BW (before white) Hair

At this morning's Wisdom Class, we talked about the chapter on "Aging" in Lauren Winner's Mudhouse Sabbath. We had a really good discussion about aging and dying.

One item I mentioned was that I have noticed my white hair in the midst of women in Russia, Spain, Canada, and the USA in the past few years and have felt marked as "old." It seemed like most women, even older than me, colored their hair. I stopped doing that soon after DC and AA's wedding in September 2006. Someone in our class then asked me what was the color before I let it go "natural"? Brown.

So here is a picture of AA and me (with brown hair) the afternoon before the Rehearsal Dinner for her wedding:

My hair was longer than it is now, but also a better texture. My hair has gotten very fly-away since taking methotextrate (for RA) in the past year--I've lost some hair and it grows back in-- obviously shorter. I am not sure that I'll ever stop taking that chemo-drug, because it with Humira stops the RA inflammation in my joints. The side effect of "witchy" hair is better than painful and swollen joints!

Stages of Aging

Once I hit 60 years old and let my hair go white, I've felt pushed into an "old" category. And today I saw the stages of "old" that I heard about at a United Methodist conference on senior adults some years ago:

65-74 young-old

75-84 old

85 and older old-old

I'm not even "young-old" yet! Although, I am taken aback that my mother died when she was young-old.

All these categories are meaningless, especially when you consider that they all indicate age.

It's a new world!

It's a new world!

I am suddenly newly aware of all the technology that is changing the world (or my world).

Our nephew and his wife announced their decision to break up on Facebook: changing their status designations from "married" to "single." I guess that is the same as someone announcing an engagement or the beginning of labor in having a baby on FB. (I am showing my age.)

By blogging, I am participating in this new way of communication, too. I sometimes think of blogging posts as "notes" I would have written to friends and family. So in shorter and faster ways, communicating via FB or tweeting is the same.

The demise of the written word is occurring, as I have lamented about letter-writing. Others worry about the end of printed books: Tonight my friend Nancy told me that she can sync her Kindle with her i-phone Kindle app and read on her i-phone when her Kindle is left behind.

I will appreciate this technology when MJ is in Spain for the next four months. We will stay in touch through e-mails, Skype calls, FB, and her blog about Spain.

But I will still write her handwritten letters once in a while.

Getting old is no fun

Baillie by the new couch

Baillie is 14+ years old. She is blind and deaf and gets confused at times. In the past few days she has gotten lost in our backyard. One day she was wandering around in a corner, bumping into a tree stump. I finally had to pull her back to the deck, where she realized her location and could navigate herself to the backdoor. However, today she went in the wrong direction from the backdoor and fell off the (low) deck. I had to guide her back.

Usually Baillie walks tentatively and slowly around. She also sleeps a great deal of each day. She still seems happy, unlike our last cocker spaniel Bagel who whimpered in one place all day in the kitchen, because she could not see or hear. Bagel was put to sleep as she could not cope with her blindness and deafness. I am glad that Baillie is more cheerful.

Cannot Sleep

It seems hard to sleep tonight. For a long while I read The Book of Love, which is the sequel to The Expected One. These books are interesting and fun, but I do not feel like reading anymore tonight.

• As Jennifer wrote in her blog, she is planning to write notes to friends and loved ones. That's a good idea and something I like to do, but no words are flowing. . . .

• I cooked a very good recipe in the crockpot today that I found at Anne's blog--pork tenderloin cooked with chopped sweet potatoes and prunes. It's delicious! We have enough to last a few more days--yay!

• I'm not sure if I ever told you that our priest Sandy Casey-Martus is staying at our church. She was not elected to be the Episcopal Bishop for Wyoming, which was probably disappointing to her, but it is a happy decision for us in the congregation.

• I am reading too many fiction books lately and lost my impetus for writing my papers. I know I will write soon, but not at this moment. After Easter?

• Maisie is probably about 4 1/2 months old. She is getting much bigger and has still bigger paws. We are wondering how much more she will grow. CB looked on the internet, and it said for larger dogs, they could keep growing till they're 7-10 months old. Uh-oh.

• My friend NKE and I are going on a trip to New Mexico after Easter to celebrate our 60th birthdays! NKE lives in California and we will meet each other at the Albuquerque Airport on April 8. (NKE and I met in 7th grade when we lived on the Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan.)
  

• 60 sounds old to me, but I still feel like myself. I guess I'll always feel like myself. I remember my mother telling me when she was in her 70's that she was surprised to look in the mirror and see how old she looked.
  

READ this poem aloud! Beautiful!

The Messenger
by Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—

equal seekers of sweetness.

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me

keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

astonished.

The phoebe, the delphinium.

The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart

and these body-clothes,

a mouth with which to give shouts of joy

to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,

telling them all, over and over how it is

that we live forever.

Oliver, Mary. Thirst. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006.1.

Between/Out of the Cracks!

Last week husband CB bought these flood lights for the kitchen, but accidentally dropped the package as he got out of his truck. Look what happened: the outside broke, but the actual fluorescent light inside remained whole.

In my meditation time and later in Lectio Divina, I realized that this is what we are all like--cracked and broken (as in the post below) but whole within. In fact, within each of us is the Divine Light that always shines. Sometimes the Light cannot be seen unless there are cracks and broken places.

The Lectio Divina selection for the day was I John 4:11-13:

4:11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.

4:12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

4:13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.

Whether we feel broken, cracked or not, Love abides in us. Always.

Today let us look further than the exterior, which may be too beautiful or too flawed for comfort. Beneath is much, much more.

Bury me in the library!

Please bury me in the library

In the clean, well-lighted stacks

Of Novels, History, Poetry,

Right next to the Paperbacks.

Where the Kids' Books dance

With True Romance

And the Dictionary dozes.

Please bury me in the library

With a dozen long-stemmed proses.

Way back by a rack of Magazines,

I won't be sad too often

If they bury me in the library

With Book worms in my coffin.

J. Patrick Lewis

Thank you to Diane Vogel Ferri at Coexist.

Age

Yesterday was my third child BJ's birthday. He is now 24.

My oldest son DC will be 30 this summer, and my youngest child MJ will be 20 in November. (So as not to leave out a child, AE is 27.)

I remember when I was 24, my husband and I moved from VA to OR so that CB could go to graduate school at Oregon State University in Corvallis. We lived in married student housing, and I taught 2nd and 2nd-3rd grades in Eddyville, where the entire school had 250 kids for grades K-12. It was a happy time. And now BJ is that same age.

Then I wonder if I'll even be alive in 24 years. Neither of my parents lived to be 80 years old. Will I? In 24 years I would/could be almost 82.

I'm not really worried about dying. It just seems closer as I edge nearer to the age of 60. Maybe I am also more aware of it as I stopped dyeing my hair (last year) and it is going whiter. (See in the Easter pictures.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I've also been reading Autumn Gospel: Women in the Second Half of Life by Kathleen Fischer. I had been averse to reading it, probably due to its title, until a friend called me up and read some quotes from it. Then I had to get the book!

Here is how I so often feel these days:

"The novelist Isabel Allende explains this shift after turning fifty: 'I don't have any time to waste. I don't have time for gossip or greed or revenge or undirected anger.' She says she is concentrating on the basics, which have to do with love." (32)