What "They Say..."

They say happy people live longer. I read just enough to notice what “they say.”  It was a book review but I didn’t jot down the title of it, and even if I do get the book it might simply rest with its cover closed among the other books that have caught my fancy not quite enough to get read all the way through before another grabs me. 

What fascinates me most is that some idea like that gets lodged in my mind and I have to go to my notebook and start writing about it. When you’ve lived long enough and have the luxury of more time to think about things you’ll find that there’s a deep well of wisdom within you. All you need to do is let down your bucket and draw from it. You can’t take credit for it, it’s just there, and when you stop to think about it, you don’t have to be old to discover it. That well is there for us at any age. We get tired of just sopping up what “they say” without challenging it with what “I say.”

So, happiness. Does it really contribute to longevity? You’ve known some older people, perhaps, who are crotchety, cantankerous, and anything but happy. Could they get their happiness from being that way? Well, rules always seem to have their contradictions, even definitions of happiness. We have to test them in our own lives. I look at mine and can attest that I’ve been a happy person. Except for that time when...and that other time when... and I do remember when... But looking at those times I find that they are long gone, are no longer a part of me, and I so rarely remember them that I have to conclude the obvious, they are buried in happiness.

Why is that? I can tell you one reason. It’s that I don’t hang onto the bad times. I don’t rehearse them. I don’t glorify them by writing about them so somebody can gain salacious pleasure from reading about them. Or hearing about them. (Don’t you love to hear someone carry on for hours about every bad thing they’ve ever experienced?) No, I don’t just bury them out of sight, I simply lay no claim to them. They are not now and never have been a part of the real me. Sure, guilt and sorrow had their play, but even that is over and done with. I’ve got a better sense of who I am and that’s because I’ve known good. I’m ever learning more about God who is good.

“OK,” I can hear some saying, “here’s where you’ve lost me. There’s no god, and if there were one, it certainly is not a good one. All you have to do is look around and see what such a god lets happen in this world of his. If you do open your eyes to the evil out there you can certainly not believe in a good God! Things are just randomly good and bad according to how you see them. But don’t blame them on a god. That’s just the way they are.”

So, I can understand that point of view, but here’s mine: There’s enough I can call good in this world to believe that there’s good everywhere. Where it seems not to be and something called bad is? Well, that’s only a place where good seems absent. It’s a phase of nothingness claiming to be something. Like a mirage, an illusion, a temporary misconception. At times the bad things in life are so bad that, like bad dreams, we let go of them by dying. We give our consent to the worst. And then? 

Your guess is as good as mine about “then.” I believe that, like sleep, death simply releases us from a bad dream and gives us a respite until we can wake up and start over again. Maybe as babies, maybe as we were before death, maybe as it is when we wake up from a night’s sleep, not much different at all. Or maybe it's really over. Maybe there is an end in death. That’s the unsolved mystery that some have come back from to tell their tales. But we don’t know. Not until we ourselves go into the great unknown.

In the meantime, if you can keep being happy you don’t need to escape. The longer you can keep living on the side of faith in the basic goodness of all things, (how else can you keep happy?) you see reasons to live in a happy frame of mind. You cease to give credence to the ugliness, the horrors that come from ignorance of the one infinite Life that is totally good. You take those horrors as no part of the grand reality that is even now working its power over evil by bringing it into the light where it can be seen as it is, simply bald illusion. They say (again,) that "the darkest hour comes just before the dawn."

When I dig into the reasons why I can stay happy it all boils down to this: I can see the dawn of intelligence. I don’t look back. I live in the present and find my interests here. I find some purpose in sticking around. I will not be sucked into thinking oblivion is better than what I have. I don’t give my consent to death. The errors that would appall me are just that, errors, mistakes, things I need to do something about by learning more of what is real and what is not real. Jesus said, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Even my atheist friends can agree to that. Freedom from ignorance makes us free to be what we want to be and if we choose to be happy we have no reason to escape through dying. We will escape though, and peaceably. We'll escape through living, discovering more of what is true, what happiness is all about, now, in the forever now. So, whether you're old, young, or middle-aged, be happy now. And always!

In Defense of the Non-Activist

Activism: “the policy or action of using vigorous campaigning to bring about political or social change.” I was tossing about ideas for another blog yesterday when I caught sight of the Google logo for the day. It was honoring Jane Addams, a pioneer settlement worker and activist. I needed to refresh my memory about her and found much to read. It set me to wondering what it is about me that has kept me from being an activist for some worthy cause. After giving it some thought, here’s what I’ve come up with:

1.Maybe I’m not born that way.

2.Maybe I’m not unselfish enough to spend my days that way.

3.Maybe I haven’t enough money to make much of a dent in what’s needed.

4.Maybe I have been burned in the few times I’ve tried.

5.Maybe?

Well, as usual, I don’t know exactly where this blog is going or if it will get published, but let’s start with numbers 1,2 and 3.

These would be the easy answers. “It’s just not in the genes,” is one. That covers a multitude of shortcomings. Also, I was neither born into wealth or poverty. My parents were hard-working middle class people from hardy immigrants who came to America in the early 1800‘s to seek freedom and a good life. They were industrious, honest and prosperous, but none of them attained fame or great fortune. They were God-fearing, respectable and good neighbors, yes, but other than a great grandfather who fought in the Civil War on the Union side and was fatally wounded, and one grandmother who became a member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, I know of no activists among them.

As for my own record of activism, about the only time this label could have applied to me was when I became a “Nixonette” prior to Nixon’s first run for the presidency. My friends talked me into it and I wore the uniform, went from door to door, and did all those things we were supposed to do. Nixon lost, and of course I was sad. I didn’t campaign for Nixon when he ran the second time but I voted for him. When Watergate came along I stood staunchly behind our man but those tapes with the “expletives” that needed to be erased appalled me. How could such an honorable man use profanity or language unfit for children to hear? Or lie to his fellow citizens? Though he did many good things I was disillusioned with politics and never again became active in campaigns.

I’ve taught Sunday school, volunteered to take bag lunches to the homeless, contributed to community projects like the Main Beach park in Laguna, as well as being active in church affairs, but the bulk of my efforts have been more in the line of trying to be a good wife, mother and grandmother, neighbor and friend. My modest donations in the past to worthy causes have been sufficient to bring letters with calendars and note papers and return address labels to my mailbox everyday, but I’m learning to be more selective in answering those now. 

You’ll notice I left number 5 blank. I’m out of excuses and I’m not sure I’ll be publishing this blog anyway, but if I do, it will be to applaud publicly all those men and women who stand tall in the history books for their efforts to help the needy and to establish equality of rights for all people.They are towering examples of what it means to be activists.

No need to enumerate the ways I’m trying to stay active now, but I get up every morning grateful for each new day and the opportunities it brings to me. About the only social life I have is with my family and a few friends. And here's one I could put in the number 5 slot: I pray daily for the world and its great needs. Nights I usually sleep well, but here’s a little something I saw in Suzie’s, (my centenarian friend’s), bathroom. She’s not been an activist either, but she’s lived a good life and is greatly loved.

“If you can’t sleep, go to God in prayer.

He won’t mind; He’s awake all night anyway.”

Apologies are done now. In the years I have left I may yet become an activist but, if I don’t, I think I’ll be doing the best I can to help others and, to quote another friend of mine, “That’s all the angels are doing nowadays!”

   

Arranged Marriages

“Do you take this woman to be your wedded wife? ...this man to be your husband? Do you promise to love, cherish,......?

A wedding seems to be the highlight of any life to a person who weds well. Today’s society is beginning to recognize marriage as between two persons, in some cases persons of the same sex, but I won’t get into that now. What I’m thinking of is the idea of arranged marriages. Can someone else do a better job of bringing two people together than the principal parties themselves? The Western world would say no, that the idea is antiquated. Or is it? The Internet match makers are doing quite well. I believe though that the heart and the head need to stick together when contemplating marriage in order to make it work.

My first marriage was arranged. Well, close to that. My grandmother was the matchmaker. My second marriage? I think some angel got in on the act because I certainly had no expectation or desire to marry again. Forty years with a good man was enough. A part of me went with him when he died, but the empty space it left caught me up unexpectedly and boom! Cupid’s arrow hit home. I had another seven plus years of happily married life. Now I’m alone again, have been for about six years, and happy to stay in a state of single blessedness. Besides, I doubt that there’s anyone out there who’s looking for the job of matchmaker for the likes of me. They’d say, “At your age? Don’t push your luck, lady! You’ve had it good!”

So, how were my marriages arranged? I’m going to try to tell it in as few words as possible:

First husband, Lt. Col. Wallace G. Wethe USMC 

When a little boy 

he knew me as a baby girl.

Families were friends

who soon moved apart.

Miles apart. Years went by,

war took him away,

but Grandmother 

knew, and when I came

to stay, live with her,

go to school, she

set his picture on the mantle.

Handsome too!

Wrote letters, with post scripts by me, 

to that fighter pilot somewhere

in the great South Sea. 

WWII but he came back safe,

met the grown-up me,

Where else? At Grandma’s,

of course. Took me out 

on dates, then asked for my hand.

Grandma just smiled!

Forty years of many homes,

three children and fun.

Struggles too, but growing like one.

They called me a widow.

I thought so too.

But little did I know what

was yet coming to view.

Second Husband, Dr. Forbes S. Robertson PhD

Fifty-three years after

the walk down the aisle

a widow for twelve,

a summer school for adults.

Met him through friends,

a lonely man who

had been married too,

for fifty years "and three months"

(don't forget those!) 

six years widowed.

We were partners at bridge.

School friends only, until

a walk in the moonlight,

a kiss on the path,

struck as by Cupid,

later to laugh at how

could this happen to

people our age? We felt

like kids, parked in the car.

School almost over, what then?

Our homes were too far for 

courting like folks say we 

should do, the sensible way.

We jumped on the carriage,

the one that's spelled marriage.

Happy years, those seven, 

with cruises and friends, 

card parties, families, 

concerts and home.

Hearts held together

‘till another goodbye. 

But good memories and love,

These never end, love doesn't die.

A Grandma and Cupid,

"arranged" weddings for me.

I could not have done better,

my life has been good,

as well you can see.

That’s it in a crude pencil sketch and old-fashioned rhyme. Fill in the outlines with color and music, the happiness of love known twice. Two different men, decent and fair.  Doubled our children and grandchildren too. And now I’m thinking how “love and marriage (do) go together like a horse and carriage,” The horse is the heart, alive and faithful, pulling us home. The carriage, the head, wise and true, making the trip comfy and safe.

Arranged by whom? I think more than Grandmother. Or even Cupid. I think the old saying that good marriages are made in Heaven must be true. What an arrangement is that!

Blank Books

Until blogging came along blank books were my thing. Now I rarely write in my journals. The background graphics on my blog show book shelves with no bottoms or tops filled with endless books on them. Here’s the other interesting thing about the books on those shelves, they have no visible titles, no visible authors, and nothing on the insides of them is visible. I think it’s symbolic of our personal lives. The covers hide us and what they do reveal looks so similar to the other book covers that it renders them of little interest. On the other hand, the page on top tells what the eye cannot see, something the words can’t spell. It tells of the author, but it tells even more of the reader. The reader sees himself, his tastes, his expertise, his compassion, his interest or lack of it, - well, you see what I mean. 

If the story on these pages told itself in pictures we’d either be hooked as in TV or turn to another channel. Maybe Facebook would capture our time. But the blank books I’m thinking of are the ones that are being written today as the minutes turn into hours. We have an idea of what the day might bring but it’s like a title with no words following. We have to write the page and read it too. Will I get the clutter of magazines and letters and books sorted out today? If I do, how long will it be before I need to do it again? Will Katie get the job after her interview this morning? She thinks so. “I’ll get that job, Grandma. It’s perfect for me and only five minutes away.” I admire her certainty but always qualify it.

My thought about the future goes something like this: We’re each one of us in his or her right place at the right time. The events in our lives are all a part of some vast harmonious whole and often not at all what they appear to be, as my former blog about the sunset brought out. I tell Katie and she nods in agreement. Her confidence and my theory await the unfolding of the day’s events and there are untold unnumbered unknowns. Somehow the pieces will come together in some way like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. 

Do I really believe that? I’m not sure. It would mean that the picture on the puzzle was completed some time ago, that the future will only restore the whole scene of what already is. It would be a fatalistic view of life, one we have only to step into cautiously and let play out. I prefer to think we have more of a hand in painting the picture.

You see, as we grow older we generally take more time to think things out. We need to watch out that we don’t become mere spectators, live our lives vicariously through others. Book-reading, television, movies, the daily news, and what goes on in the lives of those nearest and dearest, all these are all right if they don’t eclipse one’s own unique purpose in the grand scheme of things. And what is that? Well, if you do as I do, you’ll sit down and begin to write. You smarter ones may skip that step; you'll just be up and doing. Ideas tend to come out of blank pages, whether on paper, electronic devices or getting right down to business. We need at some time to get up and start doing. See what happens, pray along the way that wisdom and love are leading, and before you know it that page is done. Like this one.

Labor Day, 2013

It’s a holiday today and I’m watching a light show that many would pay to see. It’s our Sun again, dropping into the creek to dance on the waves those ducks made passing by. At the same time He’s playing hide and seek through the tree tops and painting Himself softly over the bushes and lawn across the way. Wow! What a way to celebrate! Better than fireworks by far, cheaper too, and all in the early morning! 

My neighbor, Bonnie, the tall slender gal, the single bachelor one who works in a bank, the neighbor I know best but don’t really know at all, just walked over the footbridge downstream with her basket of laundry. She usually does her laundry on Sunday mornings in the laundry machines provided by our home owners association over by the swimming pool. I don’t know why she doesn’t have laundry appliances in her place. Maybe she’s economizing. Maybe she likes to do it that way; laundry can be a pleasant thing, the handling of clean fresh clothes compared to the handling of “filthy lucre,” as we used to call those coins and paper bills. Then again maybe Bonnie’s bank job only involves spread sheets and such. She may not be a teller, but if she is, she’s a good one. Friendly, pleasant, efficient and easy to look at. 

That’s the way I see Bonnie. We’ve stopped to chat on the paths near our places but we’ve never been in each other’s homes. I sense that we’re alike, not indifferent to our neighbors, even kindly aware, but still private people. Not the “come on in for coffee” types. Each of us occupied in our own ways. With Bonnie it’s workdays and weekends to herself. I’ve never seen her place occupied by visitors or parties but she does have a black cat called Bandit. With me it’s Katie, my youngest granddaughter who lives with me. And Robin, my only daughter, who lives about 200 steps away in the Quail Creek area where I live. 

Katie’s looking for another job today. “I’m just going around the neighborhood looking for help wanted signs, Grandma.” It’s crunch time for her too with her bank balance shrinking. I sense that her outing today is just that. She needs to get out. She’s already been on line sending out her resume and getting leads and she already has two interviews set up for tomorrow. She’ll do OK. She’s a good worker. And right now she needs to get ready for her husband when he gets out. 

The two of them were married in jail. Jeff is there for...let’s just say 9 months. They’d hoped to elope that week he was arrested, but decided later to do it in jail. May 17 was their wedding day. Nobody was allowed to be with them except the “facilitator.” The witnesses? Two cops who watched on a video camera from another room. All of it with a plate glass window between the bride and groom and telephones for them to talk into. "I don't even remember reading and repeating our vows, Grandma, we were both crying buckets!" That will be something their grandchildren may hear about in whispers. (She doesn't mind my publishing it here. Everyone who knows her knows her story.) The date for them to seal it all with a kiss is set for November 9th in the early hours about 1 or 2am. when she picks him up at the prison gate. They will be spending their honeymoon here at Grandma’s where the rent is free, the food is plenty, the use of Grandma’s car free except for the gas it consumes. Two weeks of home life should make for a homey honeymoon.

 And Grandma? Well, she and Robin will be off to Oregon on a two week vacation. There’s a place that’s on my time-share plan called Whispering Woods Resort, close to Mt. Hood. We'll be there for a week. Will visit my sister-in-law who lives in McMinnville the other week. My two weeks should be quite pleasant while the honeymooners keep house and care for the dog and canary and houseplants and patio plants. Now Katie needs another part time job to pay for movies and dinners out and all the fun stuff that goes with a honeymoon. 

Then after the honeymoon Jeff will live in a place the government supplies for three months while Katie stays on with me. She'll get a more permanent job then. About Valentine’s Day they will be on their own, have their own place and get started with the life they've been waiting for. They’ll be a part of the work force of this nation, choosing when to start a family. The bad times will be left behind. They’ll be contributing to Grandma’s Social Security checks through their work. And I’m sure Labor Days will be a welcome days for them. If only I could peek ahead for a minute to Labor Day 2020!

Life goes on, sometimes at a snail’s pace and other times like a rocket. The news is that right now Congress is deciding whether or not to go to war again. I’ll come in from the patio, put away the breakfast dishes, type out this blog, and then, maybe then, tune in to see what’s going on outside of Paradise on this Labor Day, 2013.

Where the Sun Goes

I went back to Sunset Rock today, this time on the Internet, and it prompted me to tell my story again.

Our trip to Sequoia National Park was in the fall of 1972 as I recall. Wally and I had built a house in Laguna Beach and stretched our resources thin. Still, the urge we always felt to get out in the wilds pulled on us. Children were back in school. Ours had flown the nest, one left in college back east. A good time to take a vacation away from the madding crowd. 

“We could pack up the Volksie with our pup tent and sleeping bags, Wally.” I’d sat down in his home office to chat. “Make it a five day vacation with two days of travel time up and back and three days to drive around the park and sleep in the tent. It would do us good.” I didn’t need to sell him. He looked out the window before responding. He’d no doubt been thinking along those lines before I mentioned it. “I suppose it wouldn’t cost much that way,” he said. Wally was always conscious of the cost of things, especially after house building and starting to live on his retired pay.

The drive up from Laguna Beach only takes about four and half hours, but we didn’t hurry. It was just good to get out on the road again. We started out in the dark, early enough to beat the commuter traffic around the Los Angeles freeways. Somewhere north of L.A. we pulled off to the side of the road along a stretch of desert to watch the sun come up. After that we locked the car doors and stayed to take a little snooze. Packing up the night before and then leaving so early, both of us were pooped. 

It was an easy trip though. We arrived in mid afternoon. We’d been to the park before and loved the giant sequoias. We took our time stopping to look at them, stand in awe of them, touch them, feel the reverence of being near such ancient living wonders. Later on our way to the camp ground I saw a sign on the side of the road that said SUNSET ROCK.

 “Oh, Wally, it’s nearly time for the sun to set. Can’t we stop to watch the sunset?” Without a word he slowed down and turned into the road by the sign. When we’d parked and walked the short distance to the rock I saw that it was not a protruding sort of rock but a huge built-into-the-hill kind that offered space to sit for dozens of people. But no one else was there. Just the two of us.

When I saw we were alone I could have snuggled up next to my dear hubby and watched the sun go down with him. It might have been a romantic time. I would have too except that for some reason I saw our solitude as even more special than the two of us. “Let’s sit apart from each other, Wally. Somehow I feel so inspired here I think we might each enjoy it in our own way without talking.”

Wally was in a similar mood apparently. The absence of people made it seem like we’d stepped back in time, even into prehistoric time.The air was crisply cool, but there was no wind and the place seemed silent and sacred. I smiled at Wally sitting about 30 feet from me. He’d been so compliant this trip. Not at all like he used to be when we made our way across the country from one tour of duty to another with the US Marine Corps.  Then I turned my attention to the sun. It still hovered above the horizon and was too bright to look at directly. Out beyond where it would be setting lay a thin stretch of haze along the horizon. In front of us the hills spread in pristine shades of green and browns. I looked but couldn’t see a single sign of civilization. It was as if this place had escaped humanity’s footprint. Not a road, a cabin, a telephone pole. Just the stillness of a fall day like all the rest of the days the place had known since time immemorial. How many sunsets this rock had seen! 

And the one we were about to see, what would it be like? Not one of those spectacular sunsets I’d seen with a canopy of clouds catching all the shades of red and gold. I wondered what it would look like when it reached the horizon. What would be that something special I felt we were in store for? 

As the sun got lower I wondered how the haze on the horizon would affect it and slowly I saw. The brilliant white orb began to change color. It became orange with horizontal dark streaks across it Japanese lantern style. As it sunk a distant hill took a bite out of it. Then it was as if the sun let go and spilled out its blood becoming shapeless. Dark blobs appeared on its redness and the hazy horizon spread the paint across the landscape. At last the glowing orb slid down and disappeared into one tiny brilliant white flash of light as if it were bidding us goodbye. 

At that moment, that tiny bright light, so similar to the ones that used to flash when we’d turn off our first television set, began to tell me something. It said, “Don’t be disappointed, my friend. I didn’t suffer one little bit when I got sick and died. See? I’m still as white and bright as I was at noonday. I haven’t changed at all even though you saw me disintegrate. You watched it all and I know you thought I was beautiful even then. You didn’t think of those sunset symptoms as some sort of horrible disease that sent me out of your life. I know you’re not grieving for me.”

It was as clear a message as if spoken in those very words. I looked over at Wally. He was still sitting there staring out over the horizon. Then I thought of the sun again and remembered how that morning we’d watched it come up over the desert. One tiny bright white flame broke through the warm red radiance blanketing the landscape. The brilliance of it grew, the shape of it grew, and the glorious orb of white we all know so well forbade us to stare at it anymore. 

The same sun. Hello and goodbye. Yet all the while we’d watched it being “born” and later go through the agony of “sickness and death” not a thing about the sun had changed, even for a moment. What’s more the sun had not risen or set. The phenomena of sunrise and sunset were the result of the earth’s motion and our earth-bound view of it. We gave it birth and we gave it death, names we’d never call them because we know it’s an illusion both times. Our limited views had caused us to see a limited span of life, one sunny day.

I’ve never forgotten that day’s lesson. It showed me how arrogant we are to think that all there is to true being is what we see of it in human form. We are no more in the short span of a human life than the sun is in a daytime. We see only what we can understand at this moment and much of that is educated guesswork. When the ego is lifted up we’ll get a better view and eventually, like the sun, see ourselves and others from a higher point of view where there is no night. Scientists say that the universe is filled with invisible light and we know only a tiny fraction of it as yet. Gives us something to think about, doesn’t it?

Some fifteen years later my husband passed out of my sight. That time at Sunset Rock helped me to see past the grief, helped to comfort me, and as I write I wonder if Wally is waiting somewhere along a desert road to greet me as I come over the horizon one morning. If so, we won’t be silent. We’ll have lots to talk about!  

Growing Old The Cash 'n Carry Way

Like many couples, my husband, Wally, and I had issues over money. Growing up in the  Great Depression years, Wally G (we called him that to differentiate him and our son, Wally K) learned to respect money, though he was anything but a miser. A dollar bill never entered his wallet with crumples or turned-down corners. But he didn't like credit cards.  If I'd hear him call me, “Joyce!” into his office shortly after the postman came and see a business sized paper in his hand I'd know I was being called to account for some credit card statement. "What was this for? Or this?" he'd ask, pointing to the numbers.

Wally G liked to manage the money and since he was the one who earned it I could scarcely quarrel with that. I never purchased big items without his consent, it was the accumulation of little ones that ballooned to a dreaded bottom line. Then I’d have to remember, explain, placate, and remind him that I, too, earned the money as his housekeeper, loving wife and the mother of his children. “If you had to pay for even the first of these, a daily housekeeper, think how that would add up!” To which he’d respond, “I know, Mrs. Wethe," (his pet name for me, pronounced wethy,) "and I wouldn’t deny you anything under the sun if I had the money! I never mind spending money if I have it.” To prove that point, he'd save cash in an old coat pocket for special occasions. I found $1,800. cash in that old jacket in his closet when I went through his clothes after his passing. It was money he’d put away to spend on one of his no holds barred Christmas family dinners at our favorite restaurant. We hadn’t gone out that year because he was not well. He died on December 26th. 

Even though I, too, grew up in the Depression years, I was not quite old enough to feel it. I used to wonder why Mother sliced the Spam so thinly though, or showed me how to separate the two layers of a Kleenex tissue so they could be used separately. Since I seldom handled money I didn't miss it. When Mother passed on and I took over the housekeeping, laundry, and cooking, Daddy would stick a few greenbacks under the scarf on the top of the piano for me to take when I drove to town. I seldom bought anything for myself, though he never told me not to. Then when Grandmother Darling took me in as a college student, she paid for everything. I didn't lack for anything nor even ask. I just didn't need money. After marriage, at nineteen, I found it hard to spend money provided for by my husband. I got over that, however, and learned how to enjoy shopping. 

I've learned to spend more freely as the years go by. But lately I’ve been a little too free with my credit cards and have gone into my savings to keep them paid up. So yesterday I did something drastic. I terminated the use of all my credit cards, packed them up and mailed them to my son, Wally K. It’s debit card, check and cash from now on and I’m going to have to watch my step!

Maybe I’ll try to follow Wally G’s example and leave the kids cash enough to go out and have a grand Christmas dinner. Somebody remember to tell them, as Wally G used to, “Don’t look at the right side of the menu, kids. The sky’s the limit!” And when the check comes to the table pay with cash and hand the waiter and maitre'd their tips along with a word of thanks for their service as you leave.  

Growing up as we grow old, I'm learning, is coming to grips with one's faults because we may be making other changes before long. Mark Twain was asked which he'd choose to go to after death, heaven or hell. He's supposed to have answered, "Well, I think I'd choose heaven for the climate, but the other place for the company." So now, for me, this is one more step in the process of growing up. If I don't grow up I might grow down and that's not a place I'd care to go to either for the company or the climate!