Tag: middle age

Pretty

On the way to see our children at their university last weekend, my husband and I stopped at a Dunkin Doughnuts. We had to use the restroom (of course we did – we are in our fifties) and then we bought some coffee and then we decided to treat ourselves to some doughnuts, because, why not? When I was paying, the young lady who was waiting on me, mumbled something to me that sounded like, “You’re so pretty.”

“Excuse me?” I asked, because honestly I was a little bit surprised and confused. She said it a little bit louder, yet still shyly, “You’re so pretty.” I was shocked, pleased, embarrassed, grateful, flattered and glowing all at once. You see, I’m almost 52. I’ve been considered attractive back in the day, but I’m 52. I have pudges and wrinkles and everything on my body is a little worn because I’ve lived my life enthusiastically. This now rare compliment couldn’t have come at a better time, as I was embarking on a weekend filled with beautiful young faces and perfect, scantily clad bodies, and boundless youthful energy that was impossible to keep up with for more than a day, tops.

The compliment has stayed with me since. I’m probably a little flushed as I write this. As I have said many times on this blog, it is good to offer compliments often and magnanimously because they change a person’s whole vibe, for a long while. A compliment is a beautiful gift to give to someone, and it costs you nothing but a penny of your thoughtfulness and kindness.

My friend texted me an instagram page this morning that she thought I would like. She was right. I love it. The page is of Denise Boomkens, and she is the author of The Art of Aging Unapologetically. (which I just ordered this morning from Amazon) The latest post on Denise Boomkens’ Instagram page is a picture of a lovely, elegant 66-year-old French woman named Petra, who now lives in Belgium. Petra is quoted as saying this:

“I don’t find aging very easy and sometimes a confrontational process. The emphasis shifts from your outer self to your inner self; I sometimes ask myself, “who am I when nobody glances at me anymore.” This is not a negative development; I try to make the best of it in my own way.”

There is a wonderful, relief-filled part about shifting the focus to your inner self as you age, but there is also some grief in the understanding and the accepting of the changes that inevitably come to your aging outer shell. Still, there is some real, true wisdom to the saying that beauty comes from within. Sometimes, we think that this saying is just a nice thing to say, to make us feel better if we don’t feel attractive, but honestly, it really is the truth. I think that the girl at the Dunkin Doughnuts sensed my excitement, and my loving yearning to be with my children. I think she felt my happy, relaxed flirtiness with my husband as we embarked on our adventure. I felt pretty on the inside and it overflowed to my outside. True beauty is pure and timeless and has nothing to do with how we look.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Ambedo

Word for the day: Ambedo The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows describes ambedo as this: n. a kind of melancholic trance in which you become completely absorbed in vivid sensory details—raindrops skittering down a window, tall trees leaning in the wind, clouds of cream swirling in your coffee—which leads to a dawning awareness of the haunting fragility of life . . . .

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows was created to find words for emotions which we feel, that do not quite have a word for that particular, intricate feeling in traditional dictionaries of our modern languages. On another site the word ambedo is found beside the heading of “Thoroughly Depressing Word of the Day.” On this site (BK Words Worth Knowing), it says that ambedo is this: “briefly soaking in the experience of being alive, an act that is done purely for its own sake.”

I am not sure why ambedo and its meaning is considered to be “thoroughly depressing.” I am not quite sure why a word, that seems to me, to mean mindfulness which is also filled with deep emotion and appreciation, comes off as depressing. I find it more depressing how mindlessly and unmoved we seem to go through our lives a lot of the time. We get into habitual robotic action, often forgetting what we last did. We drive along in beautiful scenes full of nature and notice that everyone in these scenes are hunched over their phones, oblivious to the miraculous vitality teeming all around them. We stay in the dramatic, antagonizing stories created in our heads, while we miss the epic novels of being present in our every living moments, while being willing to fully feel the emotions and sensations which this presence brings to us.

Readers, let’s take some time today with ambedo. Let’s light a candle and stare at the flickering flame. Let’s watch water trickle into a fountain, and hear its light touch as it falls to the pool of water calmly catching it below. Let’s watch a precious pet napping in the sunshine and notice how the sunlight highlights the intricacies of fur and patterns of the fur slowly rising and falling to the vital breathing of our beloved companion. Perhaps what we really feel when we allow ourselves some rare ambedo moments, is an overwhelming, lump-in-the-throat awe of the incredible miracle of life. Perhaps the depression only comes about as an after-effect of ambedo, because we realize how little of our own lives we spend in the pure astonishment of the amazing, yet fleeting experience of it all. We worry about being in ambedo states as “wasting time”, and yet what ambedo does for us, is makes us come to the realization of how we waste so much of our living experience ignoring the true experience of real, tactile, beautiful, in-the-moment sensory life.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday – Funday

I saw a more explicit version of this on Twitter today and I decided to replace it with the tamer version above (although the other one was funnier as it replaced evil with a-hole. I do try to keep it funny on Mondays. We have to get our smiles on Monday from somewhere, right?)

It’s such a hard lesson to fully grasp, but not everyone will like us. Why is that hard to comprehend? We, ourselves, don’t like everybody we meet, and often the reasons why we don’t like someone aren’t even fully understandable to us, ourselves. Sometimes we don’t like people for truly irrational reasons. We don’t like someone because they remind us of someone else whom we had a negative experience with previously in our lives, or perhaps, we have already made up our minds that the person doesn’t like us, so we don’t like them back. So there!

We often make up our minds about people before we get to know them, and so we like or dislike a person based on our personal perceptions without ever having the full experience of getting to know the person on a more intimate level. Our human nature isn’t always the best about giving people “fair chances.” And so, that works the other way, too. If someone doesn’t like you without ever really getting to know you, whom they actually don’t like is someone based on their own perceptions and prejudices. Therefore “that someone” whom the person doesn’t like, isn’t even really you.

I read once that most of the most evil characters in soap operas and long running series are actually some of the nicest people whom you would ever want to meet. They get all of their negativity, anger, disappointment and resentment out by playing truly nasty characters. If we accept the fact that we are playing the evil character in someone’s story, we can maybe get an evil laugh out of it all. Mwahahaha. And we know that actually, in real life, we are much sweeter than the evil character whom we play in someone’s imagination.

I have always told my kids that when it comes to friends, four quarters is always better than 100 pennies. Instead of collecting adoring fans, and hundreds of “likes”, be thrilled if you have four people in your life, who truly “get you”, flaws and all, and love you deeply. The rest is all just about “live and let live”, and hope that everyone in life has their own four quarters, jingling in their back pockets to be there for them, when some random pennies have misunderstood them as evil chumps.

I have read that true wealth is freedom and the older I get, the more evident it is to me that this is absolutely true. A wonderful way to give yourself freedom, is to fully accept that not everyone likes you. In fact, some people really can’t stand you. And that doesn’t make you a bad person. Their perceptions really have nothing to do with you. You also have at least four quarters who think that you are absolutely wonderful. Whose right? It doesn’t matter. You be you. If you love and trust and respect yourself, everyone else is just a plus, and not a must. Be your own best friend and carry on with your story. The only story that really matters in your own life is your own story.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

College Days

We are visiting our youngest two children at their shared university this weekend. It’s the last home football game of my youngest son’s senior year in college. We’re only one evening in and I’m pretty, pretty exhausted. There was a time in my early adulthood that it seemed like I had just graduated from college myself. It was a good decade after graduating college, getting married and even having four kids, in which I would still feel as if I had just very recently graduated from college, myself. For the longest time, as an adult, I always felt just a few years out of college.

It is now safe to say that I don’t feel that way anymore. At all. It’s not even close. But it sure is fun to see my babies savoring their college years. And I assume that it will take a long while for them to no longer feel like the fun, silly, energetic, “the sky is the limit”, “life is a party” college co-eds, even years after they graduate. And that is a beautiful thing. The good stuff in life lingers long after it is over. Your experiences never fully leave you. In fact, your experiences do a lot to form you. Perhaps that glimmer of a young, radiant, excited college girl is shining out of my eyes a little bit this weekend. I can remember it (her) like it was yesterday.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Free Friday

As a woman from a family who has many members who have served in our military branches, and who has married into a family of many members who have served in our military branches, I couldn’t be prouder. There is no greater sacrificial service, than to be willing to put your life on the line for something bigger and more important than yourself. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We honor you. Veterans will always, always be a favorite of mine.

Happy Friday, friends!!! Friday is the best day of the week, in my opinion. Therefore I keep it light on Fridays and I only discuss the frivolous – essentially material stuff that I like. On Fridays, I offer up one of my favorites, whether it be a book, a movie, a product, a website, etc. and I ask you to add your own favorites to my Comments section. Please also check out previous Friday posts for more favorites.

Today’s favorites are hilarious plant stakes that I purchased at a local plant shop, but it turns out that you find all sorts of these sticks of cute-funness, on Etsy. (With that in mind, before you know it, every one of our own dozens of plants will soon have their own stake.) These plant stakes make me smile and giggle to myself every time that I look at them, so besides the delicious clean oxygen my plants offer up to me, now they make me giggle and smile on the daily, too. How great is that?! What a simple, easy, inexpensive way to add delight into your own life.

Have a wonderful weekend! See you tomorrow.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Confession

A friend recently confessed that lately she feels like she doesn’t want to be a parent anymore. It was over a text, but I imagine if “the confession” had been in person, she would have sat tentatively, her eyes darting around the room to see if we, her friends who are also parents, would be looking down at her with glaring supreme judgment, even worse than what she was doing to herself.

And what she got instead was a lot of support, love, understanding, and relating. Parenting is hard. Caretaking is hard. Life is hard. Making those statements doesn’t mean that you are a terrible parent, an awful caretaker and that you hate life. Parenting is hard and wonderful. Caretaking is hard and rewarding. Life is hard and overwhelmingly beautiful.

Give yourself a break when you feel overwhelmed by your life and your responsibilities in your life. These are the times to lean into self-care and trust the Universe/God/Life with the rest. Give yourself the love and the care and the support and the advice that you would give to your partner, or to your child, or to your best friend. (in other words the person or people whom you love the most, because honestly, you, yourself, should be on that list)

I’ve shared this on the blog, before, but it seems appropriate to bring it back. Before I even became a mother, and I was spending some time in my head thinking about what kind of parent I wanted to be, I came across this wonderful poem by Kahlil Gibran. It has become my parenting mantra/philosophy/reminder throughout my entire twenty-six years of being a mother. It helps me to remember that I am co-parenting with a vast and loving and mysterious force of Life, and that I can lean into that wisdom and comfort whenever I need to just let go. This poem puts me – a fiery, sometimes control freakish mama, into her rightful place. And when I am in that place, I am freer to live in my own faith and to trust that bigger arms are wrapped around us all. I am freer to be loved, and to be Love. Gibran’s poem:

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
     And he said:
     Your children are not your children.
     They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
     They come through you but not from you,
     And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

     You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
     For they have their own thoughts.
     You may house their bodies but not their souls,
     For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
     You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
     For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
     You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
     The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
     Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
     For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Exhibits

I have to get out early this morning for some appointments, so today, I am going to share some gems, from one of my treasure troves of other people’s thoughts which have sparked thought and reflection in me. I have always said that I wanted this blog to be a small museum of thoughts/ideas/reflections/perspectives. These might make for some good journal prompts for your own writing?! Here are some exhibits:

“You couldn’t heal because you kept pretending you weren’t hurt.” – Wise Connector, Twitter

“The saddest aspect of life now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” – Isaac Asimov

“Whatever it is you are seeking, won’t come in the form you are expecting.” – Haruki Murakami

“If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” – Maya Angelou

“A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because its trust is not on the branch, but on its own wings.” – Native Red Cloud, Twitter

“Time you enjoyed wasting, was not wasted.” – John Lennon

“Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.”– Rumi

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Porca Vacca!

https://twitter.com/i/status/1589282144840740865

This is a delightful video of an Italian little girl who is telling her mother the story about her friend who told this little girl in the video, that she shouldn’t have worn a miniskirt, and so the little girl in the video told her friend, to mind her own business. Her mother says, “Brava!” I so agree. Brava! The little girl uses lots of emphasis and hand gestures when telling her story. She’s a girl after my own heart. I am not Italian (as much as I wish I were), but I do talk a lot with my hands. People have called me out on it. I once caused a bruise near the eye of my friend’s fiance (now ex-husband) when while telling a story, my ring on my dramatic, story telling hand, smashed him in the face. (I guess now I would do it on purpose – kidding.)

My daughter is currently taking a public speaking class in college and she said that one woman suggested that she not use so many hand gestures while speaking. (My daughter kind of looked like an older version of the little girl above, when she told me this story. I hope that the girl who offered the perhaps helpful, constructive criticism did not receive any extra hand gestures from my proud, indignant daughter.)

I like passionate people. I like people with flair. I like people who are interesting to watch when they tell their animated stories. I imagine that this little girl in the video above will be known as an excellent storyteller for the rest of her life.

Speaking of “dramatic”, could this lunar eclipse, full moon be any more suspenseful and electrifying??? Election day, delayed powerball numbers for the biggest jackpot in history, another possible hurricane in the mix . . . . Porca vacca!!! (written with my hands escaping the keyboard and flying into the air above my head, with dramatic flair like you’ve never seen)

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday – Funday

credit: @woofknight, Twitter

Perhaps you have read about the brouhaha over salad dressing with Jason Sudeikis and Olivia Wilde. Apparently, when their relationship was falling apart, Jason was extremely upset that Olivia was bringing a salad with her “special” dressing, to her now boyfriend, Harry Styles. It has now come out that the “special” dressing is an easy, three ingredient dressing that came from Heartburn, the book by Nora Ephron which was about Ephron’s own divorce from Carl Bernstein. (My husband was a tad concerned when I made this dressing for us yesterday.) I adore my husband, but I will never pass up the opportunity to try an easy, delicious recipe. Here’s the recipe for topping tonight’s salad, friends. (You’re welcome.): “Mix 2 tablespoons Grey Poupon mustard with 2 tablespoons good red wine vinegar. Then, whisking constantly with a fork, slowly add 6 tablespoons olive oil until the vinaigrette is thick and creamy.” Supposedly this makes a good marinade for meat, too.

When my kids were living here at home, and they would ask what we were having for dinner, on any given day, with fear and trepidation in their eyes, I would always answer (curtly and confidently), “Yum! We are having “yum.” I don’t know why they ever even bothered asking the question, because the answer was always, always the same: “Yum.” We had “Yum” every single night for dinner.

Have a great, yummy week!! See you tomorrow.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Good morning. You’ve earned some peace in your life, don’t you think. Just for today, take it. Accept peace. Peace accepts. If you accept the moment, peace follows. Believe that you are right where you are supposed to be in your life’s journey. Because you are right where you are supposed to be.

Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Poetry comes out of the most accepting, open place/space in the poet’s heart. Poetry allows for emotion, imagination, wonder and truth. Today, I am sharing a delightful poem about autumn leaves, written in the 1800s, by the American children’s writer, Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, who went by the pen name, Susan Coolidge. Reading it, I feel like a curious, wondrous little kid again. That’s what good writing does. Good writing intrigues you, and then transports you.

Enjoy this poem. Write one of your own. Have a lovely Sunday.

How the Leaves Came Down by Susan Coolidge

I’ll tell you how the leaves came down.
  The great Tree to his children said,
“You’re getting sleepy, Yellow and Brown,
  Yes, very sleepy, little Red;
  It is quite time you went to bed.”

“Ah!” begged each silly, pouting leaf,
  “Let us a little longer May;
Dear Father Tree, behold our grief,
  ‘Tis such a very pleasant day
We do not want to go away.”

So, just for one more merry day
  To the great Tree the leaflets clung,
Frolicked and danced and had their way,
  Upon the autumn breezes swung,
  Whispering all their sports among,

“Perhaps the great Tree will forget
  And let us stay until the spring
If we all beg and coax and fret.”
  But the great Tree did no such thing;
  He smiled to hear their whispering.

“Come, children all, to bed,” he cried;
  And ere the leaves could urge their prayer
He shook his head, and far and wide,
  Fluttering and rustling everywhere,
  Down sped the leaflets through the air.

I saw them; on the ground they lay,
  Golden and red, a huddled swarm,
Waiting till one from far away,
  White bed-clothes heaped upon her arm,
  Should come to wrap them safe and warm.

The great bare Tree looked down and smiled.
  “Good-night, dear little leaves” he said;
And from below each sleepy child
  Replied “Good-night,” and murmured,
  “It is so nice to go to bed.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.