? I don’t know.

I asked a friend what a car transmission does. He said it changes the gears, or changes the car from park to drive, something like that.

“So it’s like the stick-shift when I had a standard?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “that’s a gear box.”

Clear as mud.

I’m a deep-diver. I want to understand. Something in my brain has to click so it’s more than words I’m saying. I want it to be something I really know.

This is why I watch the god-awful videos of the shootings.

Sometimes the words people say don’t line up with what I’m seeing.

So I watch another video.

And another.

I listen to the explanations from one side.

And then from the other.

I may never understand carburetors or transmissions, but I feel very confident in saying that the victims in Minneapolis are not the Border Patrol agents (as Gregory Bovino says), but are the people who are trying to help their neighbors and are ending up dead.

I really don’t understand how we came to this place as a country. That’s even more of a mystery to me than a carburetor.

Life

Wheesht

Sally2 Comments

“Haud yer wheesht”

“Yer bum’s oot the windae”

These are my two lines for One-Liner Wednesday. I know, I know — it’s supposed to be only one.

I’m getting ready for my third Burns-ish celebration that I do with the seniors where I work. I’ve got the bagpiper set, haggis in the fridge, and cooking to do this weekend.

These two lines are Scottish. I have yet to go to Scotland, but I love reading about, watching movies set there, listening to the accent, etc.

Wheesht alone means hush, like talking to a child. But Haud yer weesht is a wee bit stronger, like Be Quiet!

Yer bum’s oot the windae means You’re talking rubbish.

I chose those two Scottish lines because I’ve been thinking about one of my countrymen who HAS traveled to Scotland, may even own property there in the form of a golf course or two, who may be abroad right now, who really needs to learn to wheesht because his bum’s oot the windae, if you know what I mean.

Life

In the Office

Sally3 Comments

I have some regular visitors to my office. I rather like that. I watch them peek around the door to see if someone else is in my office.

“Is the coast clear?” or “Can I come in?” or “Is it all right if I say hi?”

Of course, I invite them in. It’s the best part of my day.

These days, I have a frequent flyer. I’ll call him Stan.

He’s a can-I-come-in kind of guy. “How are you, young lady?” he always asks.

Between you and me, I hate being called “young lady.” I’m not young. I may not even be much of a lady. And he’s younger than I am. Whatever.

“So what did you have for dinner last night?” He always asks that. I tell him. Even when it’s peanut butter and jelly. I think he’s looking for dinner ideas.

When I was cooking for my tribe, the hardest part was the idea.

If someone told me that tonight was meatloaf night, I would make a meatloaf. But coming up with the idea for meatloaf was something that taxed my brain.

So I started writing out a monthly menu.

Seriously.

My very first blog — 20-some years ago — included a page that was “What’s for dinner tonight.” I had a friend that told me that’s what she always went to first. For the idea.

I don’t even remember the name of that blog.

Sad, but true.

Why am I telling you all this? Oh, yeah. Stan in my office.

Stan comes in to talk. About this and that. About nothing, really.

And yet about everything.

“I love talking to you,” he said today. “You’re very honest.”

I don’t know how to be anything but.

“You’re strong,” he said.

I might beg to differ, but what good would it do?

“What are you having for dinner tonight?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied, honestly, weakly. I really don’t.

I think there’s something unspoken in all these conversations.

I’m not 100% sure what it is, but I think it’s the honesty.

I’m not looking to BS anyone. My life is my life — full of mis-steps and mistakes.

Come into my office and I’ll tell you all about it.

And listen to you talk about your less-than-perfect life.

The coast is clear.

You can come in.

It’s okay if you want to say hi.

Life

Consistency

Sally6 Comments

I started a post on baking cinnamon rolls and how the baker develops a recognition of the consistency of the dough as it’s being kneaded. Yes, this yeast is alive and doing the thing it’s supposed to do.

But then I second-guessed myself. Few people will relate to that, I thought.

My fallback is to find a quote using the prompt. I forgot to mention that today’s prompt was consistency.

Consistency quotes are, well, pretty consistent. Encouragement to stick with a thing.

“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.” ~~ Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

“Consistency is the mother of mastery.” ~~ author unknown

“The secret to winning is constant, consistent management.” ~~ Tom Landry

“Long-term consistency trumps short-term intensity.” ~~ Bruce Lee

“Small disciplines repeated with consistency every day lead to great achievements gained slowly over time.” ~~ John C. Maxwell

You get the idea, right?

And it’s great advice; it really is!

But then I read Oscar Wilde’s quote on consistency.

He always was a rebel.

And I really appreciate that.