A Tale Of Two Concerts

Not that long ago, I was able to take my younger daughter to a One Direction concert. It was a defining moment for her…one of those days that she’ll never forget. It was an evening that she looked forward to from the moment she knew she was going to attend. She quickly informed me of the “outfit” she *had* to have to attend such a concert…her clothing an homage to her favorite band. This involved me ordering items from websites I’d never heard of before, but who e-mail me daily with specials on unique, screened T’s.

A few months later, I had the opportunity to attend a Rod Stewart concert. At first I thought of taking my younger daughter, but when she drew a blank on his name, I changed my mind. I could have played his music for her so she could recognize that she did, actually, know some of his music, but I preferred to take someone who would get the same flash-back experience as I knew I would have.

My girlfriend and I headed out on Saturday and arrived early. She had attended the One Direction concert with her nieces.  Although we hadn’t been together, we’d experienced it in tandem. The first thing we noticed was that the traffic was much lighter. When we got inside, we wondered if the venue was even going to fill up. Things were decidedly quiet and low-key. 

We observed the quiet, meager crowd. The mean age of the audience was roughly 60…compared to the mean age at the One Direction concert which was roughly 13…and that includes the many moms and dads chaperoning the wee ones. At exactly 7:30, Steve Winwood started things off. When I think of Steve Winwood, I think jazz…and he didn’t disappoint. I googled him and learned that he wrote Gimme Some Lovin’ when he was only 18. He brought the house down singing it as an encore. The entire place, by this time with all seats filled, stood up and gave him a standing ovation.

After a brief intermission, Rod Stewart entered the stage and wowed us for two hours. I flashed back to high school and even middle-school. Song after song, I smiled and felt, well, perhaps something akin to what my daughter felt when she listened to the One Direction concert.  No, that’s not right. If I remember my early teens correctly, her experience was all about dreaming about the future, dreaming of knights in shining armor. For me, it was about reminiscing about the past, and finding the shining knight inside myself.

In the end, my night wasn’t about dreaming about spending time with celebrities, it was about reveling in happy memories. I love where I am in life, with so many happy memories and so much to look forward to. If I’d seen Rod when he was 38 instead of 68 and I was 19 instead of 49, would I have loved it more? Would I still be thinking about it now?

Find the Joy in the Journey…enjoy every moment that you can!

Ode to My Baby Sister

Having a baby sister has its pros and cons…I see this even more clearly now that I have my own children. The youngest gets cut a lot of slack, but they also get the most hand-me-downs. My baby sister came along a little over a year after I was born, so of course our parents thought we’d be fast friends from day one. In reality, I don’t remember a time without her there. I have early memories of looking out of my crib and seeing that adorable sleeping baby in the crib across the room. Actually, I don’t recall thinking anything, all I have in my brain is a picture of her…so my adult self thinks, “beautiful baby” whereas I was probably thinking some baby version of INTERLOPER!  I could see that she was the baby, not me, so I figured out how to stick my hand down to the latch and drop the side of my crib. My mother would usually find me curled up under my crib with my baby blanket, but once she found me in the crib with my sister sleeping on top of her.

One time, a few years later, I awoke from a nightmare about an episode of Lost in Space where a green lady was mesmerizing Dr. Smith into giving her their fuel, which was her own sustenance. She had a sultry voice calling out to him seductively, “Dr. Smi-ith!” and he’d come to her, madly enthralled. I was scared to death of that lady! I awoke in the dark and popped out of bed and opened the door…I intended to cross the hall to my parents room to let them know I had a nightmare and needed some comforting. Instead, when I opened the door, there she was! She was lying on the floor between my door and my parents’ in all her shiny greenness. Then my sister woke up too and she saw the green lady too! We still don’t know how this twin nightmare happened, but young as we were we still remember it.

My sister and I were swimming at a very young age and I still remember her taking the test to swim in the Olympic-sized pool at the local recreation center. She was about 6 years old and looked younger. At first she’d get called out of the pool all the time because the life guards couldn’t believe she was allowed in the “big” pool and wanted to send her back to the “middle” pool (although, not all the way back to the “baby” pool!). I was sometimes asked to verify her “big” pool status. But, then she started diving and no one asked about her swimming ability again. I enjoyed watching her dive…she was fearless until she hit her head on the board one day and gave up diving.

When she was in middle school I remember her singing on stage and was again amazed at her self-confidence, not to mention her amazing voice. I don’t recall her doing any performing after that, but she seemed to channel all her outgoingness into friend-making. Once we were both in high school, her friends were around so much that they became my friends too. Nice to have a sister like that! (I always wanted a twin brother, for similar, but not similar reasons…but I digress). We even graduated in the same calendar year because she finished a semester early, but she still lays claim to her own graduating class a year after mine.

After that, we both felt compelled to move away from our hometown…one to the northeast, one to the west. An additional move for each of us and we are now many miles apart. That has meant not seeing one another as often as we’d like, but we are trying to make up for it now that vacation days are a bit more numerous. I wish I were there in person today to say to her:

Happy Birthday, Sis! Find the Joy in the Journey!

Related Post: Ode to My Big Sister

Ode to My Big Sister

I am blessed to have two sisters, one older and one younger. We are far-flung, but all reachable within a few hours or so, depending on mode of travel. I often think how nice it would be if we lived much closer, but on the other hand, I think it’s nice to travel and see another part of the country once in a while. My big sister lives in a big, fun city and she lives in a fabulous apartment and doesn’t mind me crashing whenever I want…well, I always give lots of notice and now that she’s an empty-nester, she has lots of room! Today is her birthday, and since I can’t be there, I thought I’d write a blog about growing up and growing older with her.

One of my earliest memories of her is about her love of the Beatles, or rather her adoration of George Harrison. I remember her watching the news coverage of a live performance where several girls close to the stage fainted and were taken away in an ambulance. My sister, just a little girl herself, was savvy enough to declare that those girls were fools…they missed the concert! My next memory of her is watching Dark Shadows together. I was too young to understand the storyline and therefore was “un-scare-able”. She’d sit on the couch with me in front of her and when something scary would happen, she’d duck her head behind me and ask me to tell her when the scary part was over!

As we got older, I learned by observation that her confrontational style about house rules got her in trouble every once in a while, or caused arguments with our parents that she lost. I therefore developed the “middle-child” style of breaking the rules first and asking for forgiveness and taking my punishment later (or rather, not getting caught in the first place).

When we hit our teens, there were three teen girls in the family all at once! Our dad was working full time and going to law school full time too…so with him out of the house a lot, our home was quite full of estrogen and drama.

Even though my sister was older than me, I always wanted the same privileges and experiences as she did…when she went off to college as I started high school, I was impatient. I wanted to skip straight to college. This was only exacerbated when we took her to college freshman year and someone mistook me for a college student! With her off at college for four years, the drama mellowed and she became this grown-up person who made decisions on her own and did things like go abroad for a year, take road trips, and make friends and date people we didn’t even know! Oh, how I wanted to be in college and all grown-up too!

My senior year in high school, just after I’d picked my college, she told me that she was going to graduate school at the same place. I was so surprised and happy! I was also completely shocked when our parents agreed to let us take a road trip that summer to visit the school and city over 600 miles away. Wow! Being an adult was SO cool! Off we went. I don’t remember doing any of the driving…my sister has always been a road-tripper able to put in 10+ hours of driving in a day. I don’t remember much of the trip, but I remember being in a popular local landmark which is very high…I was leaning over a window looking down to the street when I heard a faint “Laura? Laura? Please get away from the window!”…that was how I learned that my fearless sister is afraid of heights. You learn things on a road trip.

She has preceded me through graduate school, first job, marriage, and children. Now she is preceding me to 50 and empty-nest years. My mom always used to tell me, “don’t wish your life away”, so I guess I must have often voiced my desire to be older, like my sister. I have finally slowed down enough to appreciate where I am in my life and therefore to appreciate in a new way that I am blessed with a big sister who can help me navigate whatever comes next.

Happy Birthday, Sis! Find the Joy in the Journey!

 

Related post: Ode to My Baby Sister

Memories of The Fourth of July

I have a picture of myself, somewhere in an album up in the attic I suppose, where I’m 13 years old wearing red, white, and blue and proudly displaying a flag cake that I made for the occasion. It was the 200^th birthday of our nation and everyone was excited about this special day. To commemorate the year, the mint issued special bi-centennial quarters which I still see occasionally even though it is 35 years later. Rarer are the two-dollar bills depicting the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I think there are still a lot around, but they were never very popular as currency so they haven’t circulated much.

My dad gave me a brand new two-dollar bill straight from the bank. He had written on it, To Laura July 4, 1976.  At the time, I thought that was devaluing the bill…it wasn’t fresh from the bank if it had writing on it, and isn’t it illegal to write on money? So silly of me. I still have that bill, of course. It is a wonderful memento of that day and of my dad. I think it’s illegal to make a copy of money too, so now we’re even. I must’ve gotten a bit of the rebel from my dad!

I remember simple, free fireworks as a kid; placing an itchy wool blanket over the dry, sharp blades of grass by the football field, swatting mosquitoes away, peering at the firemen in their gear as they quarantined the explosives and ensured our safety, yawning at the late hour…then, the amazing fireworks! Bloom after bloom of colorful lights and those blinding, deafening blares of light and sound booming between the cascading shows of lights.

I still love fireworks, but I hate crowds. Once when our younger daughter was just 14 months old, we went to see fireworks and hear a symphony of Sousa’s marches. The music was great, although baby was restless…and then the fireworks started with a bang and baby started screaming in terror! We left. A few years later we tried again. They let everyone in at the same time and you had to hurry to find a good place and stake your claim. I was shocked at the white-haired old ladies, wielding their lawn chairs, shoving past families like ours with little children, heedless of any injuries they might leave in their wake. The music was wonderful as usual, but halfway through the concert, a huge storm system swept through and the whole place was evacuated. It was an expensive evening with no fireworks and the realization that people don’t necessarily get nicer just because they get older.

Now we rarely go to the fireworks on the Fourth. Our city stopped showing them in the city years ago and started showing them in a camp 45 miles away. But we get something better…the merchants in our town hold a festival every summer and light fireworks two nights in a row…and we have virtually front row seats right in our own front yard. Now that is perfect! I get double the fireworks and no crowds, just not on the Fourth.

What I like about the Fourth is singing America The Beautiful, all four verses, in church the Sunday before. I like thinking about what a wonderful country I live in where there is freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and the right to pursue happiness. I think back to growing up and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance every day in school, right hand over heart:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

And I never forget that our great nation was created as a republic…a place where we have inalienable rights that cannot be voted away as they could be in a democracy. As the Declaration of Independence so clearly states:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

And as I think about my 50 by 50, I am aware as never before that this is the only nation on earth where the pursuit of happiness is considered an inalienable right. God Bless America!

Find the Joy in the Journey and pursue happiness!

It’s Not About the Stuff

Sunday before last was Pentecost and my son had volunteered to do the reading, from the Acts of the Apostles, in Spanish. It’s a lovely event to experience as 6 or 7 members of the congregation come up one -by-one and read in either their family language or one they learned in school. When my son participated, the languages were Spanish, Hungarian, Polish, French, German, Arabic, and English. After the English, all speakers talk at once in their various languages and then flow right into the last verse, all in English, “ yet, we hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God”.

I had decided to use the video functionality on my camera to capture my son’s speaking and the final cacophony of voices. I was a bit embarrassed to hold my camera up over my head during service, but I did it anyway. I missed the very beginning as my son started to speak because I didn’t know that he was going to be first. Then when I filmed the second part, I was so in-the-moment, listening, that I failed to zoom in on the group until halfway through.

Well, apparently I don’t know how to use the video function on my camera, because when I got home, there were no movie files to be found! I was very disappointed not to be able to watch it again, but I’m so glad I was there and I was immersed in the experience because the feeling of it is still with me.

I have always felt that it’s all about the experience and not the stuff. But I’ve also always felt that it’s important to document life’s moments whether meaningful or mundane. I scrapbooked before there was a scrapbooking industry that formulized it.  I used to journal, but have fallen away from that; I thought it was a good way to document the time I’ve lived in history as a working mom so that my kids could know me in a new way once I was gone. I’ve been, on balance, a bad historian of my own life. I videotaped my son on tapes whose whereabouts I’m very fuzzy. I never videotaped my daughters. I did scrapbook a significant swath of my life, but when I had my last child I ran out of time and energy to continue.

What I do have is a lot of stuff. At one point I had all the hand-me-downs of four of my children’s cousins and a couple of friends. Surely I appreciated saving money on kids’ clothes! But at the end of the day, I had a ton of kids’ clothes. Boy clothes saved after my son outgrew them ended up to be not too useful except to send to my nephew…but my neatnik sister sent them back with additions after he outgrew them. Clothes that my older daughter wore turned out to be not too useful for my younger daughter. They were vastly different sizes and born in opposite seasons (which somehow did not work in my favor to make the clothes fit in the right season!).

I also, as mentioned in an earlier post, have all my childhood stuff up in my attic. Some I’d like to find, for nostalgia’s sake, like the Panasonic Toot-a-Loop radio and the Dynamite 8-Track Tape Player. There are also clothes I made in home economics class and clothes that I embellished with embroidery and that popular tool, the Ronco Rhinestone and Stud Setter! My LP’s are up there too…I’m afraid they must be warped and useless by now. That’s a shame, because it turns out that vinyl retains the very tiniest “flaws” that can give a piece depth and that are removed in digitized, compressed music…

 

But in the end, it’s not my stuff that brings me joy…it’s my memories and shared experiences with family and friends. It’s the weddings I attended, even when I could scarce afford to travel. It’s even the funerals, where sharing memories eases some of the pain. It’s reunions, family or class, where remembering earlier days brings delight. And some of my biggest regrets are missing such events. I poignantly remember missing the overseas wedding of a college roommate. I was 7 months pregnant and my doctor gave me reason after reason why she would not sanction my traveling. Even with the best of reasons, I felt bad about it.

And now, I watch my children with the careful eye of earned knowledge. I see them growing up and hold myself back from preventing them from making their own ways in the world. I hold them accountable “yes, you must go to practice and not just the games” to my 11 year old…and I also let them fumble through life transitions “you know, you don’t have to pack up every last one of your belongings and store them in the attic just because you are going off to college” to my recent high school graduate, and “I’m sorry that driving class is dumb” to my 15 year old.

I’ve been fortunate to be able to offer my children experiences that are especially suited to their skills and interest; intellectual pursuits for my son where he got to be away and “independent” for a few weeks each summer, art-related courses of various types for my older daughter, and science-intensive camp experiences for my younger daughter. I know that they will cherish the memories of those experiences forever. I only wish I could have gone along on all of them…not to be a helicopter parent, but to have those experiences myself!

And there’s the genesis of an idea. I can have some variation on those experiences that are better suited to my skills and interests…I just need to start looking for them and figuring out how to fit them into my life.

Find the Joy in the Journey!

Memories

I find it ironic that I love memoir, autobiography, and biography so much given that I have such a poor memory of my own past. I have a friend who has an amazingly acute memory of her childhood. I’m the opposite; I can remember some things vaguely and other things not at all. Every once in awhile a song or a fragrance will bring back vivid thoughts and memories, but if I try consciously to remember things, I don’t have much luck.

The other day I attended my younger daughter’s year-end Junior Girl Scout ceremony. After reciting The Girl Scout Promise, they recited The Girl Scout Law. This brought back memories of my own early Girl Scout years. The Law is as meaningful and universal today as it was back in 1912 when Juliette Gordon Low created the Girl Scouts of America. I doubt that this law alone shaped my ethics, but it was consistent with my upbringing at home, school, and church. Without realizing it, it is something that I strive to do each and every day, so I was stunned that I could almost recite it along with the Girl Scouts and that it made me feel connected to these young scouts and Girl Scouts everywhere.

The Girl Scout Law

I will do my best to be
honest and fair,
friendly and helpful,
considerate and caring,
courageous and strong, and
responsible for what I say and do,

and to

    respect myself and others,
respect authority,
use resources wisely,
make the world a better place, and
be a sister to every Girl Scout.

Living by this law, on the whole, is beneficial. There was one time, though, in the dark-days of my early forties, where living by the Girl Scout Law created a big problem for me. I trusted a neighbor who, meanwhile, lied about me to the other neighbors, used his pull in city government, and waged a secret campaign against me that caused my bank and builder to freeze in the middle of a major rehab on my home. Needless to say, this was disastrous! It was only by luck that we survived without losing our home, our marriage, or our sanity. And in the end, I am at peace with my own behavior which parallels The Girl Scout Law. It’s the only peace I can find about the situation, but it really did affect me in ways I’m still uncovering. I do think that “That which does not kill us makes us stronger” (That’s Friedrich Nietzesche…what is it with me and German references lately??), but it’s an awfully hard way to live. It made me bitter, angry, and fat (those things go together, you know). I know that forgiveness is a path through that pain…but frankly I prefer to find a different path…Perhaps, “time heals all wounds” is what I’m after. I have to hang my head every time forgiveness is the topic in church…because I’m not there…and much as I think and pray about it, I don’t know that I’ll ever be there.

But, for the most part the Girl Scout Law is a very rewarding way to live. I don’t claim to live up to it perfectly, but it is there as a standard in my mind to help me along the way. So, now that I’ve rediscovered it and laid it out in front of me…what does it mean to my 50 by 50? I think this is where “mission statement” and “vision” come along. So, I’m putting these each down in my 50 by 50…a personal mission statement and a personal vision for my life. Those aren’t quick and easy things to do, but they will lay cornerstones and guidelines for me that will help me live a life that is consistent with my values. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll help me solve the forgiveness riddle.

I’m sitting here listening to Tapestry, by Carole King. This is one for my song list…it reminds me of my older sister when she was a teen…she used to play it and I was enthralled. I am finding that the riddle of figuring out what songs to pick, then listening to them, is opening my childhood back up to me. And this song, in particular, resonates with my “patchwork quilt” of a life. It’s a rather mournful song by the end, but the beginning is what I particularly remember:

My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue
An everlasting vision of the ever changing view
A wondrous woven magic in bits of blue and gold
A tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold

So, I will listen to more music and have more memories and strive to connect on a deeper level with those around me.

Find the joy in the journey!