My mother's advice

Those of us who were born of immigrant parents without a clue to US culture in mid-Century did a great deal more self-parenting or relied on older sibs. That is not to say that our parents were not wise about life; they just didn't understand the changing and strange world in which they currently lived.

We were pushed to be 'clean plate' kids. One reason, that it would be a sin to throw away food while children were starving in Ethiopia. Another was that God would consider it a sin to throw the last crust of bread away. You were expected to choke it down, instead, I could never understand why God thought that important. I got fatter and children continued starving in Ethiopia and our chickens did well on the bread and other things we didn't eat.

My mother was diligent in her warnings. She was saddened that I seemed different than the ideal daughter she pictured. I grew up hearing her bemoan that I was not as smart or good as two bow-legged cousins whom I knew only from pictures. Once, as I was either reading, playing the piano or behind someone in a leather jacket on a motorcycle, she wanted to know why I wasn't like other girls my age; why I couldn't dress in a nice nightgown and join a nice nightclub! I tried to explain to her that she didn't have that quite right. I think she eventually understood the difference between an evening dress and a nightgown.

When at 17 , in college in a Marriage Course with 57 ex-GI's, an ex-Wave and a Nun, I came home daily, to find her neighbor, a peasant Greek woman, all too eager to cluck over what I was learning in college. We sat drinking rum and coke at 3 or 4 PM as I described what the professor told us, such as, "Be attractive, don't wear heavy flannel nightgowns so that your bodies can't touch". Let alone that a husband was the last thought in my mind and that, to her horror, I usually slept nude. She would come into my bedroom, pull the covers off my shoulders, and lecture me about how ashamed I would be if there was a fire and I had no clothes on when the firemen showed up!

She also butchered English, as badly as I probably butchered the Greek language. I was instructed to shop for some feta with the instruction, "I don't want that stuff they make over here. I want that 'important' feta from Greece." She also knew that if you broke your arm or leg, you should go to the doctor and he would put it in a 'casket' for you. Despite her lack of understanding of American culture of the time, she always seemed to know the right thing to do and was constantly being challenged by her children to explain her beliefs and permissions (or refusal of them). When she could offer no logical reason why we should not do something, she invoked the "Don't ask! Why, I wouldn't even dare to tell your father you have asked this." The subject was closed and we usually did what we wanted without mentioning a word to her. Luckily, we usually escaped detection though she was ever vigilant. Her disposition was usually sunny, she was kind, generous and caring, and remarkably brilliant at solving and doing things. It is 21 years since she passed away and I miss her every day.

It's time for a change

Sitting at my computer, looking up to my right, I see a 5 foot shelf of LPs. Behind me, on shelves in a hallway, LPs hold a 6 foot shelf hostage. A few years ago I began to turn my favorites into CDs but soon tired of the excessive time expenditure. I figured it was not worth the effort since there is so much wonderful current stuff to hear. That project was put on hold in favor of several others. 11 feet of LPs is really rather daunting!

I'm wrestling with myself, whether to just throw them out, try to find someone who might be silly enough to want them, or just let them sit there grinning at me as they squat on precious shelf space. Surely someone else must have liked what I listened to and loved. Indeed, that is so! Happily, I am finding many of my old favorites, digitally re-mastered, on CDs. Now they are being added to the 14 feet of CD shelf space.

Long ago, I listened to New Orleans Jazz and Dixieland. I've decided I no longer enjoy that and feed a far more eclectic taste today. One can still find a taker for CDs of any genre. As I cull these out, fortunately I can bring the oldies to a jazz club of old timers who buy them. The proceeds are donated to the club to help pay for a live group of musicians as a last program for the year, free to the community. I refuse to have a yard sale to rid myself of my past.

For several years I have started my day listening to PBS news. It has droned on in the background as I work on the computer, scarcely aware of the radio's content. Sometimes I listen to sounds of Nature on CD and watch the TV as I work. I've decided talking heads irritate me most of the time so I now I put on CDs of music I enjoy.

While I am making changes, I am ridding myself of the several hundred VHS tapes I have accumulated in the last 27 years. There were more than 100 family tapes I had filmed which seemed to have survived in rather good shape. I have converted those to DVDs. The wall of drawers that housed the 400 or 500 tapes has me singing "Joshua fought the battle of Jericho....and the wall came tumbling down." It's like doing the laundry. Put it in the washer and come back when it is done; more space gained. I have also discovered great treasures on VHS like Horowitz in concert, at age 81, in Moscow (1982); 1958 Newport Jazz Festival; Mary Martin and Noel Coward doing their 90 minute show in the 50s, saved by kinescope... the voices and songs are great!

These collections are the tip of an iceberg. There are all the unused, work-saving devices stuffed in drawers; reel-to-reel tapes; hundreds of audio cassettes in drawers and cases; and thousands of photographic slides to be digitized. Downsizing comes with change. As they tell me, shift happens and my head is full of shift as I contemplate my life changes.

Friends

A neighbor used to tell me that even if we can't choose our relatives, it is nice that we can choose our friends. Eleven of us, having been together on the Board of Directors of a Seniors Computer Group for many years, had met monthly to plan speakers and programs for the membership. As interest and need for this waned, we decided to stop the club meetings. However, we didn't want to break up the friendship developed over the years in our small group. We now meet monthly, just the Board members who had done all the work, shared fun together, gotten to know each other and who became a close, concerned bunch of friends with many disparate interests, as well as shared.

We are a rather motley group of seniors, 3 women and 8 men, who met yesterday to talk for two hours, followed by a lunch hosted by two members living in a lovely retirement community. We stayed on topic (computers) for a long time, interrupted as usual by jokes, personal anecdotes, and many topics understood only by other seniors. Two of us use Vista, one hates it; the other loves it. We discussed the advantages of MAC (Macintosh) over Microsoft (MS), though only two of us use a MAC while the rest of us are still stuck by the software investment in MS.

We shared software program information, traded information on resources, and not once was there a raised voice other than the decibel level needed for hearing at our age. There was no sibling rivalry, no Mother-liked-me-better-than-you comments, no embarrassing telling of incidents of childhood behaviors, and none of the uncomfortable things that happen in many family get-togethers.

We started as seniors and have really grown OLD together in the past 10 or so years. We all look forward to meeting. Whether we talk about computers, or not, seems less relevant than that our group keep touching one another's lives for those brief hours. It is hard to put into words to these dear friends just what their friendship means. A simple 'thank you for being you' will have to suffice.

Nature around me

There is a Lebanese neighbor who abuts my south side property, half way. She has a garage against which she has a Concord Grape vine, primarily so that she can harvest grape leaves to use them for stuffing with rice, lamb and spearmint. She is a widow in her mid-eighties who no longer does any yard work herself. At the back of her lot, a junk tree has shot up, probably seeded there by birds. In just a couple of years it has reached more than 25 feet in the air. Like a child who sees a tree and must climb it, so this grapevine leaped and twirled its way high, plunging and curling down from its 18 foot high and hanging down freely below the lower limbs.

Warmed by the sun on the tree, now taller than the garage vines which face north, this grapevine has lolled in the summer sun, grown by leaps and bounds, and has rewarded the birds with at least a bushel of plump. purple grapes. They are too high up for a human to reach without a ladder; my neighbor has no inclination to do that. I have had the pleasure of listening to happy birds chirping as they glut themselves on the ripe, sweet grapes.



All this is taking place outside my computer room window. It has made me realize how little I have appreciated Nature in my little postage stamp-sized lot. The realization reminded of one of the Disney, early documentaries called Nature's Half Acre. Walking around to the front of the house I see one of the Holly bushes, bright with red berries, a harbinger of winter to me.


How much I have missed when my eyes are looking inside my head instead of at the world around me.

High School reading

One of my grandsons is a junior in High School. Some Juniors may be quite sophisticated. This one is not. The reading list sounds like something out of the 70's, a disappointment to me since there is so much good stuff being written today. He has had to spend many weeks on discussions about Catcher in the Rye and is now to read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest! Of all the scary preparations for someone who knows nothing of current psychiatric care! I can't think of a worse one.

Shock treatment is used today, when medications fail, quite differently, and can be life saving. In the 60's, it was being used with too great a charge and left people with severe loss of memory. It has been greatly improved. Portraying the staff as so horrible serves no current purpose other than turning people off to the system which they may need someday. I have no idea how competent this teacher is about current psychiatric care, how knowledgeable. It has left me wondering if the school curriculum has changed in 40 years if these are still the books being assigned and wonder at the purpose. Shouldn't this be History and not English? Or am I forgetting that everything is being lumped into 'Social Studies'?

Am I wrong to be concerned about this. If anyone reads this, I would like some feedback on the experience of readers not so far out of school as I.

Why don't you get this?

In a long list of useless things that people say to one another, here is one of my favorites. Do people really expect an answer when they ask this question, "Why don't you get this?" It is as useless as, "Why can't you find it?"

If one examines the many reasons that people can't 'get' things, think of denial as one example. It is a defense mechanism that denies reality to keep one' s self-image intact. Even faced with visual proof, people can rationalize all kinds of reasons not to believe, such as: those photos were doctored, someone is just trying to make trouble, my child (spouse or whoever) would never do that, and endlessly more. People get ready to hear facts only when those facts are no longer too frightening to them. Some people must maintain their correctness, protect a decision made, or avoid seeing their memory in danger of being distorted by reality. Instead, it is distorted in an easier manner to tolerate; denial of the facts, or a rewrite of history. A competent psychotherapist, in order to be effective with a patient, must find a way to make the 'toxic non-toxic'. (A phrase coined by Dr. Murray Bowen many years ago.)

Often another useless saying comes into play, though in this context it may be helpful..."Oh, lots of people have (do, think, feel) that way". In this example, the patient is helped to preserve themselves to not feel alone, ashamed, or threatened. The simple fact that they are not unique in their struggle lowers the danger of ego-assault and they may listen to helpful coping mechanisms to make life less stressful. A change in attitude may occur, dropping the need to deny as a defense.

This useless expression, 'Why don't you get this?" is used in arguments often between religious believers and non-believers. It is prevalent in those who have been duped by politicians and those who voted against. We find it in personal, emotional relationships frequently, those of us who live in them or work with them. Jokes are made, such as: Denial is not a river in Egypt. However, one cannot make light of this use of defense mechanisms when we find it governs decisions being made that effect the lives of millions of people. I hear it in every speech our current President makes. He never admits to a blatant mistake or misstatement of facts though many are well documented. When a majority of Americans become complicit in his dysfunctional denial, our country is, and remains in great danger.

©

The thickening wall between rich and poor

Corporate power has become too great. Even when people want to stand up to its greed, the economy of the masses make it almost impossible. Most people need the 'bargains' of Walmart to stretch their small paychecks, to allow them to live. Thus they continue to buy Chinese goods, and from other sweat shops and child labor abusers in other countries, as well. While we all would like to eat organically grown foods, buy American goods, we can't afford it, or they are no longer available here, while corporations are downgrading our quality of life to fatten up their CEOs. They don't care about anyone else who works for them, it would seem. Even the stockholders get a very small portion of what is left after the rape from the CEOs

Minimum wage earners live below the poverty level. This seems of little consequence unless you happen to be one of them. According to recent statistics the number equals the assumed number of illegal immigrants in our country, thus doubling the 13 million person figure to at least 26 million persons.

We seem to be nearing 300 million population, if everyone here is counted. Meanwhile our Senate and Congress are bogged down with fighting whether some of them are gay or how to quit ourselves of the stone of Iraq around our necks. Bush wants to pass the responsibility of that disaster to his successor. Sad times, indeed. However, on a more positive note, the US still enjoys many advantages, though they are fading fast and it is hard to note them as compared to other industrial countries of today.