Once You Go Gray, You Never Go Black

Sheila, February 2012

Hey I am finally somewhat of a trendsetter. For years now my hair has been gray—not that I didn’t once and only once have a fling with color. I was so warped after that experience and the hole it left in my wallet that I swore off coloring my hair as I progressively grew more and more gray.

Mad Men Betty Draper double.

Perhaps I was conditioned to give hair coloring a try at least once by those 50’s and 60’s Clairol advertisements asking, “Does she . . . or doesn’t she? Hair color so natural only her hairdresser knows for sure!” Maybe my own mother’s long time love affair with Loving Care colored my viewpoint and made me predisposed to think this is what modern, working women did when those first stray grays made their unwanted appearance.

However, Leanne Italie’s recent AP story on women with gray hair proved a bit of a validation of my choice although there are apparently quite a few other women out there for whom going gray isn’t yet a reality. Only their hairdresser knows for sure—and likely most other people for that matter. Who the heck are they kidding?

Christine Lagarde

With strong and talented women of gray like Oscar-winning actress Helen Mirren, International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde, and actress and yogurt spokeswoman Jamie Lee Curtis, this gray revolution can’t help but grow, and I’m finally okay with my hair!

New Grandson

I suppose he deserves more than a quick post, but Nathaniel Trent Noblitt is one fine little guy. I suppose too that he will take the world on his own terms since he decided to come a day before the scheduled c-section for his mother. He is beautiful, with a high-pitched cry to let the world know that he requires attention--not that I have heard too much of it. That is the beauty of grandparenting. For the most part we get the fun stuff and the parents get the practical.

“Diaper backward spells repaid. Think about it.”

Getting the Lay of the Land in Aurora, Illinois

Summer update: I’ve moved from Batavia to Aurora, Illinois, the second biggest city in Illinois. I’m two blocks away from older son, and family. Grandma Sheila, that’s what Nic calls me, can walk to baby sit these days. I promise not to become the annoying mother-in-law Marie from the TV show, Everybody Loves Raymond, to my daughter-in-law, but there are parallels like the brother who lives at home. And differences. There’s no Frank.

It’s a nice neighborhood near Aurora University. I can:

• watch the peewee football players practice after school at Freeman Elementary school across the street;
• shop at Prisco’s Fine Foods and have my groceries carried out to my car with nary a tip expected;
• go to a Blvd District neighbors’ meeting on neighborhood safety issues on Tuesday night;
• visit the Jewel, a Wal-Mart, Aldi’s, public library branch, an old-fashioned hardware store, walkin medical clinic (just in case—I really don’t want to visit this but it’s nice to know it’s there), and more nearby;
• eat at restaurants close by like the Roundhouse, an historic downtown Aurora landmark that’s recently shed the Walter Payton name;
• take classes at Waubonsee Community College’s new downtown Aurora campus (disclaimer: my son works for the college); and
• check out the farmers market every Saturday in warm weather and enjoy local musicians like the lady Patsy Cline singer who was wailing out a mean version of Crazy the day I stopped by for tomatoes.

And speaking of tomatoes, my next door neighbor has generously supplied us with the most amazingly beautiful heirloom tomatoes which certainly proves growing monster tomatoes without fertilizer is not only possible but delicious. She promised to give me tips when spring planting season rolls around.

So, I am exploring and getting the lay of the land. Can you tell I kind of like it here? Should maybe I change the name of this blog?

Giving Thanks

Can it be nearly three months since I last posted? And why today did I decide the time was right to resume writing? I guess I am in a reflective mood, and when I get in those moods, I want to write.

Since the last post in early October I took a new job -- one helping older people get the services they need to remain living independently or in jargon it's called aging in place. I once worked in a senior center, got side-tracked with other matters, and have now returned to a job whose focus is this age group. To me, age is relative. Some of the "youngest" people occupy the oldest bodies.

Through the new job, I am becoming reacquainted with how Thanksgiving (and other holidays) may be observed among older people.

Is there a more iconic portrait of the American celebration of Thanksgiving than Norman Rockwell's Freedom From Want illustration, which was published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1943? A modern version of this scene is still repeated around the country, but I have found older people who prefer to celebrate in their own fashion. Maybe it's a free Thanksgiving meal from a local church, a meal they make themselves, or one delivered by a volunteer.

Some continue to embrace the traditional family celebration, often traveling to be with children or other relatives. Others prefer the comfort of their own homes and say traveling and adjusting to the younger crowd's schedules and ways is too much. Then, there are those for whom holidays are a stark reminder that as we age, we lose loved ones and friends. One of my older relatives tells me she "hates holidays." She humors her closest relations, though, and dutifully goes to the family farm where she grew up to spend holidays with them. I imagine her niece tells her that it wouldn't be the same without her. And it wouldn't.

Split Infinitives and New Year's Resolutions

Never much for New Year’s resolutions, I have nonetheless resolved the following:

1. I will try to live in the now and not the past nor the future.
What is this day like? Can I enjoy it and not worry about the number of days or years that I may have left? Can I banish the ‘what ifs’? What if the car breaks down (oh, I know it will eventually—it’s got quite a few miles on it just like its owner)? What if I get sick, or slip and fall, or lose my job, or become homeless, living out of the car with quite a few miles on it? What will I do now that I am living alone for the first time ever—just yesterday College Boy left for a new college a day’s drive away? What will be my passion? Should I return to school? Should I join a group to stave off loneliness? If I do, what kind of people should I surround myself with?

Can I let go of past hurts? Can I hold onto pleasant memories without wishing to relive them? Can I go forward al a Star Trek with a personal “five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before”?

We shall see. Perhaps, yes, with these fears and old habits verbalized.

2. I will finish reading more books, and subscribe to some magazines and the newspaper.
This is doable. I already read a lot, but since chemo, my concentration has been off and sticking with a book seems like an impossible chore. How many books I have started and put aside! That can change. I am nearly finished reading a book now. Strangely, for a person who majored in journalism, I have fallen away from reading magazines and the daily paper. What a shame! TV is a poor substitute. I resolve to change.

3. I will move forward with creative pursuits.
This is the one resolution I am most excited by, but more on this later.

Three resolutions, about the right number I think. I have a couple of others but they are the rather common ones that we all seem to share and then quickly toss aside. You know—lose weight, eat right, exercise, save money.

Happy New Year! May the coming days be filled with good health, good times, growth, and kindnesses both given and received.

A Blogging Anniversary

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us. Helen Keller

I’ve been blogging for three years now. The first post (July 31, 2006) was one day after my 54th birthday. Here’s what I said back then.

And here’s where I am now. I have a real job working for a nonprofit organization helping needy elders, children and families. I still wonder how much time I have left. It’s been over five years since the Big C visited me.

I still ramble way too much. I can have the attention span of a gnat. My head is teeming with untested ideas. I don’t write here as often and regret the loss of time to cyber-visit with readers. To recap, since 2006, I have moved from Alabama to Springfield, Missouri, and from Springfield to Batavia, Illinois. My marriage of nearly 37 years ended last summer. Lots of other things happened of course, but I’m saving those stories for the book.

So, the past year has been a year of transition, self-discovery, self-sufficiency, and soul searching. While I see the glass half full, I wouldn’t mind if it were completely full. As I flit from one great notion to the next, I do feel progress is being made, ever so slowly.

The best is yet to come!

Bama Quilt Gets a Tryout

I finally finished the quilt for Nicolas. Here he is lounging around on it at a wedding shower last weekend at a wedding shower in his mom’s hometown of St. Joseph, Missouri. Nic was the only guy there. His dad was at Grandpa and Grandma Hammer’s house watching Alabama’s A-Day football game on ESPN. Unlike urban protocol, Mid-America small-town protocol still allows that men don’t much care for attending wedding showers. Personally, I agree, but Nic did not seem to mind one bit I am told.

Monte

Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole. ~Roger Caras

We lost a dear family friend this week. He passed way too early, barely out of adolescence. For the last few months he had faced an illness which only seemed to get worse. Finally, the time came when we had to say goodbye.

Like those we love and lose, I will remember the good times most of all. As a youngster, he swam in our pool and chewed sticks in the front yard of my Alabama home when he visited. He flunked obedience training, but he was smart. He learned to go the door, indicating a need to attend to business best completed outside if you know what I mean. Then, he would pull the trick of stealing my spot on the most comfy chair before I could close the door.

His human mom and dad are sad and so I am.

Revisiting Spring

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Sheltered from the still chilly north wind, the bright daffodils surprised me the other morning as I headed off to work. Yet, there they were as if overnight they sprung to life, brave little souls they were tucked safe against the south wall of the house.

I think of daffodils as the first harbinger of spring. Maybe I should credit my fifth grade teacher for my love of daffodils since she required us to memorize poems, and I think that was when I first read William Wordworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” more commonly and appropriately called the “Daffodils.”

Today is sunny and soon less hardly plants will venture forth. I can barely wait. As the life contained in dormant seeds and bulbs begins to push its way up toward the light and warmth, so shall I.

For a while I fell off the face of the earth

I landed in Batavia, Illinois, a far-far western suburb of Chicago. Long-time readers might be curious about this journey, but for now, I intend to be discrete and mysterious about my detour along life’s pathways.

My new home, a quaint little town clustered along the Fox River, captured my eye immediately when I first drove into the downtown central business district. Yes, there is still a thriving downtown here, not yet lost to the strip-shopping centers which populate west Batavia along Randal Road where every manner of chain store or restaurant is at your beck and call. The mayor wrote this about his town, “Batavia in some ways looks like a town that time has left alone.” This part of the Fox River Valley is lovely, and I am no stranger to the river having once lived in a Craftsman-style house overlooking the Fox for a short time in Appleton, Wisconsin.

While Batavia is doing a fine job of straddling old and new, I found her charm immediately apparent with tree-lined streets of homes ranging from Victorian painted ladies to one classic Frank Lloyd Wright home. I can walk to my insurance agent, bank, pharmacy, coffee shop, and library.

The library features a mural of the art accompanying this post--John Philip Falter's "Fox River Ice-Skating," which was the Saturday Evening Post cover for Jan. 11, 1958. In the upper right corner, you can see the Challenge Windmill Factory, another Batavia landmark. Batavia dubs itself “The City of Energy,” a right fine tagline since it served as home to five windmill factories during its early years, and it has been the home of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) for more than 40 years.

Well, that’s a short introduction to my new hometown. More later but don't expect me to write about ice-skating on the Fox River or anywhere for that matter.

Some of my New Year’s Resolutions are Green

Ah yes, it is fashionable these days to wrap yourself and your home in green. Sustainable is tossed around here, there and everywhere, and I actually understand more about what that means than I did a few months ago.

Husband is on the sustainability council at Drury University and produces a newsletter for the group. He playfully points out “no trees were harmed during the production” of the electronic newsletter. In addition, he’s like a hawk with the recycling at home recently. We have paper sacks of paper and a plastic bin for the bottles, cans and plastic that our waste hauler picks up every other week. And I can’t sneak a non-energy-saving light bulb by him even if it is to rid ourselves of the old-style bulbs. If it’s up to him, our next car will be a Prius. He is fully on the green bandwagon. We are even recycling the Christmas tree, which Bass Pro and a local Boy Scout troop will take to Table Rock Lake to help the fish habitat.

Well, I’m getting there with the recycling, which leads me to my New Year’s resolutions. I have to give credit to The Daily Green for the inspiration after I read “7 New Year’s Eco-Resolutions for 2008.”

On Annie Bell Muzaurieta’s list:

1. “It’s time to clean out, and stop the crap collecting,” she says. You go girl! This is on my list too. This problem is vastly aggravated by the habit of shopping for recreation. Keep thee out of shopping malls and centers, so says me.

2. “I will avenge my phantom load.” She’s talking about computers, cell phones and other electronics that continue to use energy while plugged in. She suggests using a power strip and turning that off when the devices aren’t in use. I suppose I could shut the computer down. Okay, I’m adding this one too.

3. “I will be smarter than bottled water companies and drink for free what they are trying to sell me.” This does not apply to me (note the sound of me patting myself on the back), and I am therefore, leaving it off of my list. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that a small bottle of water should not ever cost $3. Also, the skeptic in me wonders if that Wehrenberg movie theater water fountain was REALLY “Out of Order” the other day.

4. “If I can remember to TiVo “Dancing with the Stars,” I can remember to bring my own bags to the grocery store.” Annie, I think I want to try this one. There are plenty of cheap eco-friendly bags for shopping instead of the plastic ones offered by merchants. Of course, if you shop less frequently, you may be like a pack mule loading up for the trek home.

5. I’m deviating from Annie’s list now to my unique set of enviro-issues. A dirty little secret is thus revealed dear gentle readers. I take long and I do mean long showers. I hearby resolve to save water, energy and time with shorter shower-time.

6. And in general reduce, reuse, recycle and conserve.

What else can you do to green up your new year? The sky’s the limit. Get the bike out of the garage and use it instead of the car. Offer a friend a ride if you are both attending an event. Plant a tree. Replace an old furnace with a high efficiency Energy Star make. We did this and Springfield's City Utilities offered us a $250 rebate. Use compact fluorescent light bulbs, which use 66% less energy and last 10 times longer than regular bulbs. You’ll save an average of $30 in energy costs over the life of the bulb. Buy as local as possible. Use old t-shirts and towels instead of paper towels for cleaning chores. Put up a clothesline. Wash with cold water whenever possible.

And on the subject of New Year's resolutions in general, is it silly to come up with them at all as some have suggested? Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute doesn’t think so. He writes:

This New Year's, resolve to think about how to make your life better, not just once a year, but every day. Resolve to set goals, not just in one or two aspects of life, but in every important aspect and in your life as a whole. Resolve to pursue the goals that will make you successful and happy, not as the exception in a life of passivity, but as the rule that becomes second-nature.

If you do this, you will be resolving to do the most important thing of all: to take your happiness seriously.

To expound and expand on the Epstein message regarding passivity, I would like to encourage us all to think about how we can make life better for others too. I resolve also to get up off of the sofa and test my passions with actions. Hope you will too. May the new year bring you hope, joy, healing from emotional and physical ailments, peace and much love.

I’m OK. You’re OK.

“Are you OK? You haven’t posted a blog for nearly a week,” kind and dear gentle reader quizzed.

I wrote back, “One word. Doldrums.”

I guess that’s the quickest way to describe my mood of late. No, not depressed. That’s reserved for more serious states, which I’m not going to trivialize by being overly dramatic.

Like a sailing ship calmed by the lack of winds, I seem to be adrift. The dictionary defines doldrums as a sluggish state in which something fails to develop. And yet, there’s tension here like a hot and angry (why, the anger?) boil ready to burst. There I go. That sounded dramatic didn’t it? Change is coming. Change is inevitable. If I rail against this wind of change and her fickleness, what good will that do? Change must be embraced as an old and familiar friend, one who was so charming when I was young and who has grown wise with time and now returns to visit when I need her and sometimes when I don't.

In reality, I’m engaging in a period of readjustment. Four months is too soon for Springfield to feel like home. Six weeks is too soon not to miss college boy although he calls often enough for any helicopter parent. With fall and winter fast approaching, gardening no longer holds my interest. Instead of possibilities right now I see roadblocks. Excuses. And writing? To my ear, the words ring hollow and insincere as if I was trying to fill up a washtub with wisdom for myself one drop at a time.

I’m a nurturer and right now I’m searching. When I find it--whatever it happens to be, I’m sure the mood will change, and the wind will find her way again to my sails.

Older and Wiser--Maybe, Maybe Not

Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many.

Today I’m celebrating a couple of things. First, I’ve evaded AARP successfully for five years now although they have pursued me like a lobbyist after a politician, and since the move, they haven’t located me yet. Let’s just say I prefer to have it that way.

And the second occasion, is that it was a year ago that I started the blog. Many thanks to those who have visited, at times enduring long rambling vents and soapbox stances on a huge variety of issues ranging from why I don’t like Hillary Clinton to my worry about a Rip Van Winkle son and his quest to wake up. It’s been fun and just as I thought, I haven’t run out of things to say.

Hope to make many new blogging friends in the new year. Cheers.

A Poem in Memory of?

Invincible; no, you only think so.
Immortal. Hardly.
You are the bright promise we old farts hang our stars on.
You are the better day. Funny. So full of life.
Intensely living and learning and growing.
Why did you fall? Why did life cut you down long before life wore you out?


Note: I swear I’m becoming forgetful, because I came across these words today while decluttering and can’t remember for whom they were written. I think maybe I wrote this after the shootings at Virginia Tech. How quickly that story disappeared from the nation’s radar. Now with Scottie going off to college soon, I’m again reminded of how fragile, vulnerable and precious life is. And I don’t claim to be a poet; it was just a case of a tired and sad blogger wondering why.

I took this photo of the grave of an obviously well-loved-and-lost child during a visit to Florence, Italy. Scott is holding the umbrella. It somehow seemed to fit.

Countdown to Launch

“You baby him too much,” husband said to me the other day. I couldn’t really disagree with him but felt compelled to defend myself with, “But he IS my baby.”

And that Dear Gentle Readers is where we stand on getting the kid ready to head off to college next month. Dad worries that his son won’t cut it in the real world and mom holds on trying to cushion the transition.

I suppose I could just say, “Well, he’ll either learn to handle himself or he won’t.”

But I also happen to believe that there’s no cookie-cutter approach to parenting either. What works for one kid, doesn’t necessarily work with them all. Junior didn’t come with a 600-page instruction manual or even one like the one with 240 pages that came with the Sprint cell phone husband brought home for me recently. This has all been on-the-job training. Thank goodness, there’re two of us. His yin balances my yang.

I’ll deal with my anxieties here on the blog, sorting through the issues and feelings. Husband has retreated to his floating “man cave,” a. k. a. the boat. Oh, if you have any words of wisdom, send them my way. The last time we did this was 11 years ago when elder son trotted off to school for two years, transferred for a year at home in a school change and finally spent his senior year studying in Italy.