2--->6--->66

I remember my sixth birthday,so clearly that it is hard to believe that I am 66 tomorrow. How could it be? Where have the past 60 years go? And.... will I get as cool a present as this doll was? On that sixth birthday, I got to have presents before I went to school. My new doll was beautiful and her clothes were blue,she had a lovely bonnet, and actual shoes. At life size she was even bigger than my baby brother, who is also in the photo. (The clue that it was NOT taken on my actual birthday!) I was so excited about this doll and so broken hearted about having to still go to school, that I became sick at school and had to come home. My Dad said maybe I made myself sick so I could come home to play.....maybe, maybe not, I don't think I was that clever. I walked home from Fairfax Elementary School right after lunch and got to play with my new doll.Walking home alone in itself was something that was common in those "olden" days.That wouldn't happen today. I was happy that day. I have no idea why no other childhood birthdays stand out. I am still kind of dumbstruck that 60 years have gone this quickly. So to quote the title of a poem that my Mom used to recite:"Happy Birthday to me", and no, I don't remember the poem.

Anyway you look at it, its a miracle

This photo was taken at a department store somewhere in Cleveland. I was 5 or 6 years old. According to my father as the photo was being snapped, supposedly I was telling Santa that we were Jewish and didn't celebrate Christmas. This was true. I have no idea why my father would have taken us to see Santa as he was very strict about being Jewish....we DID NOT have a tree, we did NOT celebrate Christmas. I felt sadly left out of the festivities, although Cleveland Heights was a comfortable place to grow up Jewish. Anyway the miracle of Chanukah (as I learned to spell it at Rabbi Silver's temple), is that after the trashing of the Temple, there was only enough oil to keep the Everlasting Light at the Ark burning for one night. It would take 8 days to go and then return from where oil could be purchased. It was a great miracle that the tiny bit of oil kept burning for the entire time. Christmas celebrates the miracle of the birth of the Savior. So this is truely a miraculous season,no? The Facebook version of Chanukah is that even though the cell phone battery was almost dead, it lasted for 8 days. I remember lighting the candles as a kid, as a parent, and lighting the 8th candle last night. I always wanted a Christmas tree though, I love sparkling lights, piney smells, and beautiful ornaments. I never had one until I was in my 40's. I echoed my Dad, "You are Jewish, Jewish people do NOT have trees." When my daughter brought home her college roommate, who had recently lost her father, my husband and son put up a tree, "only to make her comfortable". Ever after it became "why not we did it before?" I have to say, I enjoy the beauty, the smell, the festivity;the stuff.Chanukah is not the important holiday within the framework of Judaism that Christmas is to Chrisianity but it has been the Jewish answer to the season. I also loved to celebrate the Solstice as the home of friends,smaller gifts were exchanged, with meaningful thoughts for those who received them. Right,wrong, I don't know, my former Rabbi said that ;Jews don't have trees because they didn't think of them first." Another friend says I am an uninformed Jew. Some years I do the tree, some years I don't, this year I needed the smell and the glitter. Its all okay, it is all a miracle, no matter what or how one celebrates. It is the miracle of the season that I hope we are celebrating. If one looks back at Pagan times,the miracle was that even after the darkest, longest night, the dark hours grew shorter again. We renew our lives, through daylight,through oil, through a belief that the Messiah has come....anyway you look at it, its a miracle. God is bigger than all of this, of us, and I believe exists. Happy holidays.

Happy birthday Lynda!

I am amazed at my own life sometimes. My friend Lynda turned 61 last week. It is hard for me to believe. I am 4 years older than her, although come February, I will be 5 years older. Time has flown;we don't seem much older to ourselves. We still send birthday cards to each other that remind us that we are "still hot", as least she is.I don't mean menopausal either, I mean attractive. What kind of brought this time passage to some sort of perspective was when I realized that I met Lynda when she was the same age as my son, who is 36 now. How can this be? Not only are we older but our "kids" are older, we are both Grandmothers....I don't feel any older at all. This truely is the basis of this blog, my musings....I think about things all the time, I just don't always get around to writing about them. I am blessed to have friends that have stayed in my life for most of it! I guess the thing that got me here was the realization that a friend I made as an adult is still a friend and we are older adults....wha happened? Time passed, and it is good and sweet and life has given me more gifts than I can possibly handle. Thanks Lynda for being one of them, and for all the laughs, for all the times you listened, for the good advice and the friendship.

Who will know?

We are now the elders of our family and in some cases of our group of friends. It is a sobering thought because who can we ask what we should do? I remember the first time I realized we had to make up our own minds, but we were still young and there were people to ask. It was Thanksgiving probably about 30 years ago and I remember standing in our kitchen: my sister, her husband at the time, Arnie and I wondering if the turkey was really done. I had a moment of fear, knowing it was up to us, at least until my Mom got there. She may have been at our home once that morning as she usually made the stuffing and then brought it over to bake at our home. Now my husband is in the middle of mess of paperwork, he can change his Medicare Advantage plan during the open enrollment which will end on December 7th. It is kind of a big deal, he can only change within an Advantage plan because of his pre-existing condition (cancer). Due to our limited income we need to get the best bang for the buck. So he is calling agents, having agents present different plans. He would like to talk to someone about it, I live here, so I would be a good choice. I am overwhelmed by the paperwork, the decision, the time limit, and wanting to do the very best thing. If my Dad were alive, we could talk this over with him. Today we are the people who need to decide. We are the ones who are supposed to know. I wonder if the generations before us didn't really know either.

A Simpler Time

My husband listens to old time radio stations at night through his internet radio. This morning we heard a radio play about returning two men who go back in time 20 years prior to the "magic time" that they lived in: 1952. It got me to thinking back to the 50's. So many people today say those were the golden years: post war, the country growing and changing, homes, jobs and so forth. Yes it was different, but so was our mind set and our expectations. The wall I am standing in front of in the photo is the retaining wall of our home in Cleveland Heights. My Father and my Grandfather built it. It looks pretty solid today(at least 50 years later) and I don't see any sign of repairs. My father also paneled part of our basement and made it into a recreation room. The walls were sanded by my sister and her friends, in a "sanding" party, my parents supplied dinner. I remember lots of junior high kids there helping. My Dad built our back porch into a bedroom for me. The floor was made out of pressed wood chips....something very new and different. We only had an upstairs bathroom so my Father added one to the downstairs for my Mother. Those were days that if one needed something,they mostly did it themselves or had friends who helped out. There were many things that we kids wanted but we just couldn't have them. No money. Credit cards were metal plates that each department store notched if you had an account there, but you only had one card. It came in a small leather envelope. They were only used for department stores, not gas, drugstores and so on. My Grandfather was given a color television and the whole family would go over to watch Bonanza on Sundays. We were really lucky to have one black and white television in our living room. We didn't all run and buy newer models. As kids we walked or biked most places. I guess I was just musing about those days because of both that radio program and the the fury of this election year. On the larger part though, everybody didn't have to have everything that someone else had. We didn't have that awful drive to get what someone else had. We didn't go into debt on plastic to be like other people. We accepted who we were. We may have wanted but knew that sometimes, having wasn't possible. It was a simpler time. We need to think about that, it was simple because we were not so driven and possessive. We didn't need alot of stuff to be okay.

I think this photo would have made my Mom happy. My brother and his wife sent us plane tickets and took us to a beach house on Emerald Isle in North Carolina. It was such a beautiful place and a wonderfully peaceful time, for me anyway. I hope it was for them also. For all of us, or maybe just me, who were merciless with their brothers and sisters as children, it is amazing how precious they are as we age. Who else knows us as well. One friend said that "family will always push our buttons, they installed them!" This may be so, but only if we are looking at the negative side of it all. No one quite "gets" where I am coming from like my "sibs". Anyway the week was special and beautiful and I can only say that I didn't deserve it but I am grateful for it. I sat on the beach next to my brother who will be 60 to my 66 next year (no rush here) and thought how lucky I am that we still have that opportunity to share some time and space. Our spouses are compatible and we are blessed to be together. Our parents gave us the gift of family and installed the belief in its importance.

Job Well Done!

I know, I know, I am still writing about my parents....I thought I was done. In the group that I am a part of, we talk alot about humility, letting go of expectations, thinking of others instead of self. It's what can make us better people. I believe it can and will. I was not a humble child, although I was insecure and not confident. Those kinds of feelings can result in acting boastful, angry and impatient. I was also intolerant and easily bored. Taking care of my Mother was an exercise in patience,tolerance,and humility. (I wrote much about that in my prior blog "Turnabout is Fair Play".) Sometimes when I do something good, or take the time to help someone,in those moments when I am able to put my needs and wants aside, I have to think to myself that my Mom was a teacher for me until the end of her life. Job well done Mom. I cannot thank you enough. Or maybe I can by simply doing the right thing.