Carlene wakes up about 5:30 each morning for her quiet time before walking three miles with her friend Judy (who also happens to be the mayor)--though she's taking a break from walking this week.
When I woke up Saturday morning, she had already been up for a couple of hours and was playing a hymn on her iPad and reading Daily Joy. "Let's read some of these and talk about them," she said.
First: "We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them," by Kahlil Gibran.
She's always liked Gibran. I remember her quoting him when I was a child: "Let there be spaces in your togetherness" and "Your children are not your children." (I didn't get either one at the time, but they lodged in my brain and I puzzled over them for years.)
My take on "choosing joys and sorrows" is that maybe on some level we do choose the things we're going to experience in this lifetime; her take was that we choose how to respond to the joys and sorrows that come our way. Carlene's philosophy of life is that we decide how to respond to whatever happens and that nothing is ever wasted if we learn from it.
Then she read the Dalai Lama's words: "Sleep is the best meditation." As a regular napper, I love this one--a validation of my daily hour-long nap, napping sign on the door and everything unplugged.
"A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous," I read. "Coco Chanel said that."
Carlene was making brownies from a mix. "Well, I sure qualify for that!" she said, grinning.
"Listen to this one," she said: "Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open." John Barrymore.
"Maybe that's how it is with you and Mike," Carlene said. "You left that door open and didn't know it."
We've always loved sharing quotations and books. When I was little, I used to wonder how she gleaned so much meaning out of a few words. Without a doubt, her love of words prompted me to become an English major. Poetry at the breakfast table and quotations taped to the kitchen cabinets whetted my appetite for a lifetime of loving language.
Carlene has had too many losses these past two months--two brothers and a sister-in-law who was like a sister to her. She's sad, but she's also resilient, always looking for the thing to be thankful for in the middle of losses. I'm wondering how she does that so well, and I'm taking notes.
How does she return to her balance and equilibrium after three deaths in a row? How does she hold on to joy when she could so easily give in to sadness? Here are a few things I've noticed about her:
Carlene squats, saunters and sashays like a woman half her age.
She knows when to let go of things that don't matter so much.
She has so many friends coming by to visit she needs a revolving door.
She sleeps with her hair wrapped in toilet paper, and she never goes to bed without Pond's Cold Cream--same as her mother, Mimi. (She refused to let me capture this on my camera to show you, however!)
She always finds something to be thankful for, no matter what's happening.
And--she's "classy and fabulous!"
No comments:
Post a Comment