Food for Thought and Talk

Once again families are preparing to celebrate another Holiday Season. Gifts are bought and wrapped, the house is filled with the aroma of special foods, and kin are gathering. Somehow it all comes together like magic, as family members, young and old share this time once again. Throughout the day we may anticipate a call from those absent members who live a distance away or we might remember a member who is no longer with us.

However, I add the following for thought, because this happens much too often.

For families so blessed to still have senior parents or other relatives with them, I ask you to honor their presence. Many families have at least one elderly member who has lost touch with reality, perhaps a bit or perhaps a lot. And, as we age, hearing is not as acute as it once was and it is hard to understand numerous conversations at one time, especially when delivered at a rapid fire pace. I ask that at some time during the festive day, you take a minute to direct conversation to the elderly in your family, especially if they have become the silent member in the rocking chair.

Think about it, if you don’t hear well and don’t comprehend the conversation, the alternative is to just close your eyes and nod off. The fact that an elderly family member may not seem connected to stories or conversation does not give anyone permission to ignore that person. Everyone wants to be a part of things, including the senior members of the family.

Look around the gathering and give special notice to those elderly grandparents or other family members who do not seem as connected to the conversation as the younger members.

I believe it is called respect. Acknowledge their presence now rather then, perhaps, having to acknowledge their absence next holiday season.

My WOW Moments (Numbers 1 and 2)

Roscoe Turner

It is a common thing many of us elderly folks find ourselves doing. In the quiet times of our life we reminisce about the past. Invariably, the things that come to mind easily are the events that made the deepest impressions. I call them my WOW moments. The things that pop up may surprise you – for me, a myriad of moments surfaced!

My first WOW moment came when I was 10 years old. I entered a short story in a school paper called “The Weekly Reader”. My story was about airplanes. I titled it “The Great Silver Bird”. In 1934 we probably observed two or three airplanes a month flying through the skies. I was so amazed by aviation. My story was a regional winner and the prize was to meet Roscoe Turner, a WWI flying ace. I was the shinnng star of Califonia Elementary School and much admired by the boys, because flying was not considered a ‘girl thing’. When I met Mr. Turner, he made me a member of the Roscoe Turner Flying Club and told me I had won a short flight over the city and Ohio River. Can you imagine the excitement, fear and anxiety that pulsed through a skinny 10 year old body, whose mother shook in fear as the WWI vintage two seat airplane took off from Bowman Field? I am sure we shared the thought that I would never return in one piece. Of course I did, and I was sure I would become a second Amelia Earhart.

I had a lull in WOW events until I was in my early teens. It happened when I went to the neighborhood cinema, the Oak Theater. The movie was Bolero, staring George Raft and Carole Lombard. In the movie they danced the Bolero on a raised round circle above the floor. When he appeared on that circle I was awestruck. I had never seen a more beautiful man in my young life. He became the standard of what every hero, lover, man of the world should be. Like magic Carole Lombard was tossed off the circle and I replaced her.

I have never been without his picture in my home. At this moment in time I have his autographed photo hanging in my condo bedroom. He never had a more devoted fan. On a trip to Los Angeles I was determined to go to the Valley where he lived and try to get to see him. I “chickened” out. Regret in life #1.

Keep checking my blog. Numbers 3-10 will eventually surface, I am sure.

Bloom where you are planted

This statement was made by Hillary Clinton during the campaign. It settled into a niche of my brain and has stirred me to consider the following analogy as I look out my window at the trees along our street in downtown Louisville.

They are not the biggest trees, almost saplings, planted just a few years ago and struggling to exist. I am sure they would have liked to begin their life on a grassy knoll in suburbia, extending their young branches heavenly to blue skies, warm breezes, rays of sun and gentle rain drops. But that was not to be their destiny.

Their destiny led them to the streets of a downtown city with all its exhaust fumes from traffic, abuse to their limbs by tall standing SUV’s and delivery trucks that scrape their overhanging young branches, the sparse wind and rain that has not been deterred by the tall buildings and the occasional beautification “expert” who assumes their branches need trimming.

In spite of the deterrents to become a mighty tree, these small saplings provide us urbanites spots of green in our concrete jungle, a promise of shade by our benches, and a holding place – for each small tree is decorated with Christmas lights to remind us that even the smallest entity can bring cheer to those of us that share this Main Street.

The trees remind me that each one of us, when we arrived on this earth, were placed where we were meant to be at the time, and for some years our care, nurturing and pruning is in someone else’s hands. As we mature, just as the tree grows and extends its arms to shade the weary who choose to rest on the benches beneath it, waves its beautiful green leaves in the spring and glorious hues of browns and gold in the fall and lights up our holidays with sparkling lights, each of us can bloom where we are planted.

The only limits are the ones we place on ourselves. Check your ledger of life from this past year and vow to smile more often, be more respectful of others, do some good deed each day for someone – even a compliment or pleasant greeting may salvage a person’s downward spiral. It is never too late to Bloom where you are planted.

At What Cost?

The horrific news of the last few days in India and New York connected in my mind in a way almost too similar to comprehend. I wonder if the two connected for anyone else as they did for me…

I am sure sitting in a restaurant, a synagogue or a hotel room and seeing determined humans storming through the doors in your direction with only one goal – to do you harm – must be terrifying.

To be on the inside of a department store and see several thousand humans determined to be the first to get through doors that, at most, could only accommodate seven to ten bodies at one time must be terrifying.

Death waited beyond all those doors. I don’t mean to equate terrorists to Christmas shoppers but the same result happened. Death.

You may say there is a big difference between a terrorist attack and shoppers literally fighting to be the first to get a bargain at an advertised sale. You might say there is a big difference between the numbers of deaths each act caused. That may be true, except the slain citizens in Mumbai are no more or less dead than the young clerk who was trying to protect a pregnant lady in that department store. One family will grieve just as much as another.

One’s loss is no greater than the other.

I do understand the difference. The terrorists were out to do bodily harm, spurred on by a hatred or mistrust of countries, religious sects or governing entities. The department store death (a miracle there was only one) was caused by mob misbehavior, a me-first attitude at all costs, and a greed factor that invades bargain hunters at this time of the year – and we forget the significance of the season. Was that electronic gadget, that flat screen TV, that one of a kind toy worth that young man’s life or was it just as useless as the deaths in Mumbai?

All but one of the terrorists are dead. Will the winner of the mad rush to get to the department store bargain first enjoy the rewards of their conquest? Will anyone, the first through that door or the last, stop to think about how much of a bargain they really got in their mad dash to be the “first to grab the prize”?