Category Archives: Celebration

And So This is Christmas

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I will have a full house this year, to celebrate another milestone birthday. And I’m grateful for that. I truly am. I wonder how it is I got to be this old. I still feel twenty! But I have survived a year since the slipped disc diagnosis. Slight, I keep reminding myself, as if that alleviates things. But, hey, the pain is more controllable. For that I am grateful.

I tell myself how lucky I am to have illnesses that hurt worst in the morning. I have never been, and will never be, a morning person, so how apropos is that? I can linger in bed, read, write, play on my iPad. My responsibilities have lessened with age. One perk, I suppose. Or maybe, I have downsized them by instinct. Self-preservation.

Whatever it is, I give thanks to have all my kids and grandkids with me this year in what may be the very last Christmas spent in this house. I may have to change my header from palm trees to mountains. Palm trees or the sight of palm trees has always been soothing to me. They represent home, home in south Texas that is, but they have also been representative of home here in south Florida for over thirty years, though I’ve never felt of this place. Have just been passing through for three decades!

I look forward to making plans for next year. I am making mental lists of what goes with me, what gets sold, what gets given away. Something else to think about, occupy my mind. But for now, I will enjoy my family and give eternal thanks for all that I have been given in this life.

All.

I wish everyone the merriest Christmas, happiest holidays, and the very best 2023!

I’ll Take That, Life

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Education has always been a high priority for me. I don’t think I’ve ever stopped going to “school,” stopped taking classes, stopped learning. Stopped wanting to learn.

My environment growing up did not cultivate that in me. Nor in my siblings. I wondered what was wrong with me, at times. To always have my head stuck in a book, when no one else in my family picked up a book willingly.

I picked up book after book, even at risk to my well-being (more on that someday). But I persevered, and picked up a lot of books in nursing school, and afterwards. And although I did not achieve all that I wanted to academically, kids, job, life, etc., I’ve had the unparalleled joy of watching my daughters reach higher than I did.

I’ll take that, Life, I’ll take that.

My daughter, graduating with a master’s degree in English Literature a few days ago.

A Glow

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It is eerily quiet in this house now that we two are the only ones left rattling around. For almost two weeks we had a little person around us 24/7. In preparation for our trip to celebrate my younger granddaughter’s first birthday, I kept four-year-old Alyssa away from daycare. Though she loves school, I was afraid she would pick up some germ surprises to take to Carmen, who does not go to daycare.

Sometimes I wish I could stop thinking like a nurse, an infectious disease nurse, no less. But that doesn’t seem to ever become a possibility. And of course, I can never stop being an overprotective grandmother. But my plan worked well. Alyssa remained healthy and she fell in love with her little cousin. And for her part, Carmen loved toddling around after her big cousin.

Though RA went with me, and made sure I knew it was with me, I stubbornly refused to give it any quarter. Instead, I focused on enjoying a whirlwind week with my two grandbabies. From having them pose together for a professional photographer, to our trip to New Orleans, a fun day spent touring a children’s activity museum, then stopping at a pumpkin patch to pick out 25 pumpkins to serve as party favors for the birthday fiesta.

It was a little bit of heaven while it lasted and now that I am home, I miss all that activity. I especially miss that little voice and the little hand that slipped into mine at regular intervals, wanting to make sure that I was still her Na, even though she was having to share me with someone else.

We are back to “normal” now; all of us back to our routines. After a day of rest, it’s time for me to get back to work. But I have fresh memories to keep me company. To keep me warm and my heart aglow

Birthday fiesta

Sweet Memories

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I remember when I used to scour the stores looking for just the right basket. And when I found that, I went hunting for the just the right gift. What was it they were into at that particular time, in that particular year? Their whims changed with the wind and turned me into a weather vane, always pointing in a different direction.

It gave me untold pleasure to follow their beckoning. I would hide to arrange everything in their baskets just so. And then hide the baskets themselves until that Saturday night when I had to stay up and wait till they were sound asleep. Only then could I sneak into their rooms and place the basket where it would be the first thing their eyes would light upon come Easter morning.

Those days, those moments are now filed away in my memory banks. They are images of times past, marching before my eyes like clips of a movie collage. I needn’t worry anymore about constructing the perfect Easter morning surprise. Now they surprise me. Now they give to me. The most precious of all gifts.

Easter Sunday

 

My granddaughter Carmen (for some reason reminding me of Carmen Miranda).

Happy Easter everyone!

To The Future!

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Today is the first day of the rest of my life. That sounds so cliché.

Today is the first day of the second part of my life. That sounds horrendous!
Who wants to live 120 years?

Today is just another day, another Saturday in a long string of Saturdays I have lived through. Another Saturday in perhaps a future string of Saturdays awaiting me. I hope not too many.

Both my parents lived another 29 years from the point I’m standing in now. 29 years. I think if I was offered another 29 years, I would say, No, thank you.

If I knew I could live what would essentially be the last third of my life as I am now, the physical status I’m in at present, RA and all, I might say yes. Enthusiastically, yes!

But, we can’t know what is to come. There are no guarantees.

And I suppose it’s just as well.

So, I raise my glass in a toast as I blindly go where I have never gone before.

To the future!!

Tequila Turkey

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It’s that time again. Time to figure out what to serve on Christmas Day. I go through this every year, the pondering, the planning.

It’s the same thing every Thanksgiving; I’m always wanting to tweak the usual fare. This year I did. While visiting my son, I became acquainted with the Food Network. Seems it was always on so I watched. This particular chef caught my interest. As did her recipe for the aforementioned tequila turkey.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/marcela-valladolid/apricot-and-tequila-glazed-turkey-recipe/index.html

The results of this recipe were in one word, scrumptious. The turkey was moist to the point that chewing was practically optional. Everyone raved. That turkey made the quickest disappearing act ever. Leftovers, what leftovers?

I debated whether to repeat this recipe for Christmas, but I’m just not in a turkey mood. After some thought and discussion we came up with an idea. The one ingredient we’ll carry over from Thanksgiving to Christmas will be the tequila. We’ll need it to make the Margaritas that will add the finishing touch to the Mexican spread we will serve.

Come to think of it, my red serape will look great as a tablecloth . . .

Ripples

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As the days go by and my birthday approaches, I can’t help but think of what my life has been. The ripples my almost six decades on this earth have produced. I find it hard to believe I have been alive this long. And yet it seems like such a short time has passed. I don’t feel it. If I don’t feel old does that mean I’m not?

Some days I do feel ancient, but it only means I need more rest, more sleep. Like today, I feel very sloth-like. But, I was up till 3 am. Just wasn’t sleepy, I busied myself with my crochet project. One of them anyway. And today it’s done; that blue and white blanket will soon be making its way to California, to cause another ripple in the fabric of time. My time. And the time of my loved ones.

I have much to be thankful for in this life, many blessings. My children and now my granddaughters. Ripples that extend way into the future. The future that one day will not include me. And yet it will, because I will live on in them.

My lovely Carmen

My lovely Carmen

And my beautiful Alyssa

And my beautiful Alyssa

Longevity

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My hair is too long, my nails are too long and I think maybe my teeth are too long. Well not so much my teeth, but is that not what they say when you are getting old? That you’re getting a bit long in the tooth?

I will do something about my hair in a couple of weeks. I don’t know how or when it decided to get so long. I had no intention of letting it grow to such lengths. Seems it snuck up on me. It could be that the feel and weight of it against my back and neck hypnotized me into feeling like yester-me.

My nails I will take care of tonight. For some reason, I find it soothing to care for them, to shape them and apply color. Maybe it’s because that makes my hands appear more like they used to. Seems time has left its mark upon them and now RA is working on leaving a trail as well. This week brought the news that I have an enchondroma on my right index finger, a benign tumor that forms in the cartilage that lines the inside of the bones. My rheumatologist said he was leaving himself a note to speak with the radiologist who read my hand x-rays. Won’t that be a thrilling conversation.

And as to getting old, this morning I realized with a start what today was. The first of December. The first day of my birthday month. I will be turning a number that I can’t truly get my head around. For one thing, I don’t feel that old, for another, how is it possible I am coming up on six long decades?

59 doesn’t seem so old, but 60? And yet, I feel 40-something. I feel younger than I have in over a decade. A dichotomy perhaps, between the calendar and my body. It was really my brain that started to feel younger first. And then my body followed suit. I became more active physically, and spent time doing the things that brought me joy, peace. And what resulted was that my odometer started rolling backwards, metaphorically speaking. Time gave me the gift of time.

So in recognition of this upcoming birthday, I decided to try something. To post every day for this birthday month. And right when I thought it would be a good idea to try it, the image of Yoda popped into my head. Telling Luke (paraphrasing): “There is no try, there’s only do.” He goes on to tell Luke other things, like we must unlearn what we have learned.

Yoda’s words were few and maybe not in the correct syntax, but he was always so profound. His words ring true to me now. I must not try, only do. I must unlearn the pain that I have known and accept the gift of time that has been given me, up to now and yet to be.