These are my forefathers, Their common bond was hard work and honesty. Very hard-working. Willing to do whatever for was available to take care of us. Came home every day and spent every evening there with their families. Changed out of their work clothes on Sundays when they all got dressed up to go to church. Tall, handsome men. Did lots of reading. Could fix anything.
How lucky am I at nearly 80 years of age to have known you all and to remember you so well? I can still tell stories about each one of you.
They all made me feel safe. To any young woman who is thinking of sharing her life with a man, may I recommend that quality? Along with being honest, hard-working, and coming home to be with you every evening. If he happens to be tall and handsome, so much the better.
I’m pretty sure it’s one of the deadly sins in Judeo-Christian teaching.
It is sometimes called vainglory. Its antonym is humility.
It’s adjective is proud.
Now mostly we hear about Proud Boys. They are clearly proud of themselves, a gang of self-named folks who carry semi-automatic weapons. In my town, I have seen them storm up to the governor’s house in my neighborhood intimidating people.
I feel sure their mothers did the best job they could bringing them up to be kind and well-behaved. Bet those mamas aren’t proud.
I think sometimes my mother said, “I hope you’re proud of yourself!” and I don’t think she meant it in a nice way.
I sometimes say I am proud of one of my children. Since I occasionally helped them along their way, I can possibly justify saying that. “So proud of you for getting your driver’s license”, since I took them to an empty parking lot on Sunday afternoons to practice backing up and parallel parking.
But saying to a young friend, ” I’m proud of you for getting that new job,” makes no sense at all. I have no right to take pride in that.
As for me, I can’t remember the last time I felt proud of myself. That’s not a sin I regularly commit.
And I’ve aged-out of lust. But on the subject of sex (gender), I never felt proud about being heterosexual. My “gender-orientation” was not something I had anything to do with. It just was.
I deeply regret the pain people of other gender orientations suffer. They didn’t choose theirs either.
Last night, I watched a horrifying documentary on PBS titled “The Lavender Scare.” It tells the little-known story of an unrelenting campaign by the federal government to identify and fire employees suspected of being homosexual during the ’50’s. It included a clip of President Eisenhower speaking to it. Homosexual employees in federal jobs were thought to be dangerous because they could be bribed by the Communists into spying. One young woman in a desk job was described as “wearing severely tailored suits, having short hair, and using little lipstick.”
I knew nothing of this. In fact, I’m pretty sure I was well into my twenties before I heard the word homosexual.. I did hear the then derogatory word queer but I had no clue what queers did. To be honest, as a girl, I really didn’t know exactly what anyone did. It was the ’50’s.
Now, it’s Pride Month. So many groups want to be included that the initials for them has grown exponentially. It is presently LGBTQA+, I think. If I have excluded anyone, please forgive me. It’s unintentional. That pretty much includes everyone but me.
Maybe I should ask to be included since I support their cause, if not their pride. And I like their colorful flag.
Maybe I could start a group of my own. Its initials could be PCOWW. Presently Celibate Old White Woman. I bet you didn’t want to know that much about my sexual activities or lack thereof. That’s the way I feel about everyone’s sexual activities. It’s possibly the most private and personal thing we do in our whole lives.
On a related matter, I think one of the hardest challenges that a child and his/her family might face is to discover that the child was born in an inappropriate body. That cannot be kept private. The medical guidelines for dealing with that now include things which in some states parents are criminalized for.
Who knew until recently that in England the Sexual Offences Act 1967 marked the decriminalizing of “sodomy.” It was the first gay law reform there since 1533, when anal sex was made a crime during Henry VIII’s reign; all other sexual acts between men were outlawed in the Victorian era.
When you studied the “Ballad of Reading Gaol” in school, did you know Oscar Wilde wrote it when he went into exile in Normandy after being released from prison for “gross indecency.” I would have had no idea what that might have meant in any case and I’m sure my teacher would not have explained it.
I can think of so many things that are grossly indecent and none of them has anything to do with what people do in their private lives.
But I digress.
Back to pride and being proud of things, particularly things you had no control over and cannot rightfully take any credit for.
This is Pride Month. I think we now have a month for almost every oppressed group. I doubt that any of them win any supporters and possibly offend more folks than they win over.
I believe March is National Women’s History Month, which seems like a nice idea since historically women were neglected in history books.
I believe last month was South Pacific Americans Month.
I am a European American and do not feel offended that there is no month for that.
I’m not proud of being a woman or of European ancestry since neither really has anything to do with anything I ever did.
I believe people who were born in Texas are very proud of that, but really it’s only an accident of where their mothers happened to be when they gave birth.
My sins are many: sloth, envy, gluttony come to mind. Pride? Not so much.
I started this blog as personal journal and a photo album. I need to get back to that plan. I’m going to wax eloquent here.
Life sometimes gives us surprises that at first seem negative but turn out to be serendipitous.
My long-time PCP suddenly closed his practice without an explanation. Luckily, I was able to get a new doctor whom I like very much. One of his areas of expertise is gerontology!
A few weeks ago I had a “meet and greet” appointment with him. While his assistant was checking my vitals, it was discovered that I was having tachycardia. I hadn’t noticed a thing. I felt just fine, but my heart rate was 180 BMP. They were unable to reduce it in the office using several first-aid techniques and I was immediately sent to the ER.
Briefly, I received immediate and excellent care in the ER and as an inpatient for a couple of days. I was very impressed with the attention I received at the highly-rated cardiac unit in my nearby hospital.
They quickly got things under control and I still feel just fine. I have to wonder what the result might have been had I not been in the doctor’s office. But never mind what might have been.
I really like my new PCP and my cardiologist. My main concern at this point continues to be rehabbing my new knee. I need to be able to get in and out of my kayak. Cardiologist still wants to do a stress test and yet another EKG.
This “event” prompted me to re-think my future plans. In the next year to fix up and sell 1880 and move to a much smaller place where I won’t have to deal with a lot of the things I no longer want to deal with in this large house and property. I feel relieved about that.
And it prompted Kate to drive up for a visit and to spend a crazy night with Dolly while I was hooked up to every device imaginable in the hospital. I even had a talking bed that immediately and loudly admonished me when I was so bold as to get out of bed when no professional caregiver was in the room.
When I got home, Kate reminded me that she had sent me an oximeter for Christmas. I hadn’t even put batteries in it, but she did and I have used it regularly ever since just to reassure myself. My BPM has always been about 60, I think maybe because I jogged for many years.
I look forward to down-sizing. I have always loved small spaces. My favorite childhood room was a little porch Mother and Daddy closed in to make my first bedroom. At 1880, it is the snug. I will be very happy in a new snug. I’ll take all the furniture from this one.
I subscribe online to the daily entry from Garrison Keillor called “The Writers’ Almanac.” It’s a nice way to start the day. I highly recommend it. It’s free. Much more relaxing than Wordle! I still miss listening to “Prairie Home Companion” on Saturday nights and the cohort I shared that with. Today, I got an announcement that Keillor has a new book out. I liked this excerpt
Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80: Why You Should Keep On Getting Older A book from Garrison Keillor, a man nearing age 80, on leaning into the beauty of getting old. “My life is so good at 79 I wonder why I waited this long to get here,” he writes. You learn that Less Is More, the great lesson of Jesus and also Buddha. Each day becomes important after you pass the point of life expectancy. Big problems vanish, small things make you happy. And the worst is behind you because you lack the energy to be as foolish as you might otherwise be.
Including 23 rules for aging, including “Enumerate your benefits,” “Enjoy inertia,” “Get out of the way,” “Don’t fight with younger people;” and finally, “Ignore rules you read in a book. Do what you were going to do anyway.”
I’m not sure “gaiety” is a word I can embrace. Instead I like the word “joyful.” Not exactly the same thing, but I advise finding some little thing every day that makes you joyful.
I am very comfortable with the age I am now. Gertrude Stein wrote that we are always the same age inside. That’s true. That girl is still in there. There are some things I can’t do anymore, but mostly there are things I don’t have to do anymore.
This past week, our family suffered a loss. It is not primarily my loss. Not a death, but a very real grief, none the less.
I tried to put words to my feelings, because that’s just what I do. This is a private matter that I cannot discuss with anyone, so I said just to myself, “I feel like someone punched me in the gut.” And “The wind has abandoned my sails.”
There is now a line of work called “professional grief counselors.” They have apparently come up with certain steps every grief-stricken person must go through. I contend that every grief is unique and to say that everyone grieves the same way is condescending and plain wrong.
I always go right to “sad.” I always wish for “fury.” The is a lot of energy in anger. None in sad.
I think the word “closure” is an obscenity. You may eventually get both your feet back under you and begin to put one foot in front of the other, but grief holds a permanent place in your heart.
This morning, in the produce aisle, I bumped into a dear old friend. Literally old. In her nineties. We were both buying fresh vegetables to make soup this weekend.
She is a prolific and highly regarded painter in the Northwest, still painting every day and still driving herself to Seattle to visit her daughter.
She noticed my limp, so I confided that I was recovering from knee surgery but that the grocery cart is a really good support for getting in my daily walk. I don’t much like the look of a walker.
We agreed that the past couple of years have taught us many things, such as that we must be open to change and adapt to it with grace. We both said we have been doing a lot of reading.
Ironically — or perhaps not — even though I had not mentioned our family’s loss to her, she quoted from a book Elizabeth Edwards wrote. Maybe you remember that Elizabeth was the wife of Senator John Edwards who was a jerk and philanderer, who cheated on her and fathered a child while she was campaigning for him and fighting breast caner.
“She stood in the storm, and when the wind did not blow her way, she adjusted her sails.”
Sometimes, figuratively speaking, you have to put your finger in your mouth and then hold it up to see which way the breeze is coming from.
We may be becalmed for a while but then we will adjust our sails and feel a new breeze.
