Going off to school!

You might not have met a nonagenarian who says, "I love being 98!" 

But this is what Nana said to Day--in spite of a few physical challenges that began four years ago when she totaled her car:

"One foot points to Lawrenceville, the other toward Buford," she says of her crooked leg that has gradually turned outward since the crash.  

Before, and even for a while after the accident, she continued to walk--three miles a day in her early nineties. Now she needs a cane or an arm to walk steadily.  She rides her bike on the porch twenty minutes a day. 

Due to circulation issues in her feet and legs, she's getting used to support hose.

She still drives to the beauty shop, church, and nearby stores.  She says to me, "This is your car, but you can't have it until I'm through with it." She wonders if she can still get her drivers' license when she's 100.

I always call her when I first get up.  This morning, she said, "I'm so excited I feel like I'm going off to school." Her sense of humor isn't going anywhere. 

She even laughs about her feet.  Showing Day and me her hammer toes one night, she said, "Let's play 'This Little Piggy Went to Market' and look at these toes!  These little piggies went to market and got all beat up!"

So if you haven't met a nonagenarian who loves being one, let me introduce you to my amazing mama as she makes the kind of move we might all be lucky enough to make if we live into our nineties. The body may play tricks on us, but--if can keep our minds intact--we can still be who we are, just needing a little help with the inconvenient physical changes!  

As I tell her every day, she is modeling for all us younger people accepting the changes when they come.

Here we are at the Presbyterian Village in Watkinsville looking at one of the apartments and talking to Edward, the chef there.  All we have to do now is await an opening on the third floor. 

Speaking of grace....

Carlene, at 98, has decided to get in the queue for an assisted living home just a few miles from Bob and Jocelyn.  While I was in Georgia last week, we toured the place she's chosen and were impressed with all it has to offer.

All these years she's been taking care of her three-bedroom house and beautiful yard, and she's ready for a change.  Moving will free her from home maintenance and give her time to write, listen to music and meet new friends--while still being close enough for her Lawrenceville friends to visit.

I'm always amazed at how gracefully she makes decisions.  She knows that "when the time is right," she'll know.  On Friday night she wrote, "If and when God takes me, I don't want to have dishwater on my hands; I just want to hand Him my gratitude journal." 

Seeing her sister's homey apartment inspired her, too.  With her own furniture and decor, she will make her new space  feel like home, too. 

 Now we just have to wait for an opening and I'll be going back more often to help with the transition. 

Grace

Mary Locke, Freda, and Bonnie treated me to a delicious lunch at Cappy's for my October birthday that stretched out until everyone was home at the same time. 

I want to share this poem Freda gave me by San Antonio poet, Martha Grant.  She self-published a book of her poems for her friends on her 75th birthday.  

Grace

Grace has no manners and she isn't choosy.

When she decides it's time for a visit

she stops what she is doing

and expects you to do the same. 

She never calls first to ask if it's convenient.

When she arrives at your doorstep,

She doesn't care that you might be

on the toilet or in the shower

or on a ladder changing lightbulbs.

What she lacks in manners and consideration,

she makes up for in enthusiasm.

It is hard not to appreciate her good intentions,

But that comes later. Much later.

After you've fallen off the ladder, say,

spent months sidelined with a broken leg,

reading, writing, learning to knit,

maybe even to meditate. Only then

might you think thank her for

her visitation upon you, for

loosening the middle rung of the ladder

when your back was turned. 

November, Here You Come

What a Halloween I've had--a morning call from Jocelyn, an amazing-as-always Cecelia massage followed by a lunch at my favorite (and pet friendly) Thai place where Belle and Kitty bring aprons for Luci to sit on while they kneel down all the way to the floor and speak softly to her: "Concrete floor is too cold and hard for our Luci, need something soft and warm." 

Then a long afternoon nap, a phone call with Carlene, a snuggle with my Trickster dog, three trick-or-treaters (I hope those snack-sized Snickers I found in the pantry were not stale!), a  trip to an actual mall for the first time since pre-Covid, and a late night phone call from my all time favorite ex-boyfriend Mike who recommended a George Carlin video that made me laugh so hard Luci looked at me with genuine concern: "You've turned into somebody else or what?"  

Jon Stewart, former host of The Daily Show, was the emcee of Forty Years of George Carlin.  I rarely like stand-up, but these guys take comedy into a whole other place, an irreverent blend of jazz, truth telling, philosophy and drama. 

So now it's time to wind down and wake up to November.  It's already out there, my phone tells me, gonna be 39 at sunrise.  

Where's Waldo? And what's up, Bersatto?

 

Jackson, at 22, posing as Waldo, is easy to spot in Richmond, Virginia.

Marcus, whose favorite holiday has always been Halloween,  is Carmen Berzatto, the brilliant chef of the 2022 movie, The Bear.

Homecoming to a cold front

Flying into Texas yesterday, 

Luci in her carrier stuffed under the seat, calm as could be, 

I wanted to stay suspended above the thick white blanket of clouds a little longer. 

Leaving is always sad.  When Day was a two-year-old--crying when Nana and Granddaddy left, she said, "I got dirty water in my eyes." 

Day arrived on Thursday and we shared a ride to the Atlanta Airport yesterday, so it was a double whammy, tears in Lawrenceville, then again in Atlanta. 

I'm still not ready to land, but here I am, met by cold weather and a too-quiet house, feeling blue and lonesome and not entirely at home yet. 

Day drove us to Elijay on Sunday, one of our favorite mountain towns.  We had pizza in a little Italian cafe there, one we discovered on our last threesome retreat in the North Georgia mountains two years ago.

On Saturday, we visited Carlene's sister Dot in Warner Robins in her new assisted living apartment.  I'd planned to leave Luci for the day with a young woman I'd met on Rover.com....

Carlene and I drove there, planning to pick up Day and go to Starbucks, then on to see Dot.

I met the woman, walked up a flight of stairs, down another,  and took some convoluted path to her basement apartment.  I hoped Luci would be okay with the other three dogs and the stranger, but didn't feel entirely comfortable. 

By the time I'd gotten back to the car, started it, and set my GPS for home, I saw the woman in the parking lot waving her arms and calling Luci. I was horrified that she was alone in a large parking lot and already lost to the woman I'd trusted to keep her for twelve hours!

"She's in your car!" the woman shouted.

Sure enough, and unbeknownst to me until that moment, Luci has a super power: she can turn invisible.  She had somehow scooted out of the stranger's apartment, taken a different route, and jumped into the car without either of us even seeing her!

How had I not seen her fly into the car when I opened the door?   She's tiny, very fast when she wants to be, and stubbornly loyal.  Long story short, it was the four of us who visited Dot that day. 

We enjoyed seeing Dot in her new space and seeing how much she loves it there. Though she's six years younger than Carlene, she acted like the big sister, sternly cautioning Carlene to use her cane all the time.  "I see it every day," she said, "And I can't stand the thought of you falling."

Neither can I. 

Luci and I want our whole pack together, everybody safe. 

Back Where I Was Born

Athens, Georgia

Photos mostly by Bob Harris

Trials and Trails

We all know our own quirky stoves and faucets and kitchen appliances. I know, for instance, that if you turn on the hot water in my kitchen it takes a full minute to heat up, then it gets scorching hot fast.  

Last night Carlene and I went to Walmart to get three of the mini-Bundt cake pans I use at home, along with cream, butter,  eggs and candles.  While there, Carlene and I got separated for a long hour in the huge store filled with crying kids and babies.  She didn't have her phone, so we both walked miles of aisles looking for each other.  I asked a nice couple to help me look for her, and we were finally relieved to be reunited.

So this morning the butter was soft and the eggs room temperature and I set out to make three little birthday cakes for Jocelyn.  After putting them into the oven and walking Luci, I came home to  the distinctive smell of cake batter burning. Three cakes were running over the rims onto the bottom of the oven.  

I quickly poured the wet batter into the trash and vowed to avoid cooking in anyone else's kitchen.  

Otherwise, we had a beautiful day.  We went to the Harris Greenway Trails, named for my daddy.  It was packed with people walking, riding bikes, and playing games.  Bob said it is the most used park in the state of Georgia.  There could be no better legacy for a man who spent his career as a soil conservationist planting trees and planning parks for recreation. 

Quilts for a Suffering World

 On the last day before Luci and I flew to Georgia, Jan took me to her church, Christ Lutheran, to see some of the quilts made by the women of the church.  Every one was beautiful, and I wished that many more people had been there for the silent auction on these works of art!

Today all the quilts were displayed on the pews of the church before they are sent to people in need all over the world.  Hours and hours went into the construction of these quilts and the women will then start over for next year's quilt show.

Jan said it best in a letter of appreciation to the quilters:

"These kind and thoughtful ladies sew love into every stitch, they spend hours together and hours at home making these colorful masterpieces that will go to sisters and brothers around the world who are suffering – from war, poverty, natural disasters, and other casualties of life.  For many years, quilts from the hands of these CLCAH servants have brought joy, hope, warmth and love to the hearts, minds, and bodies of their recipients."

I only saw and bid on two small quilts, but look at the ones being sent to people in need.  It's an awesome project, a collective work of love, a collective work of art. 

Under-Standing

Once upon a time in writing group, Kate introduced Cecelia as "everybody's fairy godmother."  Kate was right. After a long absence, going from doctor to doctor, therapist to therapist, I have returned to Fairy Godmother Cecelia.  She's more than a massage therapist; she's a teacher.  "Bodies talk to me," she said.

Not only is her work helping my neuropathy, but she considers the whole body and mind. Today she asked me three key questions, all with a foot-related issue:What am I not understanding?  In what ways do I not stand up for myself?  What can I not stand?

On the scale of woo-woo, Cecelia is about as far to the high end as it gets. I'm re-finding advantages to unconventional ways of dealing with pain.  

Astrology, trusting one's own guidance, palm reading, meditating, mysticism, finding out what we're here for "in our wisdom years"--these may or may not speak to you, but some of these supernatural pathways may be just what the doctor ordered--though a real doc might look at them with raised eyebrows. 

Scar tissue and neuropathy are real, as are cancer, arthritis, and all the ailments that befall humans.  But the medical community's job is to provide relief (usually with pharmaceuticals), not overall healing.  Maybe, according to woo-woo thinking, the pain has shown up "to show us something" about ourselves.  

Folk and herbal remedies can go a long way toward healing the body and mind.  From here on out, having tried every conventional therapy I know of, I'm putting all my eggs in the basket of the Fairy Godmother! 

The following is related, but I'll save the thread that connects them for another post--when I don't have an Uber coming before the crack of dawn:

Just last night I watched Season 2 of World on Fire (PBS).  

Sir James, who's staying in Robina's house during the war, asks her to marry him.  They are both in their sixties, very strong-willed and attractive people for whom responsibility seems a higher currency than happiness. While it's clear that she has feelings for him, she refuses his proposal.

James: "I think you're afraid to be happy."

Robina: "But I have to choose between my happiness and my greater responsibilities."

This is the take away line, spoken by Sir James: "Your happiness IS your greatest responsibility."

I offer you this line as a ponderable!