Category Archives: turning 50

down the rabbit hole

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Do you ever wonder what happened to people? And that’s when you take a peek on social media to see where they’ve been for all the intervening years? Mind you, I’m not talking about people you were necessarily close to,  just people that were sort of in your world or circled your orbit as it were. Sometimes they were just people you sort of saw in the background.

I have done that a few times recently and it’s so odd to look at some of these people you knew once as kids now as adults, often with their own kids. Time has flown, yet the  strangest thing I’ve noticed in some of these cases is how little some of these people have changed. They’ve aged, so have I, but it’s like time stood still even if the aging clock didn’t . There they are, in poses similar to what their younger selves used to do and in similar situations. It is like Alice looking down the rabbit hole.

And then there are the people that you run into in real time. My favorite have been people that just used to know my parents and in some cases are the kids of the people who used to know my parents.  Most of the time, it’s really nice to run into these people as we shared some fun memories, but some are not so pleasant.

Sometimes you run into people whose parents used to be friends with your parents but are no longer friends with your parents.  You see these people and you say “hello” to because that’s the polite thing to do when you run into someone, especially when you’re about 3 feet or less from them. And these are also the kind of people who pretend they don’t see you, don’t hear you, or just turn their backs.  What is the point of being rude? Yet they do it. Haven’t run into some of these people in a long time except for occasional near misses on social media on other friends’ Facebook pages. Which is terrific. Who needs that pettiness and negativity?

But looking down the rabbit hole can be painful. You see people you were once close to as well as the people who were just sort of peripheral or on the fringe of your life. People change as they get older, and commonality fades. People just let go of one and other. 
 

Sometimes you see people who were once a very large part of your life…..until they weren’t. Sometimes seeing those people is ok, and sometimes it’s not. Because some people just hurt you when they leave. Period. Sometimes these people know they have done that, but often times they don’t because they are not thinking about anything other than their own path.

I guess that is one of the blessings of growing up and even getting older: you can choose who you wish to spend your time with.  And that is such a nice thing. Occasionally looking down the rabbit hole for me reinforces I am glad I am where I am in my life and who I am with.  Love and respect are very powerful things.

I have been working on this piece of writing for a while and put it away. Then I came back to it. I did not want to sound negative writing it because I wasn’t feeling negative.

But then I was. It’s like I was a kid again with all those raw feelings you can feel at those young ages.

Sometimes it is just hard to have grace when you unexpectedly find yourself face to social media face with someone who hurt you deeply.  But then you realize they aren’t the people really once were. And while it still hurts in a sense, in a sense you can let it go. You have nice memories, but you are both off on different journeys.

Trust me, grace and forgiveness take work, but if you don’t release it it’s simply unhealthy. Why let it fester? After all, these people you see in your rear view mirror ? They aren’t worrying about you are they?

I know some will read this post and wonder if I am speaking about them in particular. Those are the people who will never get it, and I can’t control what they think (or feel). This is just one of those things I have thought about and have actually discussed with other friends who have also thought about and/or  experienced this.

 Thanks for stopping by.

the curiousness of women as we age

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Human beings are a strange bunch. One thing that fascinates me endlessly is how some women, who as adults are still controlled by their parents, eventually come to mimic them. In both appearance and behavioral patterns.

Social media gives us a look inside of the lives of those we know. Sometimes it also gives us a look inside the lives of people used to know but no longer are in contact with or really connected to. I had one of those experiences recently. Outside looking in. Being a couple steps removed changes your perception, and often you see things that you wouldn’t have noticed before or didn’t want to acknowledge you noticed before.

Recently I saw photos containing someone I used to be quite close to, and very fond of. But when I moved to Chester County it became too much of an effort for them to stay connected, so the relationship fizzled away. I wish this person nothing but the best, but after just catching them in someone’s photos from the holidays, wow, do we as adult women always run the risk of becoming doppelgängers of our mothers? In this case it almost made me sad to see.

This person I used to know at one time was extraordinarily vivacious and alive. And in all the photos I’ve seen for the past couple of years she smiling but it’s like there’s nothing going on behind the smile any longer. Truthfully, she’s looking more and more like her mother. Also, much like her mother she seems to have one friend she takes everywhere, and that friend looks enough like HER mother’s friend in photos I saw that it could be the daughter that woman never had separated at birth.

Someone said to me recently as they overheard a conversation I was having with someone that I had morphed momentarily into my mother. That kind of freaked me out. It’s not that I don’t love my mother, but I want to remain my own person. Not become a mini me of her.

Some women I know I do indeed resemble their mothers in their looks, but not the personalities and behavioral patterns. Perhaps men are like this as well, but this is a thing I have observed more so in women.

My mother has a very strong personality and so do I. But I would like to think and hope I am my own person. Not that I don’t love my mother but I just wasn’t put on earth to be her mini me.

And then there are the women I know that are all mostly chameleons, ever-changing. It’s like they can’t decide who they are even as adults.

And there are some women I know who seem to want to almost compete with their teenage daughters, something I completely don’t understand.

What happens to women as we approach and enter middle-age? Do we fight the aging process tooth and nail, or do we accept who we are? Or are we the balance somewhere in between those two things? And is this struggle which causes some women to head down paths already in place courtesy of their mothers?

What happens to female individuality as we age? Do we just get tired and in some cases give it up to Stepford? Or do we become more fiercely protective of our individuality?

Does who we are continually evolve or are we always basically the same person? I know there’s a lot about me that is considered constant, but I like to hope I am continually evolving to be the best person I can be. In the end I might fall short of the mark, but I at least want to remain my own person.

Thoughts?

passages

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Have you ever had a memory flash through your mind that is so real and tangible, it’s almost like it was happening at the moment you remembered it?

Today, clear as a bell, I had a memory of myself as a child looking out the window in winter. When I was really little, we lived in a very old house. The windows were large and original to the house, and weren’t all air tight like modern windows.

Today I remembered the windows in winter time. The smell of the cold and the crisp cold air leaking in from the outside. I remembered looking out the window onto a snowy street and then blowing on the window to make a little cold frosty pattern that then quickly disappeared. And then just like that, the memory was gone.

This has been a bit of a weird week.

Yesterday I got a Facebook reminder that an old friend was having a birthday. This was a woman I hadn’t seen in many years because life had taken her way out of state where she had gotten married and started a family.

A few years ago we had reconnected and sporadically had kept in touch with an occasional call mostly to leave a message, or Facebook message. So yesterday I went to her Facebook page to say happy birthday. Only what I saw was a post for someone I don’t know saying she had died.

Google, that thing that is a blessing and a curse of online research, led me to her obituary. It really got to me. I was also upset that although one of this woman’s siblings was actually in my class in high school and there was a third sister that somehow people that knew this friend never knew she had died. Out of sight and out of mind in the saddest of ways.

Yesterday I had another one of those crystal clear flashes of memory. I saw my friend basically as I had last seen her. She was a petite woman with a beautiful smile that was almost shy as it developed at times and sometimes it was wistful and other times mischievous. She also had this deep throaty voice. The memory made me smile through tears.

Today another friend said goodbye to her dad. He had been ill and on hospice. When I was talking to her on her way home from saying good bye to her dad and starting the frenetic process of everything that falls under that horrible phrase “final arrangements” I had my third flash of a memory for this week. Of my own father, two days before he died and when he was on hospice.

It was my parents’ wedding anniversary. We watched a movie. The original Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn I think it was. My father turned his head slightly on the pillow and smiled a slight and very weak smile. That is my last memory of him. And then today, poof the memory was gone.

And you know what else in this week of flash memories and weirdness? Trees full of lots of cardinals in my back garden. Every day. About a dozen, if not more. I heard an old wives tale once long ago that said a lot of people feel cardinals appearing represent loved ones or people you cared about and knew who had passed away. When you see them, supposedly those who had gone before you are visiting. Makes you wonder.

Thanks for stopping by.

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women and social media

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One of my mother’s favorite expressions is “never complain, never explain”. As I flip through Facebook this morning while having my coffee, I thought I would pass it on. Some people might actually need it cross stitched and framed. Do you sense sarcasm here? Just a little bit? Sorry, I just find women and social media an oddity at times.

There is a lot of glass half empty and what the world owes people going on online. But maybe that is just social media: our own personal platforms for way too much grexing. (“Grexing” is Pennsylvania German for whining, complaining, or brutzing.)

I understand that everyone has troubles at different points in their lives and I totally get feeling the need to vent now and then, but there are some who are always seeming to be this way. I don’t know if they are this way in person all the time at this point or if this is just their online persona. But it’s like they are constantly negative and chronically angry and how is that healthy?

Trust me, I can whine with the best of them. But when you seem to be barraged with it from certain people all the time it gives you pause for thought. Is the glass really always half-empty? Why isn’t it ever half-full?

None of us are perfect, but do some of us simply expect too much of other people without looking to see what we can do by standing on our own two feet? It’s just that when I see some of what some people are putting “out there” for the world to see versus friends I have who lives with horrible diseases every single day and are among the most positive people I’ve ever met, it just makes me stop and think. I know women who are living with diseases like multiple sclerosis and metastatic breast cancer. Truthfully, these are the women that inspire me. They have every right to complain, but they don’t. They live. And they live positively and with love.

Whatever happened to personal accountability? Why is the world responsible for everything that goes wrong in our lives? We are all capable of free will, so unless we are being dangerously coerced or abused, aren’t we the ones making those decisions? From businesses to kids to life to men it’s giant gripe-fest some mornings. In some cases I can’t help but wonder if it’s karma, and I feel bad even thinking that, but when you treat other people poorly or rudely for long enough, what happens? Is it the old adage of everything that goes around eventually comes around?

A dear friend’s husband said to me that I need new people in my sphere, and I don’t think I necessarily that but I think some need a new outlook. And I’m not Pollyanna every day, so don’t misunderstand me, it’s just sometimes I am left silently asking these people a question. That question is how are we responsible for your personal happiness? And I am not silently asking that question to be mean. I want to know how it is we are supposed to be responsible for own lives and our families and their happiness? And yet we are called disloyal and worse if we don’t jump on the online bandwagon of support, which I don’t get. Do these people want true friends or sychophants?

Personally, I am someone who can be extraordinarily hard on myself. I am probably harder on myself than anyone else ever is. But when I see other people’s negativity head on it gives me pause, and makes me look inward at myself and my attitude too for that matter.

And then there are the women I see in groups who ask questions of total strangers that I don’t know that I would even voice out loud to people I know. Some of the questions range from the “lady you need boundaries that’s very personal” to “say what did she really just say that?”

And in group forums, there are some women who seem to view everyone else as the Shell Answer Man for lack of a better description. Sometimes I wonder if these people can get out of bed in the morning without seeking consensus first. Looking for referrals for a doctor, hair salon, restaurant, service provider I get those questions. But what I don’t get is when people post things like they have a cheating spouse and spouse was a cheating person before they married them and they just caught them at it again and what should they do should they just stay or should they leave? Really??? This is something you ask a thousand strangers ??

Another another favorite topic in the group forums is what to pay the babysitter. I’ve come to the conclusion there are a lot of cheap women out there.

And then there are the women who seek actual medical advice from a thousand strangers they don’t know and who definitely aren’t medical professionals- yes, that consensus seeking syndrome again. And I’m not talking about their asking medical related questions in a group that is geared specifically towards a disease or disorder. I’m talking about the women who should be filed under the category of “there are no boundaries on this bus”. And really, I don’t need to read what color your kid’s poop is either. (Yes seriously I have seen people post things about that.)

The thing that amuses me about some of these women when I see what they’re writing in public (and if it’s on Facebook or Twitter or other social media, it’s in public) is that these are often the type of women that I would run into a few short years ago who would say “I don’t know how you can blog. It’s so public.” And the tone of voice and face that would accompany comments like this was like I was doing something well, dirty.

Yes, to an extent, the Internet is like a giant bathroom wall. Which means what exactly? A society we are changing how we share? Or it’s just nice to have a place to vent? Or we should learn to once again to occasionally curb the streams of flowing consciousness?

Another amusing thing about women and social media are the ones who try to develop a particular persona that’s really not who they are in real time. I’m talking about the ones who are all so sickly sweet and posting cute little phrases often with photos constantly while they God bless everyone and thank God for blessings everything. And I am not speaking of the people I know who are truly good and Christian women, I’m talking about the ones that think we don’t know how they treat other people in real time and how viciously they gossip when they’re off their social media pages.

I really respect women who are who real and true online and off.

One of my favorite things hands-down still about connecting with women I know on social media is it’s a way to keep up with relatives and friends who are spread out and scattered to the four winds. It’s really nice to see pictures of their kids, and hear about what everyone is doing. One of the sad things however, is you can also see those who are starting to self-destruct and disintegrate. It makes you wonder why their families don’t see it too at times.

And then we all know people who seem unable to have actual conversations any longer, yet you can read all about it on social media. Maybe I am showing my age that I lament the lost art of conversation and even thank you notes. But I do think people don’t talk to each other enough any longer. Texting and tweeting and Facebooking are not talking. They might be a form of communication, but it is not the same nor a substitute for speaking and having conversations. And this doesn’t just occur with adults, it occurs with the young – our kids. And I think our kids need to be able to communicate and express how they’re feeling traditionally not just via social media and texting. And a lot of times they can’t.

I know some people I know are going to be annoyed or almost paranoid by this post I’ve written. Ladies, rest easy, the one thing that has never changed with me in all these years is telling you exactly how I am feeling person to person. If I had an issue with you I wouldn’t allude to it vaguely on a social media feed or in a blog post, I would tell you. In other words I’m not gonna play whisper down the lane behind your back yet in front of your face like a lot of people do on social media, this is just something I was thinking about as I was drinking my coffee this morning.

Thanks for stopping by and please, try to see the bright spots in life. It’s really easy to be negative, it’s much more work to be positive but so worth it. Life, every day, is a gift.

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what is beauty?

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What is beauty? When it comes to nature as in flora and fauna, it’s easy to point out a beautiful bird or a flower. But when it comes to humans, can it be said it is not only more subjective, but societally subjective?

Yes this may indeed be a post that some consider a flowing stream of female consciousness and that’s ok. No one is after all, holding a gun to their heads and say read this, right? And yes, it is all the chatter about actress Renée Zellweger which made me think about this.

I will start with this article I read this morning:

Are we hypocrites over Renee Zellweger? By LZ Granderson, CNN Contributor
updated 9:40 AM EDT, Thu October 23, 2014

(CNN) — Renee Zellweger looks different than she did 10 years ago.
Big deal—who doesn’t?
Maybe she had plastic surgery. Maybe a little lipo, too. Or maybe her new look, at 45, is truly courtesy of her living a healthier, happier life away from the constant media glare, as she reportedly told People Magazine.

Considering how mean-spirited some of the response has been since Zellweger showed up at the Elle Women in Hollywood Awards much slimmer than we remembered, who could question the effect time away from the vitriol can have on a person?

….The face and body we associated with her for all these years was, in her words, a byproduct of having “a schedule that is not realistically sustainable and didn’t allow for taking care of myself.” Makes sense to me. I can’t tell you how many former NFL players I have come across who look nothing like the men I saw on the field—significant weight loss, clean-shaven, hell, just being clean for a change. And dare I say healthier.

I then read something on someone’s Facebook page (also this morning):

Can we leave Renee Zellweger alone, please? As a woman, I’m offended by the criticism she has received for doing something personal and private. Do the talking heads have nothing better to discuss? And seriously, if we should fault anyone, shouldn’t it be the entertainment and fashion industries for harping on their own standards of beauty? Sorry, I don’t usually take public stands, but this issue hits home.

So this is true…..but I am tired of what the media and Hollywood puts out there as far as women and aging, aren’t you? Renée Zellweger is a victim of that cycle I believe, but unfortunately she is also in the public eye. Why are people talking about Renée Zellweger? Because she did the all-American mid-life woman thing and apparently got some nipping and tucking and filling.

Why do women have such a hard time aging? Or admitting they are getting older?

Maybe we all play a part in this?

As women, we need to stand up for what the definition of beauty actually is. I don’t know a single female from 15 to 70 plus who doesn’t fight with self body image at times. And how many women just want people to notice sometimes when they look nice and not that they have a few more wrinkles than last year?

As a 50-year-old breast cancer survivor who did not have breast reconstruction when I look in the mirror I often only see a lopsided me. I have to remind myself how blessed I am to be alive. But how hyper-focused are we often as a society and the concept of the perfect female form and does that perfection even exist naturally?

In that vein, after seven weeks of radiation coursing through my body there were a lot of things about chemicals that I decided to shed from my life. That included hair coloring. I decided I was going to let my hair color change naturally to what it was meant to be, versus trying to cover it up every few weeks.

Truthfully I am very slow to gray up and in three years there is little difference. Yet if you look around all you see is advertising aimed at women which subliminally tells us day after day that aging naturally is BAD. We are bombarded with hair color and cosmetics ads, ads for injectibles like Botox and Juvaderm, ads for plastic surgeons, commentary on what unnaturally thin actress with unnaturally large and upstanding boobs are wearing.

And of course there are our more local influences. Our mothers, siblings, friends, spouses, and so on. For example, I adore my mother but you can ask anyone and they will tell you she is obsessed with appearance. The flip side is that is probably why she looks so good for her age, but you can’t wear sweat pants and a t-shirt around her! However, in her defense, as opposed to many of her contemporaries and my own contemporaries she is not someone who has been nipped, tucked, or injected. Which I am glad about because there have been some older ladies I have seen in society photos recently who look downright scary they have had so much work done. They don’t look attractive, they look freakish.

Most of the time I am good with me at 50, but there are days where I look in the mirror and wonder where I’ve gone. And then I have to remind myself that I’m not 24 anymore I’m 50 and that’s ok.

But societally in this country it seems to be the exception rather than the rule as far as aging naturally versus not aging naturally. The funny thing is when I was about 22 I wasn’t sure if I was going to like myself as a 50 year old. But that was a 22 year old looking at what was then, older than dirt.

Now that I am 50, it doesn’t seem so bad or so old. Yet because of what I see put out there some days I struggle. But when I lay it all out I would truly rather be a more authentic me and I don’t need anyone’s permission or approval to be that woman….and that is what women forget.

Women forget that we do have the right to be whomever it is we want to be. Societally we are often judged if we don’t wear makeup, don’t color out hair, haven’t been augmented and injected, and wear more age appropriate clothes rather than looking like the teenage daughter’s closet was raided.

Can it be said the obsession with appearance versus the inability to deal with aging is pervasive and damaging? And have you ever noticed the men who will sit and judge a woman like she is someone’s prize cow? My ex was one of those kinds of men and I think individuals like this need to take a long, hard look in the mirror before they judge another human being. Yet, it is often through eyes like those that women judge themselves. And yes, we are our own harshest critics

Getting older is a challenge. Of course it is. But it is part of the cycle of life, right? So what if societally we were a little more accepting?

Thanks for stopping by today.

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an essay worth reading

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Someone had the essay below from Vogue posted on their Facebook timeline. In addition to the fact that it is a beautifully written piece that literally makes you feel you are with the writer in his journey from city dweller to his now Woodstock, NY home, I get the whole move-to-the-country thing and how it fits me personally. Mind you I am not as deep in the country as the author, but I can’t help but feel a sort of parallel after a fashion. Similarly age, and life changes including where I live now versus where I used to.

Having moved a few short years ago from the Main Line to Chester County,I get it the whole change of venue and lifestyle. When I initially told people I was moving a lot were like “Why? You guys could live on the Main Line.”

They didn’t get that I didn’t want to and much like the feelings of the author watching where he lived in NYC change, I was ready and wanted to live a more country existence . Change is inevitable, but as the area I once called home had changed, truthfully so had I.

What I had grown up in and amongst no longer existed on the Main Line. Everything was going from being a beautiful place to a place that no longer fit me. Glorious gardens and beautiful houses were being replaced one by one with Tvyec monogrammed infill development and the Main Line was evolving from being suburban to becoming what I continue to see happening: a crammed, noisy, traffic filled urban existence with a homogenous feel that is less than special.

And the people were changing in addition to the landscape. A lot of the the people on the Main Line had gone from being the gracious, civilized, and genteel people I grew up with, to being a whole lot of overly ambitious crass and not so pleasant social climbers whose favorite game was constant one upsmanship. And dermatological fillers. I also didn’t care about designer, car, and more general people name dropping. My friends still there are not those people, but if they are honest they are now the exceptions rather than the rule.

Living out here in Chester County completes the adult me. I am happy. And many of my Main Line friends still treat me like I live in Iowa. Some of them have never been out to see where I live although invited. The constant chorus of “It’s so far” …..yet amazingly enough I can always go back there. The funny thing is when I do go back, I now look at where I used to live through the eyes of a stranger…..and can’t wait to get back to my little slice of heaven in Chester County.

I look at where I used to be and where I am now and well, I can just breathe and be myself. There is something very luxurious about that, and living on the Main Line can’t buy that feeling as far as I am concerned. And as I have said before, many of the people I enjoyed in various stages of my younger self now live out here as well.

I am posting the article below. I love, not like living more in the country. Give this essay a read. Thanks for stopping by on a rainy morning!

Vogue Magazine: A Die-Hard New Yorker Leaves Manhattan and Embraces the Country Life OCTOBER 6, 2014 6:00 AM by JONATHAN VAN METER

At the risk of sounding appallingly pretentious, it was Cate Blanchett who made me realize it was time to leave New York City. It was a year ago, last October, and we had just finished a leisurely interview over a late dinner in a London restaurant when we found ourselves standing on a rainy street corner, not quite ready to say good night. She asked what I was doing the next day, and I said I had no plans because I have no friends who live in central London anymore. Like my friends in Manhattan, most of them have moved somewhere less ruinous. Blanchett, who’d left London herself a few years earlier, looked a little wistful and said, “It’s a different place.” Having recently turned 50, I muttered something about being older—maybe that’s what had changed. “No,” she said firmly. “The world’s changed. It’s very difficult to know where to be.”…..That was the moment, right there, the speech delivered toward the end of the story by the passing character in the protagonist’s life that turns on the light and shifts everything. As I said goodbye and walked away, my heart pounding, I was filled with a rush of certainty about something I had been puzzling over for years: Where should I be? I hopped in a cab and called my boyfriend, Andy, back in New York: Quit your job, and let’s move upstate.

life and scarab bracelets

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I have now had a few falls living in Chester County. I woke up today realizing that I didn’t feel like a stranger in a strange land any longer. It was a great feeling.

I love living out here. I love discovering cool things and bits of history. I love that almost every day there is something beautiful to take a photo of or something new to experience. Next on my living in Chester County bucket list is to go to a mud sale next spring. They don’t just occur in Lancaster County, there are several in Chester County as well.

The PaDutchCountry.com website describes mud sales this way:

Mud sales, named for the condition of the thawing early spring ground, are major fundraisers for the volunteer fire companies throughout Amish communities. They are huge events, sometimes drawing as many as 20,000 people, where everything from hand-stitched quilts (donated by the Amish women’s groups) and locally-made crafts to livestock, furniture, produce, baked goods, antiques, housewares, even the kitchen sink are all up for bid. In a sight that may seem like organized chaos to the novice mud sale visitors, six or seven auctions are conducted simultaneously as the Amish and English mill together over the many items bound for the auction block.

A woman in my gardening group went to one recently (they start in early spring and run through fall she tells me). She got amazing deals on shrubs and perennials and told me the quilts and other things being auctioned off were amazing. And yes she had me at patchwork quilts and plants! Apparently there is one coming up in Cochranville:

October 25 – Cochranville Fire Company Mud Sale
Cochranville Volunteer Fire Company
3135 Limestone Road, Cochranville
610-593-5800
http://www.cochranvillefire.com

Onto other things. The other evening I went to a ladies’ get together hosted by a dear friend from college. She was one of those people I didn’t see during the ex-factor years and reconnected with after he was gone.

During that particular stage of my life there were a lot of people I didn’t see because they didn’t want to be around him but didn’t want to tell me that, either. There were also people I sort of steered away from because I was afraid of how he would react to them. It wasn’t always like that with him, but that is what he seem to become. Or maybe that was true self showing through and I was afraid to acknowledge that at the time?

I am only sorry I put my friends and family through all that at the time. I’m especially sorry to my late father and brother-in-law. They only wanted me to be happy, didn’t see my happy as being him, but I never knew that until they were both gone from this earth. On some level I believe that both of them can see me in my life now and are happy with my choices, but I really wish both of them were around to be with us still. But death, like life is part of our life cycle and life experiences, right?

It’s funny, the ex factor is finally fading like the bad memory he should be, yet for some reason people like him seem to keep tabs on my life and isn’t that bizarre? After all, he left me in a blizzard, isn’t that the truth? Why would he want any kind of connection? Because I was supposed to be miserable but life led me in a new direction leaving me happy and content and where I am supposed to be and who I am supposed to be with? Because I survived breast cancer? Morbid curiosity? And is it true, does he have full knowledge of certain cyber bullies? Really?

I have asked myself plenty of times why would someone care about my life basically literally years after they ended a relationship by their own personal choice? Is it because they have been part of my writing as having been part of my life experience? Many writers write about their lives. For example, a woman I know wrote about her divorce with brutal unvarnished honesty earlier this summer. Does that make her a bad person too? Is her almost ex-husband similarly afflicted?

But you know what? I really and truly do not care at the end of the day. It’s like dealing with cyber bullies who stalk everyday existence trolling for bits of anything to twist and pervert. It is simply a reaffirmation of my life blessings. And wow aren’t I lucky? Yes, yes I am.

People seem to have a fascination in general with people who blog and write. What they are writing about, how they write, why they write. For me writing is like my photography, it is simply part of who I am.

I was speaking recently with a woman I know. She is a friend and follows my blog quite closely. She was quite complimentary overall with how I write and my writing style. She was also honest about my writings which can be placed in the category of activism driven. Some she has liked, some not so much. Did I get all up in arms about that? No, it was a conversation. It wasn’t an attack, it was looking at what I write through a different pair of eyes. I value input like that.

We also talked about scarab bracelets. Decidedly vintage, and not very expensive to pick up and so much fun to wear. They scream 50s and 60s and like myself, she loves them. They are something that is a happy association of my childhood. When I was little my mother and a lot of her friends always wore scarab bracelets and I have loved them since I was a little girl. They are something most consider to be a classic. I see them in thrift shops all the time and while some people love the look of Bakelite and vintage rhinestones, I love the look of scarab bracelets.

Commonality and mutual likes. It is what draws us together. I have met so many cool new people through my Chester County Ramblings Gardening Group and Chester County Ramblings Home Cooking Group. It is so nice to connect with people who like to do some of what I like to do.

Moving to Chester County I am discovering myself again, not just Chester County. What I am discovering are parts of myself that are incredibly positive that I thought I lost through the twists and turns in life. Maybe it’s turning 50 too. At 30 I learned it was o.k. to be who I was, but at 50 I have learned to be myself.

I think that’s pretty cool.

I will close with song lyrics sticking in my head. I am not a huge U2 aficionado (that would be my sister since forever!), but a verse of new lyrics that I keep hearing again and again because of Apple goes like this:

I woke up at the moment when the miracle occurred
Heard a song that made some sense out of the world
Everything I ever lost now has been returned
The most beautiful sound I ever heard

Thanks for stopping by today.

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kaleidoscope

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Memories are sometimes but little fragments, like looking through a kaleidoscope.

Sometimes a song triggers a memory. You hear a song and you stop and remember where you heard it first. Yesterday I heard Vacation by the Go-Go’s. That song always reminds me of the Jersey shore, my friend Karen and her friend Ellie. I heard that song and in my mind’s eye saw us as our late teenage selves when we didn’t worry about tanning and were spending summer in flip flops with sand on our feet. I swear I could almost smell the Bain de Soleil Orange Gelèe.

Other memories and like shards of glass. Fragments that pop into your head in that stage between sleeping and waking, which fall away when you wake up. I had that happen the other day when I first started thinking about writing this post. But I didn’t write it down, and the memory was fleeting.

This morning is September 1st. I woke up with memory of the many years my friend Pam would leave all of her friends “rabbit, rabbit” messages the day the old month ended to remind us to say rabbit, rabbit the first day of every new month. Saying rabbit, rabbit as your first words of the new month is supposed to bring you luck all month long. I still say it.

Today is also Labor Day. As a kid, in spite of the true origination of the holiday , you knew it was the last “official” day of summer vacation. An in between day when you are packing up and coming home from summer vacation. Maybe at a neighborhood barbecue. You wake up and even the air is different. Change is coming, a fresh start in a new school year. And the dreaded thought of homework.

Labor Day marks our transition of summer towards fall. It will feel like summer a few weeks yet, but soon it will be time for hay rides and corn mazes.

Enjoy the day.

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mind meandering

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DSC_4228As I begin this post it has no title.  It is just one of those things I woke up a few hours ago thinking about, so here we are.

I was wondering if as we age we give ourselves permission to be more our true or authentic selves?

Maybe I will just call this post what it is: a flowing stream of consciousness.

Yesterday I was thinking about high school.  I wasn’t part of any special clique, I had friends in all groups.  But I do remember the very real high school pressure to belong to one group or the other. To me, it never felt quite right, so I floated.

I remember girls and guys I knew even back then, and even in a private school, being bullied by their peers in different groups.  Like a very preppy and civilized Jets vs. Sharks.

To this day the memories are so strong for some of these people that they never even come back for reunions.  I work on my reunions so  I think about this stuff when we are planning parties. The funny thing is I realized years ago again how these people who were pack leaders and bullies don’t really matter and never really did.  As a matter of fact when these former pack leaders do show up at reunions I marvel at how little they have changed and it always strikes me as a little bit sad.

DSC_0137It sounds kooky to think that as adults we still can judge from the vantage point of our younger selves, but I have had other friends who also work on their reunions say the same things as me.  As a matter of fact I remember once friend who planned her reunion being all worried about this one group of girls coming to her home as she was hosting the reunion party.  And she has this awesome house and a terrific family of her own and has accomplished so much.  Yet all these years later she was still worried at first until she realized she didn’t have to measure up in their eyes then or now.

What I have noticed is for every stage of life, there are people like that.  Unhappy, malcontented people who essentially seem to like to make people unhappy and/or sit and judge with a misplaced sense of entitlement or superiority.  My ex and some of his siblings are in that category. I am sure they hate being mentioned in my writing (and I have no clue as to why they still follow me) , but they were part of my life experience. And I have never said they were horrible people 24/7 because they weren’t.  There was always just this hum about them, running underneath.

I will admit I never got to know most of these siblings particularly well.  I was never allowed to by my ex, so it was an observer’s existence for me.  In the early years when I would try to get to know them as in call to say hello, or send an e-mail I was always met with an angry wall of “Why are you contacting them? ” so eventually I stopped.  It was funny spending 8 1/2 years with people as “family” with restrictions. What was even more strange, knowing myself, is that became normal to me.

If these people had stayed in my life or I in theirs, I would have ended up an angry and bitterly unhappy person at a minimum.  I didn’t realize any of this until I was out and he had left.  Then, all of a sudden one day a few weeks after he was gone, when I really wasn’t thinking about it, life was better and I could breathe. My point in all this is I had know idea until I was out how much these people had changed me. How I had allowed myself to be changed, as in molded.  This was the first time I had pretty much denied who I was for the trade-off of “fitting in”.  I learned by almost losing myself how bad that is. It’s a crazy realization.

DSC_4249I have noticed that as I get older and water continues to seek its own level, that these unhappy and malcontented types still sort of bunch up together. It is as if they know subconsciously as individuals their weaknesses and ill humor towards others won’t be tolerated.  Maybe it is a pack mentality of sorts?

There is this one group of women, whom I actually don’t know so I can’t say as I understand what is so awful in their lives that they have to be so miserable, yet they are.  They literally meet for tea and scones.  It seems so civilized and sweet and country folksy, only what it is no better than a gossip club.  They rip people up one side and down the other (myself included which is so funny because they have never met me and don’t know me, it’s because I am a blogger and shock and horrors different from them), and for what?  What does it gain them in the end? Nothing.

There was a group like this in my Main Line neighborhood growing up.  The leader kept binoculars on her kitchen windowsill. Her house was up on a hill so with a good pair of binoculars she could check out everyone around her.  If there was a strange car in your driveway, the phone would literally ring and it would be her inquiring as to who was visiting you and why.

The leader and ladies would literally meet once a week with a brown bag lunch.  They would report on the happenings and transgressions and presumed transgressions of the neighbors. They actually called themselves a gossip club, amusingly enough.  It gained them nothing, either.  At first they were sort of feared, eventually they were just ignored.

I guess it just fascinates me that as we age and become more comfortable with who we are, the more people feel the need to question that from the outside.  And sometimes these people don’t necessarily have a strong voice, but they have a loud voice that at first gives the presumption of authority, but eventually all realize they are just loud and self-important. Not truly strong beings to be either feared or emulated.  It gets to a point where you have to stop and turn and think about who are these people and do we really care what they think in the big picture?

The answer isn’t necessarily simple because as human beings it is human nature to want to belong.  But what you realize as you get older is you don’t actually have to belong where you think you do and you will find plenty of people who are happy to know you just as you are.

DSC_4302What I have realized about myself is that over the years I have suffered collateral damage emotionally.  I think we all do indeed suffer emotional damage that to an extent.  It is what you do with that experience that matters.  Do you let it sour you, or do you look at it for what it is: life experience and learn and move forward?

Life is a gift.  If we are alive and kicking, why can’t that fuel happiness?  I guess at the end of the day I will never understand the truly miserable.  It must be sad and exhausting to be them.

Be true to yourself. Or learn to one baby step at a time. People are just people at the end of the day and as adults we can freely choose who it is we wish to be around.

Be happy and learn to breathe freely.

Thanks for stopping by.

 

 

life’s circles

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I read this quote once:

“No matter the deviation, all things come full circle. You begin and end your journey in the same place, but with a different set of eyes.”

I don’t remember who said the above quote, I wrote it down on the corner of a notebook a couple of years ago.

When people say life comes full circle, it’s because it’s true. Not all the time, and not to everyone, but it happens.

The fabric of life is different for everyone, but there are things that connect us to one and other. Where we live, where we grew up, where we went to school created the formative life threads we all have. Then we add to the threads based on life experience as we get older.

Life has cycles, and people enter and leave our lives. But with the cycles, I find the circles. Coming back to what you are from. I have terrific friends, and a lot of them are friends I have had since I was a small child and since I was a teenager.

My mother’s mother always said you come back to what you are from. I don’t think she was referring to a physical place, I think she is referring to people in our lives.

I was talking to one of my friends from the way back time machine of high school today, Karen. She lives out of state now, so playing catch up today was a marathon call. She is one of these people whom I have always loved speaking with because she has always been very real. We have gone from being teenagers to middle-aged women and wow, where did all the years go? One minute we are like 18 and well…now we are 50. Yet I love talking to her now as much as I did then.

Time flies.

Don’t misunderstand me, I love meeting new people. But there is always something to be said about the comfortable long term friendships of life. As much as time flies, life has these circles and if you are lucky you still have these people in your life. And it’s comforting because these are the people who know you best.

Thanks for stopping by.