Tag: Midlife

Graciousness.

While in the process of the tedious job of stripping wallpaper and preparing to paint my daughter’s childhood bedroom, I have found my mind wandering. It’s funny, the random things we will suddenly remember when we’re engaged in something repetitive and boring. The memory that came to me yesterday was the memory of a lesson in graciousness.

I made a cake for my friend’s mother’s birthday. I was a teenager with no money, and the ingredients were readily available in my own mother’s kitchen. I decided on the same dark, moist cocoa based cake with cream cheese frosting that my grandma made for birthdays in my family.

The birthday mom seemed to be genuinely touched that I had not only remembered, but also had taken the time to bake for her. My friend’s older sister was quick to chime in, telling me that her mother got sick when she ate chocolate. Even though my intentions had been good, I had obviously not considered the possibility of food allergies. I just went with what I knew. I immediately wished I had opted for vanilla.

“First of all, it’s not your cake.” Mom said to the sister. “Second, YOU didn’t even think to bake a cake for me, so maybe that’s why you’re so quick to criticize the person who did.” We lit the candles, she made a wish and blew them out, and we ate the cake. I don’t know if she regretted her decision to have “just a small piece” later or not. What I do know is that she made, through her example, a lifelong impression on the meaning of manners, gratitude and kindness on a gawky, well-intentioned teenaged girl.

“Do one thing every day that scares you.”

I opened an email from a monthly women’s newsletter, and that was the message that stood out. Do one thing every day that scares you. What a fantastic idea! Certainly we don’t want to do things that scare us because they are dangerous. Driving down the highway at 100 MPH with a blindfold instead of a seatbelt is NOT the kind of fear we need to overcome. That kind of fear is good.

This statement is referring to those fears we all have; the fears that hold us back or make us somehow feel less strong than we know we are. Facing those fears, looking them in the eye and conquering them, is empowering.

It may mean having the courage to finally get in that elevator and ride it to the top floor. It may mean signing up for a community play and getting on stage in front of a packed house. Finally learning to swim. Signing up for a class. What’s the worst that can happen, really? So what if we flub? Is it really going to change the tides and lead the earth into Armageddon if we ask for something we want and are met with a “no”?

So what if we try a new paint color, besides a neutral, in our bedroom and decide we don’t like it? So what if we take guitar lessons and find out we really ARE tone deaf? So what? What if we face that fear and discover it’s really not that frightening after all? When we do that, we can tackle something else that scares us, and then something else. Fear feeds on itself. Cut off its food supply.  Do one thing every day that scares you.

Locavore is a phone app for finding Farmer’s Markets and local growers…

There’s nothing better than buying food from a market that is well within eyesight of the farm on which it was grown.

As we age, we tend to do what is easy. No children left at home, we sometimes grab what is convenient and call it a meal. I say, what can be more convenient than a juicy peach, a steaming pot of freshly husked sweet corn and a ripe, juicy tomato?

City living is hardly an excuse. Most cities now have farmers markets and co-ops.

There is something relaxing about getting out a few canning jars and making homemade jam. It’s really not that difficult, and when the metal lid is popped off in the middle of winter, revealing the luscious aroma and taste of the past summer season, any effort that was spent on the process melts away with the oozing jam on hot toast. It takes hardly any time or effort to blanch a dozen of so ears of corn and cut the kernels into freezer bags, and the difference it makes when served at a holiday meal is more than enough reward.

Sometimes we tend to forget how food is supposed to taste. While it’s a treat to be able to purchase watermelon in the Northeast in the middle of winter, it’s not the same as eating one in season. Out of season produce that has been trucked halfway across the country really doesn’t have the same flavor.

In an age where so much is available to us for little of no effort, getting local fresh foods is one thing that really does give huge paybacks in both taste and nutritional value. There is also something very grounding and almost therapeutic about getting in touch with where our food comes from and taking a hand in preserving a bit of it for later in the year.

“Man, despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication and his many accomplishments- owes his existence to a 6 inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.”

There are some things in our world that are so taken for granted we have no clue what life must have been like without them.

One evening two summers ago, while my dad and I were alone in his hospital room, our conversation turned to his grandfather. Grandpa was a tall, handsome man of Welch ancestry. I never knew much of him, save for the fact that his nickname was “Red”, because of his hair color, and that his first wife had died when my father was a small child. This evening, alone in that hospital room, Dad told me more of the story; my father, whose name is David, was named in honor of Grandpa, also David. At one point Grandpa and his family lived on a farm, but later moved to the city. They must have done well for themselves, judging from the photos taken when my grandma was a child, and from the few lovely antiques that have survived to be passed on. All that changed when Grandma was diagnosed with cancer. The medical bills resulted in my great grandparents losing their home and all of their hard earned savings. My grandma, who was caring for my toddler father, now had her parents move in so she could take care of her dying mother as well.  The Social Security Act had only been signed a few years prior, in 1935, and Medicare, an amendment to Social Security, wasn’t signed until July of 1965. Grandpa remarried in later years to a woman he met at the cemetery. He was visiting his late wife’s grave, and she was visiting her late husband. At the time, Grandpa was working as a stonecutter, carving people’s names in headstones. Dad was about 21 years old and stationed in Germany when he received the news that Grandpa had fallen over dead in the doctor’s office, and his death was attributed to the years of inhalation of stone dust. He had been working to rebuild all he had lost.

My father went on to work as a truck mechanic, sometimes putting in 80-hour workweeks. Even after Dad “retired”, he worked part time. His plan was to finally fully retire when he turned 80 years old. He made it to one month shy of his 78^th birthday. He was working the day before he fell ill. Until then he had never had surgery, a serious illness or a hospitalization. This time, he endured 3 months of hospitalization, which included a month in a coma in ICU, 4 major surgeries, and two months in rehab and nursing home care. After a 6-month break at home, where he needed VNA care, he went for more surgery, had two subsequent life threatening infections and more nursing home rehab. His care has been excellent and his recovery has been amazing. One more surgery, is on the schedule, after-which the nightmare should be over. He is anxious to get back to his projects around the house, tinkering in his garage and walking at the mall. Unlike Grandpa, he and my mother still have their home. Even though he was forced into retirement a few years shy of his goal of 80, his hard earned savings is still pretty much intact. He and Mom can still enjoy dinners at Bob Evans and they can pay someone to fix the furnace and do minor home repairs. They aren’t living extravagantly, but they are comfortable. For that, they can thank Harry S Truman, who in 1945 proposed healthcare for all Americans, planting the seed for what would later be known as Medicare and Medicaid. President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare Act at the Harry S Truman Library in Independence, Missouri on July 30, 1965, and paid homage to the former President by allowing him to be the first recipient of that act.  My father, the younger of the Davids, remembers. He knows how different his life would be had this act never been signed.