A view from the sky tram in Jasper on a family holiday
A little over five years ago I first posted this blog. At the time I was seventy four and felt like aging was something I was looking forward to in my future. Recently, I turned eighty and came across this. It seemed to take on new meaning because now I feel like I have finally 'grown up' and I am now looking back. See if you get something else out of it five years later. Aging With Grace A friend of mine, Darlene, invited me to attend a morning seminar with her entitled ‘Aging with Grace’. Whenever I hear the word grace, I think of the lady guide that we met in the elevator in Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. My husband and I were in New York many years ago and took the tour. Although there were many impressive things to remember, she became my most vivid memory. She was a slender older lady who spoke confidently and carried herself with an air of grace. I thought to myself, ‘Now you know what grace sounds and looks like. Watch and learn’. Every time I think of her, I feel re-inspired. I was hoping to learn more of being gracious at the seminar. That wasn’t quite the focus of the speaker, but I did come away with some uplifting ideas. I took notes and was able to write a few quotes that I thought were worth sharing. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get the sources of the quotes, so if you recognize any of them and know the author, let me know and I will give credit. The first idea presented was to ‘live life with intention, not to just sit back and let it happen. Our years are a gift to us.’ ‘For everything there is a season. Wisdom is knowing what time it is.’ ‘I am in the prime of my life and loving it. I only wish I had learned earlier that any time is the prime of my life.’ ‘Youth is the time to study wisdom. Old age is the time to practice it.’ Put another way, she said that ‘in youth we learn, in age we understand.’ Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach In at least three different places lately, including this class, I have heard variations of letting go of the past in order to embrace the future. One suggestion was to look to the past with gratitude for the things that we have learned and look forward to the new learning to come. ‘There is always something to be grateful for, if we take time to look.’ There was much said about living with an attitude of gratitude. The instructor shared with us a quote from The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. ‘What day is it?’ asked Winnie the Pooh. ‘It’s today’ squeaked Piglet. ‘My favorite day,’ said Pooh. I liked that a lot. It is well worth remembering. We could make today our favorite day. Maybe we could even start the day by affirming as Marion Law suggested, ‘I feel terrific this morning. I can’t wait to get started.’ ‘My role right now is to say thank you.’ The one name I did get written down was Meridel Le Sueur. In the picture we were shown, she was just covered in wrinkles. She lived to be 96 and said, ‘I am luminous with age’. Now that is an interesting perspective. One thing that was said that seemed to get the attention of everyone there was, ‘I am grateful that wrinkles don’t hurt.’ I think I will keep that for a mantra when I need uplifting. I find myself repeating it when I look in the mirror. It always makes me laugh. If nothing else was learned that day, it was worth my while to attend the seminar just to hear 'Wrinkles don't hurt'. But I am just not sure I want to be quite as “luminous” as Meridel Le Sueur if it takes that many wrinkles. And maybe with a little more persistence, I will also embrace some of the other learning as well.
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Big Brothers
Victor was fourteen and Gerry was twelve and a half when I was born. Maybe that is why when our sow had a litter of pigs about the time Mom and I were brought home from the hospital to make my first introduction to the family, Victor and Gerry just had time to run to the barn and quickly check out the new piglets before they came to see me. After all, fellows have their priorities. Victor and Gerry loved to tell that story. It certainly got a lot of mileage over the years. Oh well. The two of them loved to brag about all of us. I loved it. It didn’t hurt my self-esteem any. It wasn’t because I was spectacular, I just felt loved. Because I enjoyed my big brothers so much, I often wondered what it would have been like if Charles and Jimmy, who died as babies before I was born, had lived and grown up with us. It would probably have been double the fun. My husband is one who never talks once church is started. That is why it surprised me when he leaned over and whispered in my ear. What he said surprised me even more.
It was at the beginning of the meeting when they often give announcements relating to any congregational business. The person conducting had just announced a new Employment Specialist for our group. It was suggested that if we thought about it, we might come up with a service we needed and the Specialist could match up our need with someone in the group who could perform that service. It would be a Win/Win. That was when my husband cheekily whispered, ‘We could use someone to come and clean our place.’ Fast forward about two weeks. My mind had taken his idea and run with it. He had said it in fun and I decided to make it even more fun. It was a delightful opportunity. He was right. We could certainly benefit with some help. I don't know about him, but I knew I was a little behind because of constant distractions impeding my progress, including phone calls. The next morning I got ready to go out. When asked where I was going, I just said I had an appointment and would be back about noon. I left out the back door and was on my way. The doorbell rang. He interrupted what he was doing and answered the front door. Imagine his surprise when he saw me on the other side. ‘Hi, I’m Melissa,' I said. 'Your wife said you were wanting to hire someone to clean your house.’ Then I handed him the Melissa brochure. (See the above brochure) He looked it over and with a grin opened the door and said, ‘Come in.’ And so it began as he delightfully played along. 'How long can you stay , Melissa?' 'Your wife hired me for three hours.' He went back to what he was doing and Melissa started the cleaning. At one point he was downstairs and hollered up, ‘Melissa, did my wife say where she put my .......? I don’t remember what he was asking for, but Melissa cleverly suggested where he might look for it. Melissa continued working for the three hours she was hired. Melissa was a definite boost to our life at that time. She vacuumed, dusted and generally cleaned, but didn't answer the phone when it rang. After all, it probably was for his wife anyway and she wasn't home. When she finished, she said goodbye and left. Soon after, I returned at the back door refreshed from my completed appointment. It had been great fun. What my husband wanted to know was, 'How did I get all that work done when it was more than I usually accomplished?' I responded. 'It was easy. I didn’t have any interruptions.' It was a normal Thursday morning on a lovely April day. At nine the doorbell rang, interrupting my morning plans. I grabbed my mask and hurried to answer the door. Who could be coming so early in the morning? Because of Covid restrictions, we weren’t getting much company so I had no idea what to expect. Imagine my surprise when I opened the door and no one was there, but our front landing was covered with parcels. I looked out to the road to see if the delivery truck was still there so I could stop it before it drove off. Too late, it must already have driven away. All was quiet. No sign of anyone. Upon checking the top boxes, I noticed they were all from Amazon. They must have been delivered by mistake, but they were addressed to us, some for me and some for my husband. We hadn’t ordered anything recently, let alone a front porch full. How are we going to get them returned? I immediately called to my husband, 'Hurry, come here. You’ll want to see this’. We were more than a little concerned. We must phone Amazon and get this straightened out. First we had better check our credit card statement and see if there were any unexplained charges. I hurried inside and quickly turned on my laptop to go to the bank website. We had recently dealt with a credit card fraud of several hundred dollars against us. Now this. The phone rang. I answered it to find one of our sons calling. Usually, I am delighted to talk to any of them, but I was anxious to get back to the computer. He asked if I had seen his post on our family group chat on Facebook Messenger. I wasn’t wanting to chit chat about our Messenger page. ‘No. I hadn’t seen it’ I quickly responded. He explained that he had posted that a hacker had broken into Amazon’s files. I wanted to get off the phone and get back to checking out our credit card. Even if a hacker might be at the source of our problem, we still had to get it straightened out. I told him about the unexpected deliveries at our door and our concern. We needed to see what we could do to straighten things out. I don't remember how he suggested it, but he thought I should check again for something outside. Still anxious not to be detoured from checking our credit card, I agreed to take a quick minute and look again as he was asking. I guess I could do that for him. As I stepped outside, he (the son who phoned) stepped around from the side of the house with his video camera. Oh boy, I should have guessed this was one of his gags, but why? And then it hit me. It was a lovely April day, April 1st to be exact. It was his April Fool’s joke and this was one of his best, and we had fallen for it ‘hook line and sinker’. And if there was a hacker, we know who he was. This son stole our peace. He confessed that he had planned it for about a year (probably from the last April Fools Day). I remembered that some months before he had asked if we had any empty boxes we could spare. I handed over some boxes that had come with Amazon orders. He had taped them back up and used them for the top of the piles. For the rest of these props, he had ‘begged and borrowed’ boxes from other family members and even some of his employees. Who else might have known his intention or did he work alone? He does live on the other side of the city and had to drive over before work to set his game plan in place. He made a point of parking his vehicle down the street so we wouldn’t notice it. Had we gone as far as picking up any of the boxes, we might have noticed they were empty, but we were too caught up in his grand scale of delivery. Oh well, we all had a good laugh. What some people will come up with to have fun on a lovely April Day!
My friend since childhood, Kaytee, just turned EIGHTY. Another long-time friend from a year or so later, Kathy, will be eighty in February. Myself, I will be eighty in the summer. This begs the question, ‘Are we there yet?’ For the last five decades, starting at age thirty, I have phoned Kathy around her birthday and made the enquiry, ‘Do you remember how mature we thought we were going to be at thirty?’ and we would have a good laugh together. This continued most every decade. I might have missed one, but we continued hoping that when we reached the next decade, we would have it all together (whatever that means). There is a lady that we know, Dora, who is fifteen years our senior. She turned ninety-five in August. For years I have been saying that I want to be like Dora when I grow up. She has traveled the world, ridden a camel and she swam off the coast of Spain. By the way, friends took her canoeing for her ninety-fifth birthday. I saw a picture of her paddling her own canoe. Who knows what else she is going to be up to accomplish. She is socially active, as much as you can be during Covid. Apparently, she says she is not ready to move on to the next life because she still has much she wants to do. She keeps very busy with doing family history research and related activities. She has many strengths and qualities that I admire. I would still like to be like Dora when I grow up. Don’t tell anyone, but among other things, I am studying European history in anticipation of traveling around Europe with one of our sons whose heart is there. Back to the question, ‘Are we there yet?’ it is much on my mind. There is just nine months left for me to reach the next decade milestone. I have my own definition about what it means to be mature. For me, a lot of it means to be self-disciplined in many areas that I feel are important. You probably have your own ideas. I have been working hard to close the gap from where I am now to what I want to achieve in maturity. Don’t imagine for even a minute that I intend to stop living at eighty. Like Dora, there is still much I intend to do. I must warn Kathy that I plan on phoning her by her birthday and I hope this time we aren’t laughing, rather rejoicing. I know she has accomplished much over the many years I have known her. We both want to leave a legacy worth remembering that will strengthen our families from the past, in the present and for the future. But, We Are Not Quite There Yet. What I learned from Diet Center about forty years ago has been beneficial to me in improving my health. I use the ideas I learned as a pattern. A few years later one of our family members developed diabetes. Because I sometimes cooked for him, his doctor recommended I take the metabolic cooking course as a support. I am glad I did. The diabetic plan followed a similar food balance to what I had learned. The Diet Center vegetable choices were basically those on the Diabetic A list. Some of the lessons I learned from Diet Center. Daily weighing on an exact weigh scale has its benefits to really see cause and effect. When you are sore, the body holds water to buffer the muscles. Water weighs heavier than fat in the same space. Extra salt holds water in the body. Not drinking enough water does the same thing. This helped me learn which foods to avoid. Did you know that a bottle of Coke has 10 teaspoons of sugar? Many other pops are similar. If the diet is well-balanced, it helps the body to retrain its shape. I believe a well-planned and balanced diet over the years is a better protection against sickness, than extra weight. Wrist size indicates whether you are small, medium or big boned. If you want a true indication of your weight, measure it after not eating or drinking for at least twelve hours. I like to weigh in the morning. For women, every ten pounds is a dress size, five pounds half a dress size. I don’t know about the men’s pant size. Shorter people lose weight slower than taller people. They also gain it slower and taller people put it on faster. Some years ago in the late 1970’s, I had gained more weight than I needed. As I result, I chose to go to a Diet Center for support in taking it off. It was run out of a home by a neighbor, someone I knew and trusted. Over the next few months, I checked in every morning, except Sunday, to be weighed, measured, supported and counselled. The daily weigh-in and counselling was something that set this program apart. It also was a nutritionally balanced diet. Each person received enough supplements for a day and two on Saturday so you had to keep coming. The supplements allowed us to be comfortable on 750 calories a day. They were a necessary part of the program. If you were true to the guidelines, a dieter could expect to lose an average of ½ to ¾ of a pound a day. My education began. I had been doing well from the beginning and was pleased with my success. It was now spring and I was busy digging up an area of our yard where I was going to plant some garden. I didn’t need to be the one digging, but I thought the exercise would speed up the weight loss. The next morning I was excited to go for my daily weigh in and to see the results. Because of a good workout, my arms and legs were sore enough to anticipate great results. Imagine my surprise as I stepped on the scale and the miserable thing betrayed me and registered up two pounds instead of the loss I expected. A lot of diets tell you to only weigh once a week, but by weighing daily with a scale that registers to the quarter pound, I learned a lot about how my body works and responds. Our daily weight was recorded on a graph so the two pounds I gained sent the graph spiking up. Thanks to her training, the counsellor produced her measuring tape and showed me how my waist was actually slimmer, even though I weighed more. ‘When the body is sore, it holds extra water to buffer the muscles,’ she explained. “Water weighs more than the fat that was taking up the same place.” On my way over to check in, with my excitement carrying me forward, I wasn’t hungry at all. Suddenly now, I felt like I was about to starve to death. Had I been dieting by myself, there might have been a different outcome after my big disappointment. Over the next few days, as I continued on the diet program, the graph showed the expected weight loss, even though it temporarily had showed extra weight when I was sore. A few days later, after the soreness was gone, I was able to see the weight loss balance out on the graph chart we kept. That really encouraged me. In the end of my program, I could have drawn a straight line heading downward through my chart. Additional salt also invited my body to retrain extra water. I soon learned which foods to avoid. Even a diet pop held enough salt to cover my weight loss for the day. Although retaining extra water didn’t effect fat-burning, I looked forward to see the scale register down every time. Not drinking enough water created the same problem, holding water. Considering which foods to avoid because of extra salt, did you know that a 10 ounce bottle of Coke, besides the extra salt, has 10 teaspoons of sugar? Many other soft drinks are similar. I had heard many times that when you got older, you needed to carry a little extra weight as a protection against a time when you might get sick. One experience really surprised me and blew up that preconceived idea for me anyway. There was a dieter who was in her late fifties who had just completed her program. It was someone I knew, a mother of a friend of ours. With permission, she came in and showed me how she looked. Not only was the dieter slimmer, but she was also shapely. (I didn’t remember her being especially shapely before.) Boy, did she ever look nice! It was the first time I realized that important benefit of a balanced diet. When I had lost twenty pounds, I was attending a meeting with people I knew, but didn`t often see. I enjoyed many compliments on my new look since the diet. A doctor that I had met a few months before, surprised me by seeking me out and telling me I should quit. She said she was concerned because I didn’t look good. Because of her credentials, I listened and thought about it. I came up with two considerations. My deciding factor was that I felt more energized while I was on this program, so it must be good. The other was that I didn’t want to stay heavy and carry around extra weight. Besides, I could now wear clothes that hadn't fit for a while. Ever the optimist, I had kept them ready and there were still more inviting outfits waiting. Later, I figured out what probably gave the doctor that idea. I was wearing an olive green turtleneck sweater. It was an unflattering color for me at the best of times, probably casting a green color on my face, giving me a sickly impression. A while later, my father-in-law was the second one to tell me to stop. His response was that I should stop as I looked good and he didn’t want me to get sick. I liked his approach better. I replied, ‘Thank you, Dad. It’s good to know you care.’ I continued on and I never did get sick. I knew what I wanted and it was doing me good. I was feeling great, and I was thankful I didn’t let anyone influence me otherwise. The body needs some healthy fats for proper function. We need fat to protect our vital organs. Fat gives men their angular frame and women their curves. These are essential fats. In times of crisis, such as sickness, starvation etc., this is the fat that is first used by the body as it is the easiest to access. Because it is essential, the body then demands it back. A neighbor of ours had a heart attack landing her in the hospital for a while. When she returned home, she was fifteen pounds lighter. ‘This time I am going to keep it off’, she said. A short time later and some pounds heavier, she exclaimed, ‘I don’t know what happened. It was just like I was driven.’ I continued on the Diet Center program faithfully, until I reached my goal, even trying a few new foods that hadn’t been part of my eating before. Our boys remember well the beef heart I cooked a few times (the only beef on the diet) and my husband remembers the Okra. These were not favorites of theirs. After the diet I continued with the Diet Center maintenance program to assist with stabilization. Often in the process of my learning, I have ended up teaching the very thing I needed to know. The owner of the Diet Center and her husband decided they wanted to serve an eighteen month mission for their church. She approached me about taking over the business while they were away. I was hesitant at first because we had two young boys, one fourteen and the other almost eleven and I worried about the time it might take away from them. After a family conference on the matter, it was decided that I should go ahead. After a room was made ready in our home and a week’s training in Rexburg, Idaho to prepare me as a Diet Counsellor, I was ready to begin work. Now the extra learning started. It was excellent for me because as the Diet Counsellor, I had to set an example. There were quite a few clients coming in starting at 7:00 in the morning. With so many, it was much easier to see results and what they meant. One of the first things I noticed was the importance of being on a balanced diet. Now that I was Diet Counsellor, a couple of my friends inquired about the prices. When learning that it cost $125 for six weeks, they said to forget it; they would do it by themselves. After all, they only had twenty pounds to lose, which they promptly did. One went on the egg and grapefruit diet and the other one went on some other fad diet. The only problem was that although they lost their twenty pounds, the first one complained of losing weight off her bust and not on her waist. The other one had some kind of similar complaint. I was not too surprised at the result. It re-emphasized to me the wisdom of maintaining a sensible regulated diet. This same importance showed up again later with one of my dieters. She was very unhappy with her shape after the six weeks. I couldn’t understand why because none of the other dieters had that problem. She confessed that she had been going to wedding showers and eating goodies all summer and then drinking Rye and trying some other trick that covered her indiscretions. She still had a little weight to lose so she decided to continue another six weeks and this time stick to the program. She was delighted when at the end of the next six weeks, her figure was restored. A young adult, about nineteen, came in and said she wanted to lose ten pounds. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. She weighed the same as I did and was the same height and wrist size as I was. (Wrist size indicates whether you are small, medium or big-boned.) I was concerned she might lose essential fat. ‘Yes’ she replied, ‘I just put on ten pounds. I’m always ten pounds less.' I watched carefully as her weight went down and she continued to look healthy and great. And if that didn’t get my attention, a couple of weeks later another young lady came in who was the same size and weight with the same request. Her results were the same. I had never been that weight even as a teenager. But now I started to wonder. I was aware of a few extra pounds and where they might be hiding, so I slowly started, watching at the difference each pound loss made. I didn’t want to go too far. And guess what? They were right. It looked like I had been carrying around a few extra pounds all that time. Who needs that? I felt much freer without the extra weight and could move even easier. One day a dieter came in all stressed out and shaky. She had been driving to weigh in when all of a sudden a cat ran across the road and she nearly hit it. Like the time I had stepped on the scale and I weighed two pounds up instead of one or more down, she was suddenly very hungry. We had been trained in this situation to have her sit down and to give her a teaspoon of honey, which I did. In about fifteen minutes she said she felt back to normal. I noticed the next day that the honey hadn’t affected her weight loss. It seemed that the body needed it, yet if she had taken an added teaspoon of honey any other day on the diet, she wouldn’t have lost weight that day. I was glad to learn this. It beat heading to the fridge like the hunger demanded. Weighing at the end of the day includes all you have consumed and had to drink during the day. Anything you eat or drink after suppertime, shows up on the scale in the morning. Whenever you weigh, there needs to be about twelve hours separation from when you ate or drank last and stepping on the scale, to get a true picture of where you are at in your weight. I discovered that for women, five pounds lost is half a dress size and ten pounds is a whole dress size. Now I knew what I had to do if I needed to get into a size smaller outfit at some point in time. It was interesting to learn that taller people lost faster than shorter ones on average. So it made sense that most of the men lost faster than women. The taller ones also gained faster than shorter people as well. There is justice. One tall fellow came in on a Monday morning confessing he had eaten off the diet. The scale announced he weighed six pounds heavier than he had been on the Saturday morning weigh in. Wow! Six pounds in two days! We were both amazed. Once we checked his pockets and he took out his keys and I think his wallet, things looked much brighter. It was only about three pounds gained. I was anxious to see if he took it off faster than shorter people as well. Unfortunately for both of us, he didn’t return. Although the diet was only 750 calories, it was facilitated by the morning supplement that we received. We understood it consisted of protein and dehydrated honey. Hoping to save money, more than one person tried or knew of someone who tried, with no success, to buy a substitute that worked. A few years later I did find one. It seems the secret was that the protein powder was prepared in such a way (low temperature for one) that it still had life in it. Since then, I do try to use foods and supplements with the life still in them. One unexpected and blessed happening was a new son born to our family during this time. The dieters loved to smile and coo as they peeked at him in his carriage. He got lots of attention his first six months and I believe my learning helped to get him off to a good start. I am grateful for the time I spent with the Diet Center as a client and as a counsellor. What I learned from the Diet Center has helped me have a better life with a firmer foundation of health. As a diet counsellor for a year and a half, it was a great opportunity to serve others and help them learn and benefit as well. Forty years later, I am still learning and trying new recipes, but no more beef heart. Getting ready to welcome that new family member
One of the few pictures of me when I was pregnant. I have never been a fan of practical jokes. It seemed to me that quite often the purpose of a practical joke is to have fun at the expense of others. I remember one teenager who set his mother’s alarm clock to go off at three in the morning. For some reason she thought it was funny. She was laughing when she told me about it the next morning. I found that hard to understand because she had a chronic condition that often made it difficult for her to stay asleep at night. I am glad she found it funny. If it had been me, the result might have been otherwise. It struck me as being more insensitive than funny.
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