iSmile

To take the most uncomfortable situation and make it funny is not really difficult for me. With the doctors and nurses in my life, I have always been able to find humor or smiles, even if it’s after I get home. I told one nurse my blood was slightly greenish in color, but she shouldn’t be surprised or afraid when she stuck me for the sample. ; ) Nothing can be so serious that we can not or should not be able to laugh about it. Sometimes it takes awhile, and maybe even years before we find the humor in our grief.

I remember going to a funeral wake, many years ago. It was a coworker’s father, and the four of us carpooled the 30 miles to the wake at the funeral home that afternoon. It was an open casket, and in our carpool group was with a young man in his 20s, who never had seen a dead body. Our friend sat, without blinking, entranced at the lifeless body. He taps me on the shoulder and, not so quietly, whispers, “I think he moved”. Fortunately, we sat in the back of the parlor. I lost it and my contagious giggles passed to the rest of our small group. We had to leave before we got caught, and watched our improper friend have involuntary shudders of terror the rest of the day.

I’ve often witnessed an angry person, ranting about something. Inevitably, someone else in the room will laugh. I’m never sure whether to laugh with the inappropriate person or listen to the screamer. If you laugh, they may get more mad or hurt. If you listen to the anger, you still hear the uncomfortable giggling in the room. It’s hard for me not to smile at the giggler.

Cracking smiles sometimes can make the damage worse. I’ve taped up an old picture near the treadmill. It’s a picture of me from a very long time ago in a swimming suit in the Caribbean. It give me motivation, and have now begun to see some of my abs toning up a bit. When RT saw it, with a smirk on his face, he said I was hot. Was??!!? Was!? was . . . Oh, well. I could have taken it better without the sarcastic grin... : )

Recently, I gave a future young bride some advice. She should choose lime green hoop skirted dresses for her wedding party. They would make her look even MORE beautiful in her wedding gown. The bride didn’t smile at all. ha ha ha --- Next to me was The Baby with a frightful look on her face, as she is in the wedding party. Her face was priceless. I don’t think the future bride took me seriously. Surely she knows I was joking -- I think.

It’s a sickness that I laugh when people get scared. With three older brothers, I learned quickly about rubber spiders and snakes, and where to strategically place them for the best fright. I learned to hide under tables and grab ankles when I was very young. As I progressed, my pranks were more planned and devious. It was a learned behavior that I laughed at scared people, and I lovingly passed this trait to my children. Actually, I think they hate me for it, yet they are still trying to “get” me.

When someone trips or falls, as long as they are alright, the wisecracks and laughter follow. Watching someone walk into a wall, or doing something silly or stupid are funny, and when I laugh, I will not make excuses for it. Fond memories are filled with smiles, even if some have been unsuitable for the event. It breaks up the intense moments and makes them a little more bearable, and makes our silly human mistakes a little easier to tolerate.

Bouncing Back

Today, everything is good. The blooms are coming and the garden is slowly coming back to life, after another long winter. The rain, from the past few days, has cleared, and I look forward to getting in the dirt again. Each year, I forget about a few of the perennial blossoms, and am excited to see the beginnings of the hyacinth or paper whites. Even the lilies are showing off their green stalks, preparing for their debut this summer. The garden regenerates before my eyes.

I need the same rejuvenation. I want to lose the bad information, and retain the good. In the past year, the ugly that touched my life will still exist. As my attitude changes with the season of Lent/Spring, the dormant, listless browns begin to turn into the bright greens of renewal.

Once we are a witness, we can not “unknow” anything, and certain things are stuck in our minds forever. However, there are personal ways I lessen this ugly and bring out the beautiful, and to fill my mind with better things, so the bad seem less accentuated. The memories we make may supply us throughout our lives. I would hate to be older, and recollect nothing but the awful.

Last night, I spoke with a friend’s mother. She is 94 years old and quite an amazing woman. We spoke of the changes in her life, her love of watching Jeopardy, and even called me a “youngster”. (Perspective is everything.) My friend worries about her, but he’s too close to her. From the outside, I see an incredibly intelligent and down to earth woman, who is grateful for each day she has, and does not allow any of the bad memories steal from her extraordinary life. Today, everything is good. And that should be enough.

I received a note from an old friend, reminding me of something horrible that happened years ago. Sometimes pain can make a gash and we heal, but the scar remains. She and I had some other amazing, laughing and being young. We remember these times more than the former, because the good memories seem to always soften the bad. We’ve made plans to meet and make more memories this November, and I am so excited to see her again. We both look forward to laughing together again.

So I will fill up with new and wonderful memories for my life, looking for the cushion of the positive over the negative. I want the extra hug, the warm sun and the promise of renewal. Love and friendship, laughing and living, overtaking the gloom. The flowers are recapturing the garden into its color and true form, eloquently reminding me beauty needs to be seen and enjoyed, and not to dwell on the past cold winter.

Today, everything is good. And that should be enough.

Face Lift

Every day I notice something about old age creeping in. The fine lines, under my eyes, are becoming more prominent. They seem to meet at the point where my five year old crow's feet begin. I am not one for surgery to remove these wrinkles. When I realize how I've earned these lines, it's really not so bad.

Lately, there are some things keeping me from feeling so old. I've begun to workout every day - every morning. After the initial cracks of my knees, I managed to get to 2.1 miles on the treadmill last Thursday! I've lost a considerable amount of weight, and a few muscles I haven't seen for years are toned and smiling back at me. I have a serious ab workout once a week, in lieu of the cardio, to force the aging body back into submission. The strain on my face makes the wrinkles a little deeper.

I've been able to catch up with some old friends from high school. None of us feel the last 30+ years when we speak to each other. Some online conversations have gone into the wee hours, and laughing so hard our cheeks hurt, reminding us of the long lost slumber parties. The amazing thing is, we are still talking about boys. Mostly, the same ones we giggled about years ago, plus some current cuties in our lives now. The smiles make my wrinkles deeper.

I have also made an effort with my pianos and music. It keeps my mind and soul belonging to me. It centers me and gives me an hour or two of something I like to do solely for myself. The eye strain of the music makes my wrinkles a little deeper. I've recently looked back to some of my writing from years ago. The naive thoughts I had then, remind me of talking to The Baby. She has the same innocent way of the world around her. She wants to change the world and make it better and brighter. I bite my tongue and open my heart to her. I listen intently of her ideas and ideals. My happy tears make the wrinkles deeper.

The Baby has no lines around her eyes yet. Maybe one day, she'll earn them like me.

THE REINS HAVE SLACKENED. IT WILL SOON BELONG TO THEM.

The education children give parents is never ending, and it goes both ways. They are young and, though The Baby is almost a legal adult, there is so much for them to yet experience in life.

The past few years, we have watched from a distance, the conversion of teenagers to young adults, going “steady” to engagements to weddings to babies. We were with our kids and a group of their friends the other night, celebrating the engagement of one of the young couples. I have watched this young couple grow up and both, The Boy and The Baby, are in the wedding party.

To give them all of the information we have experienced through life is impossible. We give them the best, consolidated pieces of advice we can in their first 18 years. There are not enough hours in the day to have detailed conversations about everything. It takes 30 minutes to watch a sitcom on television, but an hour to explain it to someone who missed the episode. Besides the fact, they would never believe us on some things. They’ll learn as they go forward in their lives, but watching them experience things for the first time makes me smile at their naïve thinking.

I remember giving the kids their education on insurance in their early teens, and why they had to have it. The Boy honestly thought I was lying to him. It sounded like a legalized gambling ring, where you pay into it, most of your life for auto, home, medical and life. If nothing happens, you lose. Who gets to keep all this money you pay in? When he finally began to believe me, he said, “no, I don’t want any insurance”. I told him it was the law -- no insurance, no car, no freedom. : )

The education from them has been priceless as well. Myspace and Facebook were introduced by them to us. Keeping current with favorite people and music has been so much easier with these great networking sites.

The education from them has continued. A couple of months ago, I learned what a “weenus” is and most of us have two of them. I know what you’re thinking too, and I had the same thought myself. I didn’t know there was a name for that, much less one that rhymes so well with another body part. I’ll wait here while you Google it.

There is more slang I’ve learned over the years, like emo, nuff, shiznit, etc. The slang is the hardest to keep up with, but if used in a sentence properly, you can usually understand after a hearing few times. Every generation has had slang, but we only had lyrics on albums to identify it. For these new words to go across the country to the youth took a lot longer than it does now. Today, the internet has made it so much easier for their vocabulary to spread so quickly.

At the party, the parents grouped, talking of the kids and the kids grouped together, talking about themselves and each other. We felt older watching them, but it’s a nice feeling of being older. They’ve given us pleasure and we now stand in awe of them, gullible and so trusting that the world is waiting for them. We have been careful not to share in details of some events of life, because we do not want them to have certain experiences until necessary. Illness, death or other sadness is seen in their upbringing, hopefully from a distance, and quickly smoothed over by protective mothers, so their pain is minimal. Without this form of protection, they wouldn’t be the same young adults with the innocent wide eyed look at the life in front of them.

It was so much fun to share in their dreams this night. There were a couple engagements this year, and we all wondered quietly which couple would be next. After a lot of time thinking, I think this is the best time of our lives. It’s when the kids are grown, making their own decisions and we are not yet too old to really enjoy life. We are still young enough to have fun, without the worries of constant daily parenting. Twenty years from now may suck, but now is amazing to witness the innocent preparing to take over the world.