Happy day...

A BEAUTIFUL MESSAGE ABOUT GROWING OLD: Well, crap...Now I forgot what it was.

Happy
day!!

BACK AT YOU!

Gorgeous rose!

I think all the sappy stuff written about the glories of getting old is just that, sappy stuff. I realize it's preferable to the alternative, but I don't have a whole lot of good to say about it, myself.

Dear Shelagh,
The color of that rose is the subtle color the peach ice cream that I made yesterday out of some white peaches I bought at the grocery. Peaches do not do well in Florida. Once, long ago, in Colorado Springs, I picked peaches with my family. It was in a labor camp that had a very nice store with everything a person who had no money could not buy.

Those peaches in Colorado were the yellow, big and juicy kind. If you eat a bushel of thoses a day you get mighty juicy, I can tell you!

But, that place had facilities for taking a shower. An unheard of luxury to my little dirty body. It was in the middle of the playground. I think that was one of the best places I ever lived as a child. No rats, no centipedes falling from the rafters and running water.

I imagine that was about the same time that Steinbeck was writing The Grapes of Wrath. When I read that book, I thought that he described my life so well but he added dignity to the poverty that I never felt.

Love,
Betty

Growing old may beat the alternative but it comes with a price tag. Oh crap! sums up the entire business.

Dear Dick,
I agree.

What a sneaking thing aging is! I have always thought it was a skin disease. The inside of my skin does not feel so flabby or wrinkled. I wonder that it is not a visual trick, a flim-flam, done with mirrors.

Love,
Betty

LC wrote:

I think all the sappy stuff written about the glories of getting old is just that, sappy stuff. I realize it's preferable to the alternative, but I don't have a whole lot of good to say about it, myself.

This is the first thing you have said all day that makes me feel sad for you. How full of anger and frustration your life must be, LC. You know, at 65, I can look back and notice that I don't look as good as I did, or have as much energy as I did, or live as comfortably as I did, but what I do know is that none of that really counts. I know that I have accepted the challenges that came my way, kept my commitments, paid my debts, sung my songs, danced every dance that came my way, and am able to look back and see that I have generally done the best I could with what I had available. I have no regrets. I look around my home, which is small, but expresses who I am in a simple, pleasant way, and I can smile and say that life is good.

I wish for you that you are able to find the same joy and peace when you are officially "old."

I like being a crone. I am comfortable with the wisdom it brings. I see it mirrored in my friends here.

I feel for you.

Ann

Yes, Ann, you're all that, yet you use an avatar photo of yourself that must be at least 30 years old. lol

LC,

My avatar is two weeks old and I am 71.

I don't think I look 36 years older than Ann's avatar.

Carol

Actually, that one was seven years ago, LC. This one is 30 years old.



Ann

Well, that's great, Ann, if you looked like that in your late 50's. I would have pegged that photo as age 30-35. If I can age like that I might embrace my "cronedom" too, but I don't think it's going to happen.

Carol, you look youthful, too.

Me? At 47, I'm undergoing a definite slowdown, the biggest I've ever had. I don't have the cardio endurance I once had, the energy, and looks-wise, everything is "patch, patch, patch." No, I can't say I'm embracing it, and am not motivated by sappy photos and sayings. Oh well.

I've also seen plenty of older people who are in nursing homes and assisted living homes (including my late FIL), and I have nothing good to say about those, either. Yet, I don't know what the reasonable alternative is.

LC wrote:

Well, that's great, Ann, if you looked like that in your late 50's. I would have pegged that photo as age 30-35. If I can age like that I might embrace my "cronedom" too, but I don't think it's going to happen.

Maybe if you lighten up a little and accept life instead of fighting everybody...

Ann

I don't "fight everybody." I respond in kind.

LC wrote:

I don't "fight everybody." I respond in kind.

Then I recommend a course in self-knowledge. And I mean that "kindly."

Ann

LC wrote:

Me? At 47, I'm undergoing a definite slowdown, the biggest I've ever had. I don't have the cardio endurance I once had, the energy, and looks-wise, everything is "patch, patch, patch."

My brother, Philip, would have been fifty-one yesterday. He was born the same year as Michael Jackson, who died on my brother's birthday. Philip died in 2002 at the age of forty-three.

A few weeks after he died, his eight-year-old son had a dream that he related to my mother. He told her that he had dreamed about his dad and said, "Do you know what was the best part, Gran? He was seventy-five." My mother's age at the time.

My mother is now eighty-three and still active. She does more in a day than I do! This photo was taken last year:

I had a very vivid dream one time that I have never forgotten. I was sitting in bleachers watching a soccer game in our town. I turned around and there was my grandfather, very very real. He was dressed in a brown suit, white shirt and tie, which is what he wore when he stepped off the train from work when I would go to meet him as a little girl.

I said, "Oh, Grandpa, I'm glad to see you."

He said, "I'm glad to be here." He smiled.

And later I realized, in the dream he was younger than I was.

I have been struggling big time with looking in the mirror and suddenly seeing a lady with gray hair, something that occurred within a month's time. But I am coming around. You probably have heard my struggle. It is strange. One can receive a life threatening illness and worry about the silliest things. I don't worry about dying. I've come to terms with that. And I am happier to be a gray haired live person than a light-brown haired dead person. It is just I never really felt old before. But I am.

Shelagh, your mother is beautiful.

Carol

My mother was a very pretty lady. I look like my dad.

Shelagh wrote:

My mother was a very pretty lady. I look like my dad.

Then your parents must have looked a lot alike, for I see a very strong resemblence