Friday, June 27, 2014

 

 

A Summer Wedding

I’m invited to a wedding this summer. Nothing special about that as it is after all wedding season. What’s special about this one is that the blushing bride is Edith, a relative who celebrated her 67th birthday this spring. George, the handsome groom, is 68 years old. Both lost their mates along the way, but when they met just over a year ago, they were not entirely strangers.

            I remember that last year Edith got an invitation to attend a reunion at her old high school to mark the 100th anniversary of its founding. She wanted to go but hesitated because she would have to go alone and because she had given up going out socially almost entirely after her husband passed away. However, after much hesitation, curiosity got the best of her. What would her old classmates look like? How successful and happy had they been, etc. Most of all she wanted to know what happened to Mary, her old rival for boys in their senior year.

            As Edith recounted to me later, she found the first few moments awkward when she stepped inside the old gym for the first time in decades. She realized she wasn’t the only curious one because all eyes had turned in her direction! Soon Mary came to greet her. Sister Mary for some forty years. The two women had a lot to talk about, and at some point Mary got George’s attention as he went by. He had been a source of conflict between the two women, but that evening there was only friendship in the air.

            After the reunion, George insisted he and Edith keep in touch. The get-togethers turned into dates, and love blossomed. Edith told me she did not believe it was possible to fall in love at her age. That she is in love, there is no doubt. The excitement in her eyes cannot hide the fact.

            She says that inside she still feels as she did when she was 20 years old. The only difference she sees is that the outside shell shows some wear and tear. The wedding will be a small affair with the family and a few friends. I’m sure no one will notice any wear and tear. Like every other couple in love, they will both be beautiful.

 

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Persistence

 

A man I know who is in his late 60s had a major stroke a few years ago. Doctors told him they were not optimistic about his chances of even partially regaining his previous physical ability. His family made plans to have him institutionalized. With everyone around him shaking their heads in despair at the dreary future ahead for him, he set out to prove them wrong.

He held firm in his belief that he could conquer the latest hurdle life had placed in his path, and he began a program to make his body relearn what it seemed to have been forced to forget. He never lost sight of his goal even when his efforts appeared to be an exercise in frustration. At first, there was little indication that he would ever improve, yet he always made it a point to celebrate even the smallest of victories. It fueled his hope and his desire to persist.

Today, anyone seeing this man for the first time would not believe how dismal his physical condition was just a short time ago. He dared to attempt the impossible by believing that there always is a glimmer of hope whatever the current problem. He persisted in taking very small and painfully slow steps and today rejoices in running.

I so admire people who never lose hope and persist in conquering whatever problem they are facing. These people never give up no matter how dark the sky, and their persistence pays off as they eventually reach their goal. To me, they are winners, the ones who make a difference in this world. We need more of them.

Or as my sister, a woman who has never taken no for an answer, remarked recently, the world would be so much better off with more stubborn people. Amen to that!

 

 

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

The ol’ days

When my mother was raising her family, she did not enjoy the household luxuries we take for granted today: the automatic washer, the dishwasher, etc. Homemakers made do with what they had, expanding a lot of energy while seeing to their daily tasks. Luckily, little by little, things improved.

Few people would want to go back to those labor-intensive ol’ days, yet most of us mourn some aspect of the past which we somehow feel would make our lives better today. Pangs of nostalgia seem to be most common when prices are being discussed. Someone will inevitably say they remember paying less than 50 cents for a gallon of gas.

But nostalgia has a way of being selective. We tend to forget what the minimum wage was in the ol’ days. We glorify only the memories which seem to prove the argument of the moment. For example, we may complain about today’s ethics comparing them to a time when concern for others was, we feel, the norm rather than the exception. What we are tempted to forget is that some of the attitudes of the past were grossly narrow-minded.

When I was in high school, one of my classmates left abruptly after Christmas one year to return only the following September. She had gone to Europe to live with an aunt for a while, our teacher said, but there were whispers in the hallways. When she returns, she’ll be changed, one of my classmates said all-knowingly. Something in the eyes is not the same after you have a baby, she added for everyone’s enlightenment.

When the poor girl did return, I kept looking into her eyes to see the change for myself. I remember seeing only a lot of sadness. How could it have been otherwise? Society through its better-than-thou authority figures had judged her so she had no choice but to give birth to a child she would never be able to hold and love. Of course, the pendulum has now swung to the other extreme, and often today having a child is a prerequisite to marriage! But I digress.

In the ol’ days, prices might have been cheaper, but when it came to certain attitudes, we could very well call them the dark days. Not a time everyone would wish to relive.

 

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Gray is not for Sissies

For most people, seeing the first gray hair is more often than not a long-remembered unwelcomed event. In my case I recall thinking that surely I was not yet old enough for it, yet there it was in all its glory, and as if it were lonely it soon invited a bunch of others to sprout at a dizzying speed. Thankfully for some of us someone had been wise enough to realize the commercial benefits of color in a bottle.

Some women prefer to go the natural route. One case in point is a doctor I know who has just turned 50 and whose long hair is almost all white. She looks fabulous and is proud of her natural look. To color or not to color is a personal choice, of course, but I say if you want to ignore the gray reality on the road of life, go for it.

However, you can’t avoid noticing that time is marching on when your child begins sprouting his own gray hair. In my case, this happened relatively early because his father’s side of the family has had a long-standing affair with gray. My son looks distinguished and he prefers it to seriously thinning hair, a trait of my side of the family. A nephew of mine who is in his 40s regularly shaves his head. Like many young men these days, the look suits him very well, and he doesn’t have to worry about graying or fuss with a comb-over!

The out of sight, out of mind approach of color in a bottle can only last so long. One my sisters  has now gone natural – read snowy white – after years of being a blonde. An unexpected benefit is that she looks younger. Go figure!