The Early Bird Club

I think I belong to a special club. It’s special because the members don’t know each other or see each other except by the rare chance we meet in print somewhere. In my early morning hours when curtains are still closed and lamp light glows softly in the corners of the room I find ideas to be great company. They lure me along unexplored paths with frequent viewing places into the past and future. Then my friends in the Early Bird Club seem to walk and stand beside me whispering, “Isn’t this absolutely marvelous?”

I don’t know what the others do about breakfast but I generally have a bowl of cereal topped with one chopped-up date, fresh berries, half a sliced banana and milk. A mug of black coffee too. These, enjoyed in my comfy chair, launch my day well before daybreak. Even my canary and finch are asleep as well as a small Chihuahua I’m room and boarding for a granddaughter.

Sometimes I venture out to take in the morning paper but I don’t like to take it out of its sleeve yet. I get enough of media talk later in the day. What I enjoy most in these morning hours is the company of those ideas I mentioned. I especially enjoy new ones, introducing them to old ones and listening to them talk. I do a lot of wondering and asking questions that seem hard to answer. I feel like a child pestering her parents with “Why? Why? Why?” And when I listen, I usually get answers, or at least indications of where to go next for them.

Living alone in one’s senior years would not be everyone’s choice. Some are far too social to enjoy that, but I love it. Still, I also love the fact that I have a spare bed in my bedroom and it is often occupied by one or another of my children or grandchildren, friend or other relative. Most recently I had a dear granddaughter stay a few days with her three week old baby boy. Now, that was the cherry on top!

My sister-in-law lives alone in another state. We were visiting on the phone yesterday and, as before, she commented on blogging. “Why anyone would want to read about another’s personal life and thoughts, I don’t know.” My answer was, “The beauty of it is, they don’t have to! Many of my friends and relatives know I write a blog but rarely, if ever, read it. I don’t care. It’s like fishing. You catch a fish and that is fun, but it’s also just fun to stand on the river bank and watch the bobber while enjoying the setting of serene solitude.” We weren't talking on Skype, but I could just see her shaking her head.

I don’t aspire to living to be the first to reach 150, but if I should, maybe some would like to know how I did it, and they might get a hint or two from my blogs. I’m learning more about healthful and happy longevity myself as I head into these advancing years. Here are a few tips:

1. Get up early.
2. Think about the good things of life.
3. Never stop learning.
4. Be willing to change your mind. 
5. Love, love, love, and never hate! 
6. Treat each day as the grand prize of days. 
7. Again, get up early! It won't hurt you to get up early and it can be far more satisfying than dreamland. What's more, you might learn how to be young again by finding the Fountain of Youth. I welcome you, whoever you are, to The Early Bird Club!

Done Cooking!

I like to eat as much as most people, but I’ve lost interest in cooking. When I’m hungry I want to eat right then and not wait or work for a meal. I’d rather look at a menu in a good restaurant than peer inside my refrigerator wondering what to put together, how much time it will take, how much of a kitchen clean-up will be required, and what is on the verge of spoiling if I don’t eat it today.

I found a hand-crafted sign in a thrift shop that I couldn’t pass up. It belonged in my home.

Keep this kitchen clean

EAT OUT!

It hangs in my kitchen where all can see.

After too many years to count when my home was Grand Central Station for family gatherings on special occasions, when groaning tables held food, labor-intensively prepared and quickly consumed, with kitchen clean-ups (gladly shared labor,) I feel I am justified in calling it quits. But I have yet to find a satisfactory solution. I’ve tried all the single portion cardboard-contained frozen meals I care to and I’ve run out of options.

My bachelor brother who lived in Minnesota used to go deer hunting once a year, get his quota, have the meat processed in packages for his freezer, and every week take out enough to make a large slow-cooker stew with vegetables and gravy. He’d then package it in single meal portions to take to his office in the County courthouse, heat it in a microwave oven there and eat it with a slice or two of buttered bread. Every day. It worked for him, but would not be my answer.

I’ve toyed with the idea of eating my main meal out at restaurants every day. I’d bring home half to be consumed the next day. That might work but I’m not sure it would be economical. 

When I took over housekeeping and cooking as a fourteen year old after my mother had passed on I could get a meal together in no time. Pork chops, mashed potatoes, a can of peas or corn, a stack of bread and butter, and whatever I did pleased my dad and younger brothers, especially if I’d baked a cake  or pie for dessert.

As a young bride my husband bought me The Joy of Cooking cookbook. I decided my plain cooking would not do so I’d choose recipes for the evening meal, list the ingredients necessary, go to the market and buy them, re-read the recipes and gauge the time for preparation of each, and write it all down with a time table. Then I’d tidy the house, get myself dressed for dinner, put on an apron and get to work. I’d set the table carefully with candles and a centerpiece, follow my hand-written time-table, and be ready to greet my hubby when he got home from work and finish up the last minute things like warming the dinner rolls, getting the salad out of the fridge and filling water glasses. 

Now, there’s nothing like sitting down opposite a new husband and watching him eat your very own cooking. Nothing like it was for me. To my consternation, the man I’d chosen to love and obey could not tell a lie. Not even a little white lie. We’d talk about this and that and the meal would be only half consumed before I’d give in to asking: “Well, Honey, how do you like the dinner?” His answer was, “Oh, the potatoes are good, but the squash is a bit under-done and the meat is rather tough, don’t you think?”

After a few responses like that I learned not to ask until one night I broke down and asked again with the same general response. Then I  pleaded, “Wally, if you knew how hard I’m trying to please you, how hard it is to make everything taste just right, couldn’t you just once tell me it was good, really good, even if it wasn’t?” Then he got a pained expression on his face and said, “Well, gosh, if I did that I’d get it again!” I couldn’t help it, I just laughed. After that I did what I should have done all along. I gathered tried and true recipes from relatives and friends. Found a few favorites, and through the years built up a reputation for being a wonderful cook.

In 1998 after being widowed for twelve years I surprised myself and my family by getting married again. Dr. Robby, he was known as by his students in college.  (My children had all taken geology in his classes, but this was more than twenty years prior.) I met him for the first time at an adult summer session at the same college and within three weeks we were married. His first wife, Barbara, had been an excellent cook. I knew I couldn't compete but had a few favorites of my own he liked. Curried shrimp on rice, beef stroganoff,  etc. and I did enjoy cooking for two. Sometimes I'd give Robby a couple of suggestions. "Shall we have spaghetti today or would you prefer a hamburger and potato salad?" After a few moments of studied thought he'd look up and say with a grin, "Let's go out to eat, shall we?" He knew that was music to my ears! We'd have the delightful few minutes of choosing among our favorite restaurants and then out the door.

But now I’m alone again and done cooking. No fun cooking for one. No fun busting a gusset for company either. There’s a generation under me that has taken over. I’ll bring a special dish to one of their homes for a potluck dinner at most. Their kitchen, not mine, is teeming with people, male and female, who love to cook and chat when doing the clean-up work. I sit in an easy chair and play the part of Grandma and Great Grandma to the hilt. If I don’t have a baby or toddler in my lap I just sit and smile and secretly pat myself on the back. Being the matriarch of the family is pretty nice even if I'm not the hub. It beats being alone or just another spoke in the wheel of some retirement home. I still have my own little quiet nest, however, and the only thing I lack is a plan for quick, painless and nourishing dinners with little or no clean-ups. When I work that out I’ll let you know. 

Generations Past and Yet to Come

Yesterday I met my newest great grandchild, only a few hours after his arrival. His name is Jack. Emotions run high at a time like that. Jenny, my granddaughter, and the mother of this wee lad, had given birth for the first time and I knew exactly how she felt. How can such a natural every-day affair set a new mother on such a high pinnacle? "Baby and mother doing fine!" cannot possibly describe it. Then, with family gathered around to complete the picture, another new and precious life begins. My prayer for him is two-fold, that he will always know he is blessed of the Father-Mother of us all, and that he will fulfill the promise by which he is blessed and can bless others.

In this generation I, as his great grandmother, must share the pride and joy with seven other great grandmothers. Glad to do it, though I think I may be the only one on the scene and, as such, am counting my blessings. To be near my children at a time like this is wonderful. To be near them all year around is more than wonderful! Beholding a baby's development and his discovery of this new world brings back a primal feeling impossible to describe. Certainly not in words.

But this is a world of words and in about a year's time baby Jack will know some words. Little will he know how many words he'll eventually know, since his daddy will speak to him in Spanish and his mommy in English! With an American-Spanish ancestry, his name, Jack Carlo Murcia, he will navigate through a world of schools, and then choices of his own. God make those choices good!

At weddings we remember our own. At birth times we think of our own. And we contemplate what our own lives have brought forth. Will we be able to come back again and do it over better? Will we retain the good only from this lifetime and let that be our starting line? The innocence and purity of a newborn would certainly indicate that. I've never quite resolved in my own mind if, or if not, I'll come back as an infant somewhere, somehow. Re-incarnation is a mystery to me, especially since I don't whole-heartedly believe in it. What I really believe, (but cannot prove to anyone,) is that we go on from the experience of death, (so-called,) in a probationary state, working out the problem of being until we get it right. Then, I believe, we rise to a higher state of consciousness wherein we see God and Heaven as our eternal truth, from which we've strayed, only in belief.

This earthly lifetime, (again I believe,) is a dream-state, which, like the night dream, convinces us it is real while we're in it. In fact, it is only a schoolroom experience where we learn the workings of God's law by His light that is shining in the darkness. As that light illumines us and we learn the joy and harmony it bestows, we reflect it more clearly and become the ever-unfolding blessing of God in manifesting His light. With such light we head out into the Universe to discover Infinity. We discover the joy of "Love's divine adventure to be All-in-all!" (Mary Baker Eddy)

Now it is time to stop talking and start doing today's work. Is is wrong to approach that work as play? I think not. And so, to one baby girl on the way, our new baby Jack, baby Kingston, toddler Max, and Sammie, the first of my great-grand-babies who is now five, I say, "Let's play!" There's excitement and fun and great glory in every waking moment, especially when we're fully awake! And generations past and yet to come? I think we'll all meet someday. What a family reunion THAT will be!

That Is None Of My Business!

I may have told this before but it's worth re-telling. A well-known Christian Science lecturer had finished his talk and was greeting some who came up to see him afterwards. One woman said to him, "Oh, I have loved listening to your talks ever since I was a little girl, and, as you can see, I'm no spring chicken now. Mr. ..., I know I shouldn't ask you this but could you tell me exactly how old you are?" His answer: "Why, Madam, THAT is none of MY business!"

I've thought about this often and the choice of a subject for my blog, Getting Older Is Getting Better, was not an easy one because I don't subscribe to revealing my age either, or even that I am of an older generation. Still, I'd like to know that I am helping others of any age not to give the number of years they've lived in this span of conscious being any power to diminish their capabilities on account of being "old." My religion is my science and it teaches that we are each a child of God, not a child of man (or woman.) Radical? Unbelievable? Not when we understand that all there is, substantially, to each one of us is measured in conscious thought. Those who are bent on claiming that the human, material body is the sum total of their identity will take issue with this. But even they, if with a mind open to the possibility that there is more to man than a fleshly body, will see what I mean.

Scientists today claim that we are made of stardust. Were we to trace our origins back that far, what might we find? I suspect we'd find that even stars have no beginning in the strictest sense since nothing comes from nothing. One of these scientists, (I can't remember his name,) gave a talk at UCI. His topic was Science and Religion. I'll never forget his opening remarks. They went something like this: "Here we are, together on this Ship of Life. It seems there are two major groups among us, the scientists and the religionists. Now the religionists go to the bow of the ship and peer out with their binoculars to see where we are headed. Then they go to the stern and look to see where we came from. They can only see so far with the limited visibility they have, so they study what others have found and seek knowledge within themselves where they suspect dwells the seed of truth for everyone. They keep looking, both outwardly and inwardly.

The scientists, on the other hand, go to the bow of the ship, take out their binoculars and say, "We can't see anything out there." Then they go to the stern and look. So they say, "We can't see anything out there either. Then they turn to their shipmates and say, "Let's examine the walls of this ship!"

Now, I ask, which of these seekers has the better solution to working out the problem of being? And I answer, both. We need to seek answers in both visible and invisible ways. Each of these can be credible if we are sincere and open minded. The answers often come from out of the box of either religion or science. We need to be aware of that and open. In this sense each of us has an equal opportunity to find the truth.

My "truth" tells me that I am more than a lump of clay, though that lump, uniquely designed, represents me for the time being. If you've ever lost a loved one you know that if his or her fleshly body should reappear without the mind and spirit by which you identified him or her before, that bodily presence would be a stranger, no matter how familiar it looked. My truth tells me that I am not just this perishable flower of a person I appear to be to myself and others. I'm not even the branch or stem I grew on. Nor am I the main trunk reaching down into the ground. Should I trace my beginnings back to the stars, I could not find the real essence of my being. The visible me changes but the invisible me remains intact. The IDEA of me, what others will remember most of me, even that may fade away in time. So, my business is not in the length of time I remain on this earth or stay visible to others, it is that of seeking Truth wherever I find it and living it. I may accept false beliefs for a while but sincerity will lead me past these as long as I approach each day with an attitude of gratitude and a willingness to learn more of the reality of being.

It's one grand adventure, this life we know. Discovery is what it's all about. And it doesn't matter one iota to me how many times I've moved around our beautiful sun. That, is none of MY business either!

When I Grow Too Old To Dream

♪  “When I grow too old to dream, I’ll have you to remember, and when I grow too old to dream your love will live in my heart.” ♪ The words from this song haunted me even when I was a small child. I’d play the record on our wind-up phonograph player in the upstairs hallway. Over and over and over. And I’d cry. Every time. It seemed the song was about me. I’d sit cross-legged on the floor and see myself in a rocking chair, white hair, frail body, and blue eyes looking at a scene and some invisible one, remembering.

Music and memory go hand in hand. Mother used to sing a lullaby to us when we children were tucked in bed. “All Through the Night.” So sweet, her voice, as the words penetrated the dim light. ♪“Rest, my love, and peace attend thee, all through the night. Guardian angels God will lend thee, all through the night.”♪ Like one of those guardian angels she stood at the foot of our bed.

Then, in junior high school, there were other songs, like♪“Some day he’ll come along, the man I love...”♪  And movies. One I knew would never become less than my lifetime favorite: Maytime, with Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy. My first tragic love. I can hear that rich male voice even now,                 ♪“Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart, will you love me ever? Will you remember the day when we
 were happy in May, my dearest one?”♪

In a high school production I heard for the first time “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” and my heart nearly died. Of course there were many other songs during World War II of lovers waiting for the war to end. And there was one song called Skylark sung by some lovely young spirit on the radio that played on a screened-in upper porch surrounded by trees. That was my first taste of summer camp. Somehow I always remember where I heard a song for the first time.

When I was at my first summer job I stood in the darkened movie theater where I was the balcony usher in a snappy uniform. Before the doors had opened I heard for the first time Billy Rose’s rendition of Holiday For Strings wafting out from the rich red curtains down below. It transported me into some world called the future, beyond imagination. Youth was never wasted on me. I had music in my heart. It gave me dreams. It helped me to believe in love and romance and tenderness and happiness ever after. It was always there to carry me on.

My life has been good, but that is not to say there weren’t times when the record’s needle got off track and its sweet music got lost in terrible screeches and discords. I watch my children and grandchildren and remember myself at their ages. Now I am that old woman I seemed to see as a child. I have white hair but I’m not in a rocking chair. I sit at my computer and click on that little icon called I-Tunes. Miraculously I see the old familiar titles. I sample them and buy a few of my favorites, but it’s hard to choose. Clear as the day I hear them again as if for for the first time. I’m in the hallways of the past. My dreams of yesteryear are blurred in reality’s wavy mirror. My life has not been wasted. I have loved and been loved, but now I feel a threshold beneath my feet. Will I be beyond this door another me? Will I hear some new song for the first time? Somehow I find that old song about being too old to dream is not true. I know I shall never be too old to dream. I feel like that little girl on the upper hallway floor, transfixed by a song and a vision.

This Wide World

I just saw something a friend sent me in an e-mail about a young man who was born blind and crippled. He can play the piano so as to bring the most hardened stoic to tears. He claims not to be handicapped and he has a father whom only God could have sent. I won't go into his story here but I was so touched by it that I'm sitting here by the computer trying to express my feelings. I am in awe.

This friend, who often sends me inspiring videos on U Tube, is a gentle, quiet Korean Christian man I met in one of my writing classes. We're no longer in class together, but I'm getting to know him because of a book he's written. He too just started a blog.

Since I looked into the idea of blogs I've started following another by a middle-aged American couple, my former son-in-law and his new wife, who are spending a year in Italy. He writes in it every day. I'm hooked.

There are tines when I get stuck at the computer and have to tear myself away, but I try to avoid too many of those. Still, it is marvelous to be living in this age. Marvelous, yet scary. It seems to me that my quiet life can become overcrowded with options on this device sitting so passively on my desk. Between it and the other one across the room (the television) the world is closing in on me. I'm feeling almost like I'd graduated from kindergarten to being a space traveller. I can see the world, zoomed in or out,with the bare touch of a button or two. It makes me feel so small to know that what I see and all I have seen of life is a mere speck of all that exists!

Back to the young man I started this piece with. They say he is blind, but I think he sees better than many of the rest of us. He can't walk on his legs but he marches at half time with the college band, pushed in a wheelchair by his dad and playing the trumpet like the angel, Gabriel. Yes, his father? One look at him and you know this young man is blessed to have a father like that! Now, I'm thinking. If we all knew our Father, God better, how blessed we would be!

I've been sitting here for two hours and suddenly I need to escape into the refuge of sleep. There is a kind of bliss in sleep where I can rest my mind, and yet even there I'm apt to find other worlds, other people, other marvels. I'm still thinking of that young man whose eyes see, not as ours, and although they are made of marble, they look incredulous when he's asked what it feels like to be so handicapped. "Handicapped?" The word is foreign to him and he smiles broadly. You just know he is seeing something wonderful. How could he know the answer to that?

To Be An Antique

What is it like to be an antique? You'll find out, if you're as fortunate as I am to become one. My granddaughter gave me a small decorative satin pillow with embroidered words on it. They say, "Grandmothers are antique little girls." The sentiment fits me. I feel like a little girl inside and look like an antique on the outside, (albeit, a rather well-preserved one, if I do say so.)

History was never my strong subject in school but now that I've lived through a goodly portion of it I find it more interesting. I'll read of something, say in the mid-20's of the last century, and think, Where was I then? Well, I was being born. Soon after that event someone took a picture of me, just the face. I wore a quizzical look common to newborns. Under the picture Mother wrote, "What is the little one thinking about? Very wonderful things, no doubt!"

I can't recall those "wonderful things," but I suspect they were carry-overs from my prior life. Perhaps I was trying to connect them with that new life in which I'd been so rudely catapulted. Maybe I'd been through a transition as drastic as the tree's when it turned into a table. Well, that didn't happen by itself. Something, someone, or many someones, made it happen. In the case of the tree, it was the logger and the craftsman. In my case, parents and their forebears had a lot to do with it. But there you have it. It happened, either by intent or accident. Take your pick. I choose the former.

Now, the mind or minds that brought about that change? That's a whole other story. And going back eons before the mid-20's, Who and What brought about the birth of the stars from which we're said to come? Could these changes have happened all by themselves, or did a grand Creator think them up? From stardust to an antique little girl, Who had a hand in all of this? And what drastic changes went on between then and now? Even more unfathomable is the question, What next? or what of the eons hence?

I'm still not a history student, but as the little girl I once was, resting on a blanket out on the lawn on a hot summer's night, looking up at the stars and wondering what it's all about, so here am I, still wondering. Incidentally, no matter if you're a little great grand-baby inside your mommy's womb, you're thinking about something. What, I don't know, but you are, and when you're born you'll need to get busy and think some more! "Very wonderful things, no doubt!"