My Beautiful Town

Everyone laughs at the name of my town--Poughkeepsie. It may sound funny, but it's beautiful.

Where Have They Gone?

Where Have They Gone?

There are lots of funny emails with complaints about aging, circulating among us over-the-hill folks. I think the theory must be “if we laugh at ourselves first, then we won’t be so hurt by others doing it.” (I was tempted to put a question mark there, but don’t want to be mistaken for a Valley girl with her uptalk.) Most of the jokes have to do with body parts shifting to a new low; many are about losing things and words. All of that is annoying–and maddening–and frustrating, indeed. By the way, did you realize that your credit card company no longer puts your full number on your bill, so if you don’t scan it or write it down somewhere safe, you’re up the creek if you lose it? Let’s see, where did I finally locate my number at midnight the other night? In the important papers file on the computer? No, that would be the old number of the one I lost last time! Fortunately for me, and in the interest of being able to sleep that night, it was in a hard-copy file of legal and important papers for my kids, for when—well, you know! (Good girl, Lyn.)
    As I said, those signs of aging are irritating, but the ones I hate the most are losses. Help! I’m losing my lips! And my eyes! And my hair! My lips have always been one of my best features and the most commented on, starting with the pervert band teacher in high school I once told you about–really middle school, if we’d  had one. But where are my lips going? And where will they end up? There’s no line at all on the bottom edge anymore, and if I follow my natural line on the top lip with a lip liner, it looks like I’m perpetually sneering. I can only wear the paint-on-stiff-as-glue kind now; the creamy ones creep down my wrinkles on the lower one, and up my wrinkles on the upper, till I look like a damn red-and-white-striped American flag!
    Then there’s the issue of the eyes. As a little tot, I had big brown eyes. They stuck coke bottle bottom glasses on them when I was seven, which reduced their size by a third. By the time I got contacts at nearly fifty, my eyelids were going into a decline, but finally, after 40 years, I was getting compliments by people (mostly men) but not my ever-tactful sister who said “I don’t know why you wear those things; they make you squint all the time, and it makes your eyes look smaller.” Then a dozen years ago, I got rid of the bottle bottoms with cataract removals and implants, so I only need glasses now for distance and outdoors. That would have been wonderful, if by then my eyes weren’t being swallowed up by rolls of plump tissue–top and bottom. I eventually figured out why everyone liked my black-rimmed glasses when I got them–they cover up the bags! And as for Preparation H for bags under your eyes? It may work in Hollywood, but it doesn’t work in Poughkeepsie
    Lastly, we come to the hair. Men, you are not alone. Women may not get as bald as men, but every elderly woman I know complains about how thin her hair is becoming. Vanity aside, there’s the newly-acquired concern about sunburn on your scalp. Now, besides sunglasses, I have to carry a hat? I’ve never looked good in a hat, of any shape or form.     I could go on, about boobs and butts dropping, noses and ears growing at an alarming rate–but I won’t. I just want my lips back. Not that I had any particular use in mind, just that I miss them!

Samplers

THE POEM

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THE ESSAY

The walls of my mind are hung ’round with cross-stitch samplers. They reflect the sayings that I live by, my lodestars: from Ernest Hemingway “Life breaks us all, and afterwards some are strong in the broken places;” from Albert Camus “In the midst of winter, I finally found that there was in me an invincible summer;” from James Watson “It’s necessary to be slightly underemployed if you are to do something significant,”and from Abraham Lincoln “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
    From Thomas Lynch I collected “Grief is the tax on loving,” from Epictetus “It’s not your situation that makes you sad or glad. It’s your reaction to it...,” from May Sarton “Life...has been from the start, a challenge. And that is the point--not, perhaps, happiness, but life lived at its most aware and  intense,” and from that little-known but sometimes-wise writer, Lyn Burnstine: “When the agony outweighs the ecstacy it’s time to move on,” and “Everyone has a fatal flaw, it’s just what you can tolerate.”
    This tendency that I have, to see life lessons in embroidery, can go from sublime to ridiculous, as in the poem “Sampler,” and in the following first-ever and last-ever Country and Western song I wrote after the poem, also titled “Sampler.”

Sampler

In my grandma’s house, I learned a childhood lesson, 
From the sampler hanging on her bedroom wall:
“Handsome is as Handsome does,” the sampler taught me.
It’s a lesson I will always recall.

Chorus:

There’s another sampler that I wish she’d hung there,Through the years, its message I should have recalled:

“Not every gray beard has a silver lining.”Wish Grandma’d  taught me with a sampler on the wall.

I spent many years in foolish fascination,
with those gray and silver beards that so enthrall.
I wish that Grandma’d taught me how to cross-stitch,
so I could spell it on a sampler on the wall.

I guess that Grandma didn’t think to warn me,
‘cause her gray-beard honey was so sweet and kind.
She couldn’t know my gray and grizzled grandpa
was not the kind of gray beard that I’d find.

Chorus:

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THE REDBIRD TREE

The tree wore scarlet birds like a tiara. Looking up through the branches, I spotted vivid splashes like little girls’ crimson hair ribbons. “Sweet! Sweet!” they sang in welcome--welcome back to Illinois where the cardinal reigns; welcome back to the bosom of the family.
    I was a small child when I last saw some of those Southern Illinois cousins; a very young wife and mother when I last saw Opaline, always one of my favorites, whose front yard nurtured the redbird tree. Now back after decades, in her house I slept under family quilts, within arms’ reach of family heirloom dishes, and next to our aunt’s antique parlor organ. My cousin played while we sang harmony on the old hymns. It was a day so good I wanted to live it twice--once was not enough. I wanted to be a small child again, pumping that cherished organ in Aunt Carrie’s farmhouse, swinging on Uncle Lou’s outstretched and muscular farmer arm--and relishing Aunt Carrie’s famous tomato preserves and chicken ’n’ dumplings. The next day we traveled to a small family reunion of Opaline’s two siblings, Ivanelle and Meryl, his wife Pat, and assorted offspring. We sang folk songs; I entertained the children with my dancing man (the limberjack), and other folk instruments; and I choked back tears as I accompanied Meryl, my seventy-four-year-old cousin, as he sang his favorite hymn (and mine) “Just a Closer Walk.”
    After we stuffed ourselves with memorable home-cooked food, we began a pilgrimage appropriate to that Memorial Day--a strange but surprisingly beautiful journey. We drove in a caravan of cars to several nearby towns and rural churches, leaving a carnation on the grave of each of the deceased family members: Opaline’s and Ivanelle’s husbands and parents; our mutual paternal grandparents, aunts and uncles; some of their maternal relatives; and some of mine--including grandparents, aunts and uncles, and a stillborn brother. Many of my closest relatives’ burial plots were in the churchyard of Golden Church, my beloved childhood place of worship that I hadn’t seen for over fifty years.
    It was hard to leave, not knowing if I would ever see my cousins again, and, indeed, within the next couple of years, Opaline was buried next to her husband. I can only delight in the gift of those days together, and let the memory of the cardinal tree be summoned by every call of “Sweet! Sweet!”

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This precious church, Golden Church, was torn down within the next decade after I wrote this memoir. It had always been pastored by a circuit-riding preacher, and, at the time I visited, had only three elderly people left in the congregation. I was  not yet a skilled photographer, but luck was with me that day and I captured its beauty, with family headstones in the foreground. I lovingly featured it on the cover of my first memoir.

What I Know About Joy

This is a letter; a letter to all of my dear new friends at PNN who have so blessed me with your acceptance. I am honored to realize, by your responses, that you value and welcome the wisdom of age that I, to my knowledge the eldest PNNer,  can bring to the table. Do you realize how rare and precious that is in our culture? Trust me; I talk to multitudes of older women, many of whom are not so blessed.
    The subject of joy has come up for deep discussion lately. It’s a topic near and dear to my heart. In order to have you understand why, I’m going to bare my soul here to a depth I usually reserve for private conversations.
    Years ago, a neighbor, a complainer and catastrophizer about her own (mostly self-induced) problems sat at my table drinking tea with me, and proclaimed, almost accusingly,  that my life was a honeymoon one! It was part of her usual plaint about what a victim she was and how inferior her life was to mine. I no longer remember if I responded, but I wanted to say “which part of having rheumatoid arthritis since I was  twenty-three, with its concommitant pain, crippling and fatigue; losing three babies, two of whom were live births; and nearly losing a fourth one in infancy, constitute a honeymoon life?” Yes, I had a handsome, smart,  attentive husband and three beautiful children, a nice home and enough money to be comfortable. I thought I had a wonderful marriage and I was beginning a blissful folk music career.  A few years later, I could have added to my list of un-honeymoonish  developments:  a husband who abandoned me and the children after twenty-two years; three more chronic illnesses and three cancers; twenty-five surgeries; further physical limitations; loss of the beautiful big house we’d built; financial stress after a failed business attempt; the agony and worry of a child’s and grandchild’s addictions and dangerous lifestyles; and a sweetheart’s sudden death. A honeymoon life? I don’t think so.
     So what do I know about joy? I know it hides out a lot under life; It’s hard to find, sometimes impossible for long periods of times, and sometimes, even having found it, it takes a powder again.. Were there times during all that– much of it ongoing till now– that I could say I was happy? Not always. But yes. And what there was of happiness came in moments, sometime even hours or days: mere flashes of joy!
     I had to learn to invite the bluebird in during the darkest hours: I kept a “best things” journal (believe me, I struggled to find one good thing to record on the day my sweetheart died); I kept a gratitude journal and I ended up writing and presenting a worship service on “choosing joy” and presenting it up and down the east coast for a number of years to Unitarian Universalist congregations: I needed to hear it at least once a year myself. The congregants cried with me, and hugged and thanked me. I ended it with Camus’ “In the midst of winter, I finally found that there was in me an invincible summer!”
    These days, at seventy-seven, it does get harder and harder to “choose joy,” as I become more immobilized by the inevitable deterioration of my body, and unable to do many of the things that sustained me  through those hard times. But I am fortunate to be surrounded by loving, helpful people,–family and friends, many of them younger, who constantly tell me I am their role model and inspiration. I am lucky to have found creative outlets to replace the beloved music I can no longer do– namely, writing and photography. And I am so blessed by a genetic code that did not tar me with the brush of chemical depression. Not all of my offspring were able to dodge that bullet.
    I do know that we have a choice–much harder for some–to choose joy and the half-full cup, over misery and the half-empty one.  And I know that there is always justification for either. But me? I love to sing and dance, even if it’s only virtual these days. I choose joy.
    Monday we had a spring thaw before the big snowfall of the year hit. I spontaneously bundled my cute little seated, rolling walker into my car and drove to our gorgeous new Walkway across the Hudson, all alone. Forty years ago, having never done anything alone, I would have been feeling sorry for myself that I was alone; had that forty-year-ago mindset remained, it would have made me a little afraid of falling and having my neuropathic legs give out, as they did near the end of the walk in October (unbeknownst to my grandchildren–that was a day I wasn’t about to spoil). Forty years ago, I’d have made the wrong choice, based on fear. Was it as golden as the day in October when my grands and I walked it together? No. Was it golden? Absolutely! It was glorious!  And I DID IT!
    And that’s what I know about Joy. That’s my own truth. It may not be yours, but I highly urge you to at least open the window a crack, if not the door (what the Hell, lift the roof!) for the bluebird of happiness. He can’t come in if it’s closed!

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Joy, Part II

There are pale blue Quaker ladies, or bluets, a lighter blue than the little trumpets on the ground cover, selfheal. The pale corydalis changes from light to dark lavender with the sun or shade. The shiny eight-petaled yellow flowers of the lesser celandine spring from thick ground-covering clumps of round, beautiful leaves that glisten in the sunlight as do its golden flowers. The petals, struck by the sideways slant of the sun at five o’clock, glow as if lit by spotlights. It took me twelve years of living here to identify those wee beauties, once part of the estate gardens, and now spread out over the property in many thousands of bright spots and a delight to the eye in April, as are the deep-blue star-shaped scilla. Crows, robins, sparrows, doves and cardinals have made themselves seen or heard today, and very soon now the tree outside our windows will come alive with goldfinches. The tree’s little catkins in early spring are a delicacy for the melodious little wild canaries (or lettuce birds as we called them in the mid-west), and they flock to it by the dozens for this seasonal tasty treat. The planted yellow tulips and budding pink dogwoods dance in the gentle breeze. Above all, the sky is a photographer’s paradise: the bluest of blues, with scattered puffs of cotton clouds.

   

If one can see these jewels (and my heart aches for those who can’t, and for those who   choose not to) and if, indeed

happiness is an awareness of tiny, glorious moments of joy, how can one not be happy during this month of splendor called spring?

What I Really Know about Summer Nights

When I was a small girl, seven decades ago, I learned that the star-filled sky drew me to connect with the universe–removing me from my own little inner world. When I needed that connection, even more so during my angst-ridden teenage years, I would go outside, sit down on the steps of our country farmhouse, look up at the wide midwestern prairie sky and be comforted by its vastness. That simple act confirmed for me that I and my woes were small and fleeting, and that the firmament  would continue on in all its majesty.
    To this day I take great delight in the aural and visual treats of nature’s nighttime symphony and light show: the enchanting song of the spring peepers, the late summer  warble of the cicadae and locusts, and the sight of fireflies hovering at twilight over the tops of the grasses. I love knowing they will be here for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren and beyond– bestowing the same blessings on them.
    I often stop my car, pull over to the roadside, and turn off the headlights to look at the full moon and the stars, musing on how those heavenly bodies will witness what I will not be here to see– many generations more of my blood and lineage. I hope my progeny will always appreciate the magnificence of the outdoors and take joy in its unending beauty. I’ve tried to pass along the legacy of my love of nature to the three more generations who have already arrived on this glorious earth in my lifetime–through my writing and photography, as well as with personal expressions of awe and wonder.
    But will today’s children ever really see the stars? Will they ever hear the birds? the frogs? the peepers? I see young people walking or riding bikes with phones and earbuds plastered to their ears. I see young mothers wheeling strollers with phones attached to their ears. When is there ever a time to quietly listen to that bird’s song? Time to expand that little one’s awareness of the natural world with a well-timed “Listen to the ‘sweet, sweet’ song of the cardinal. See that pretty red bird?”  
    Some of my dearest childhood memories are of my father teaching me “back-yard astronomy”– lying on the picnic table under the summer nighttime sky, and pointing out the stars and constellations. While we were walking  in the woods, or riding in the car, my mother would  call attention to the birds and flowers–giving them names. Both parents took us into the woods to picnic, gather wild flowers and honey, to swing on grapevines, to play in an abandoned pig sty,  and to wade in the “crick.” All these decades later, my sister and I can happily spend an hour slowly ambling alongside woods and roadways, identifying the weeds and wallflowers. Between the two of us, we know most of them, and delight in a new discovery.
    My own children loved the Sunday afternoon family drives through the countryside on uncharted back roads. “Can we get lost again, Daddy?” was a frequent refrain. I led my son’s Ranger Rick club of neighborhood boys to local parks to identify native and imported trees. We fed and watched wildlife from our home in the woods– skunks, raccoons, possums, rabbits and deer–even rescuing and raising a baby raccoon. We never fed birds, not wanting to put them in harm’s way of our ubiquitous cat, but we loved to watch them.
    All three of my children appreciate nature: my daughters and granddaughter garden; my son is a spelunker, hiker, mountain biker, bird watcher, and my resource for identifying unknown birds. I am saddened to think this might be the end of that long legacy–doomed by the bombardment of sound and noise and movement of the electronic age. Has all that excitement and glitz spoiled the simple pleasures of nature forever, or will future generations rediscover the eternal magic of the night sky? I’d like to believe that there is in us such a basic need for connecting with the universe (and not by cell phone) that we will someday again put down the phones and ipods, and look up– and listen.
    In my seventy-seven-year-long journey, there have been many times that I needed the solace of the sky– it has never failed me.

Four Seasons

Something for Everyone--no matter which is your favorite season. Mine?

All of them!