Knots and News

 When the school year begins, I make my new resolutions.  A major one this year is; WRITE MORE. I like the idea of an audience for my writing so, here I am, back again. Writing more posts.

This morning, I went over to Mom's because I left my phone there overnight.  (I forgot it.) AND I set up her pill box on Saturday morning for the following week.

While I did that chore, she got dressed. She shoved her sneaker across the table to me when she came out.

Huh!? "I broke the shoelace," she sighed.

I am not the world's best knot tier. (Tie-er?) My first attempt didn't allow the lace to be pulled tight.

I reached way, way, way  back in my memory to "right over left, left over right" GSA knot tying days and managed by a miracle to make a sturdy, tight, square knot and we put "shoelaces" on her shopping list for Monday. 

Mom days are still full of card games and walks - although the walks are shorter now. Life goes on and it changes, too. So my family's news is next. 

  Our family - our son, his wife and the grandteen - has moved to France.  It's been three weeks. A new school year has meant - since preschool - pick-up rotation for Gramps and me. Grandteen would be in high school this year but... she's in France. We are not crossing the Atlantic to retrieve her. Her school day starts at 8 am and lasts until 5:30 pm.  They get a decent lunch break and I hear the food is excellent.  Also, classes are not held on Wednesday afternoons. Do I miss my son, my daughter-in-law and my granddaughter? That goes without saying so I won't.

I have lost 25+ pounds on a rather severe "diabetes reversal" eating plan.  I need new clothes. I miss bread

We have many, many sunflowers in our gardens, front and back. 

And we went on a cruise to ease the first two weeks of missing the family. 

 Mom is 99. Her eyesight fails. Her hearing is creative a lot of the time.  And her step can be unsteady. She has trouble naming the right child sometimes. BUT she always knows when she's speaking with one of her kids. The rest of the world is on their own.  I tell her this. "If you forget my name, just remember that I love you."

We worry about her. Deciding when to call in the cavalry is hard. She stills dresses and washes herself, gets her own breakfast and can heat up the homemade meals we stock her freezer with. All that could disappear with one fall, one wrong step. We take turns making dinners and eating with her. We nag her about eye drops. We get her to doctor's appointments and grocery shop with her. Some of us live hours away. We are all getting older but we all do what we can.

This has become my life. 

When I sat down, I thought that knotting that shoelace had some message in it.  I'm sure you can find meaning in it. Share your thoughts if you want.  To me, it was just the continuation of the flow of love from my mother to me and back again.  Thanks for reading.

 

 

Losing Things

This post was written 2 months ago. Things are still the same. I lost my purse today.  I had it when I left my Mom's house. And when we headed off to retrieve the grandteen from summer activities, that purse had disappeared.

Or, did I have it when I left my Mom's? I called her. My brother helped her look and, no purse.

Well we got back from grandteen retrieval and I searched again.  Every room on the first floor, every room on the second floor. I even searched the guest "apartment". Where the heck was that thing?

Back to Mom's. Nope not there.  

As I strapped myself in, in my Mom's driveway, I remembered that I shifted my purse to fasten my seatbelt earlier in the day. I had it hanging cross body.  So it had to be at home.

After another circuit of all the usual suspect places, I went upstairs to retrieve my credit card info to report the loss.

This is a necessary step when you lose a purse with a wallet and other essentials for life in these modern times.  But, I remembered that I HAD put a plastic bag in the plastic bag holder in the cellarway. Before I made a single phone call, I opened the cellar door. 

There was my purse - hanging from a hook with my aprons. 

Losing things is becoming a way of life for me. The worst thing is that I have no memory of how things get where I find them. According to a well-known organization that serves people who are a half century old or older,  having no memory of putting something where you find it is a warning sign of mental decline.

I am proud that I was able to retrace my steps. I never believed that my purse was truly lost. I remembered hanging it on a hook.  And I thank my lucky stars and Saint Anthony that I looked one last place before I called the credit card company. 

 

 

Five+ Things to do with an Aging Mom

 I started this post two months ago. Here is an update!

My Mom is just shy (seriously - 2 weeks away) of 99 years old! She can still walk, keep up a conversation, read a little bit. Her eyesight is failing and her hearing, even with hearing aids, is iffy.

(For instance, I told her "Stop yawning. Or I'll fall asleep." She asked, "Why will you call the police?")

No matter. Mom and I have a lot of fun. Here are five of the things we do together.

1. Play simple card games. Mom can still play bridge. I can't. We play Skip-Bo, a game that just requires the players to count from 1 to 12- and keep track of piles of cards. If one of my siblings is in the house we can play Uno. You need to know your colors and numbers in THAT game.

2. Jigsaw puzzles.  Mom's 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle days are long gone.  She does like the large pieces of a 100 piece jigsaw puzzle. The pieces have to be large enough for her to distinguish the edges.  Here is a website that sells these larger puzzles.

3. Walk.  Mom can walk with a cane.  If your elderly person lives where there are pavements, walk slowly and warn of obstructions well in advance.  We do .25 mile and .5 mile walks.  We also drive to parks with well paved paths.

Taking wheelchair bound elders out to a park with well-paved paths works, as well, although it might be a little harder to manage. 

4. Read.  Mom is working on historical fiction right now but her eyes tire easily.  I read out loud to her and we both get to enjoy the book.  Parents with trouble keeping track of a plot might enjoy short story collections instead.

5. Chair exercises. This one is for me.  I need the exercise, too. Video services like Youtube or Vimeo, carry lots of 10 and 15 minute exercise routines for people with limited mobility. Or for people who are out of shape and want to ease back into exercising.

6. Look at old photos together. I read that sharing old photos helps older people keep their memories. The snapshots can reawaken memories in people who have lost the ability to remember the past. It's worth a try.

7. Watercolors and coloring. My Mom likes watercolors. Me, not so much. One of my sisters gives Mom a line drawing and Mom adds watercolors to it. Mom is good at this.        Coloring I can do. And so on rainy days Mom and I sometimes get out the pencils and the books. For people with poor eyesight, coloring pages with large areas and a minimum of narrow or small spaces to color are best. 

Things to try!

Crafts:  We have NOT done crafts but it is on my list of things to do. 

Sing-alongs: Print out a few lyric sheets of songs your older person may enjoy. Then find a karaoke version on YouTube for background music. 

Have fun with your old people for as long as you can.  

 

 

 

Flowers from the Mud - March 15, 1 pm

Flowers from the Mud - March 15, 2025, 1 pm

  You are not alone.

Right now we face;                                             -rising prices,                                                       -housing shortages,                                             -the fear of losing health care,                           -worry about our jobs                                         - anger at changes in our country's values          -concern about the safety of our private    financial information                                           -confusion about what the heck is going on in our government or the world,                             -a lack of kindness and caring.                             

On March 15th at 1 pm, at the Peace Pole, in Bethlehem's Rose Garden, join us as we acknowledge our concerns and explore ways to find hope. 

As that time approaches, I will post the Flowers from the Mud website with resources and more information on this event. please join us.

 

Latest Book Obsession

 Jane Austen meant nothing to me until Freshmen year of college.  Our Intro to the Novel instructor, an very tall man named Clarence something, led us through Emma.

He pointed out Austen's gift for describing the ridiculous in her time period's fashions and mores, and her ability to lead her main characters to better choices and happier endings. I went on to read more Jane on my own. Thank you, Clarence.

So when I saw a book on my library's Staff Picks display titled Jane and the Last Mystery; a Jane Austen mystery, I gave it a chance.

It was the LAST book in a multi-book series and the first book of my latest book obsession.

Jane makes a great fictional character. The footnotes and end pages show the research that Stephanie Barron, the series' author, has done into Austen's life. Many of the settings were visited by Austen. A lot of the characters did actually live at the same time as Austen. Barron is true to the Austen family, Jane's mother and father, her sister, Cassandra, and the five healthy Austen brothers; James, Edward, Henry, Charles and Frank.

I love the attention to detail in fashions and behaviors. Barron's version of Jane Austen manages to straddle all social strata and gender expectations. 

I know more about Napoleon, and England's efforts to stop the "Monster" from invading the British Isles, than I ever wanted to. Political intrigue allows Jane to do a little spying and meet dashing characters.

So, yes, I thoroughly enjoy this series. I wish that Jane could continue but Barron ended her series in a respectful manner. 

Give Jane Austen mysteries a try.

 

What a YEAR!!

It's been a Year!  I saw beautiful sunrises, watched squirrels beg, followed birds in flight. I walked with my friends around the neighborhood and stopped on the hillside to watch the sun set. I stood on shorelines and watched gulls swoop low.

Friends and family gathered around our table to laugh and eat and reminisce. My worship community is tight and striving to spread peace. I walked in the Peace Walk for the first time in years.

I took a poetry course and wrote some poems! 

I spend a lot of time with my 97 year old Mom, and her struggles to keep her sight. (So far so good!)

And a lot of time with our son and his family and our granddaughter who is as tall as I am, now.

We survived a lot of sad and shocking events in our world this year. Wars in the Middle East, in Africa, in the Ukraine. Forest fires that spread smoke all through North America. Extreme weather. Gun violence. Etc. Etc. yada yada yada.

We DID survive. And where there is Life, there is Hope.

What do you hope for this coming year? Hope means we still have a future.  Here are a few of my hopes:

I hope to use my time more wisely.  I hope to smile more. I hope to write more.

I hope for a cleaner world. I hope to make changes in my lifestyle to bring that cleaner world closer.

I hope for Peace. I hope to spread peace wherever I can.

I hope for Kindness. I hope to be kind in meaningful, measurable ways.

I hope for Truth, Justice and the Global Way*! Almost like Superman! 

I hope you are all happy and healthy and productive in 2024.

Happy New Year!!

*The original quote was "the American Way". But that has different meanings than it did in the 1950's. I have no idea what the Global Way is.  I hope that it will be a truly inclusive, accepting, generous, truthful, hardworking and respectful way of life.

 

Poetry

I am still alive. My absence is a mystery even to me. But I still have things to write about.

For the holidays, my son gave me a gift certificate to take a writing class. I signed up for a poetry course. It ended last week.

Somehow I missed that the last poem was not to be submitted. It has been such a charge to have an audience - even of one, the professor - for every poem I wrote these ten weeks. And he said nice things - mostly.

So, I wrote that last poem. A poem that would encapsulate something that we carried with us from the "rock" stars of our childhood.

Here it is:

Needs

We lock our fingers together

and mime our imprisonment.

As the shaggy boys harmonize, 

we clutch our none-too-impressive chests.

We are in "Chains!" and 

we swirl and dip and sidestep - as one.

 

We trained for years -

singing rounds in the car.

Mom taught us songs 

about "bananas"

and "chasing rainbows" 

and "old mill streams".

 

Now the music is our own.

No Mr. Sandman, No Stranger in Paradise.

All our very own. The words a code

 our mother cannot decipher.

 

And then she does. 

We come home from school

And "Yesterday" plays on the stereo.

 

The shaggy boys are older.

They play alien sounds.

They sing of other needs

beyond love and dancing.

 

We sit in the evening

reading or knitting;

we harmonize to the arrival of the sun

or the "wind that turns me on".

The music knots around us

and in us,

then and into the stars.

Bound by more than blood. Bound

by the need to sing.