Inspired by Attic “Treasures”

Inside: “That’s the breaks!”

Before getting into the tasty meat of today’s blog, I have two important announcements.  First: Today is my parents’  91^st wedding anniversary. I’m not sure they’re still counting up there where they are but down here I still rejoice mightily and often that they married and had the good sense to produce me, Ben and Dib. (I’m not egotistical, I’m the oldest.) We were very lucky to have them and the joyful running start they gave us and, happily we knew it and told them so. (Hint!) You will live a happier, more regret free life if you remember to say “I love you” and “thank you” often and “I’m sorry” as needed to the important people in your life.

Second: Primarily for three followers who commented on Wednesday’s blog. WordPress is either inconsistent in or has changed the way they ask us to approve and reply to comments. I wanted to say “You all make me smile, too!” but could not find a place to do it in WP’s message to me. Future notice: Anyone making a comment who doesn’t get one back can consider I’ve said that to them, too. Live readers who take the time to comment are like the whipped cream on an already yummy dessert making it even more soul satisfying! Bless you! 

One of my children, who has recently moved and intends a possession light life traveling for the near future, was promised space in what passes for “the attic” here although it is just a really huge room-size closet off one of the two upstairs bedrooms. I knew this would require some shuffling of contents and possibly even some throwing out. It received everything that didn’t have a designated home when we moved in here 21 years ago and I intended to clean it out as soon as Howdy got a little better. Neither happened and over the years, lots of other goodies – 3 vacuum cleaners! – have moved in temporarily and earned tenure and cobwebs. So a massive clean out project has been launched.

Choosing a box with my visiting son’s name on it to sort, we found nothing of his but a mysterious blend of things from many different areas of the Irvington house. I have been revisiting a fat 8×10 manilla envelope containing about 20 condolence notes for my mother’s 1972 death and (I counted them) an amazing 56 get well cards from 1983 when I did a bone-shattering tri-melilior fracture of my left ankle requiring surgery to reconstruct a stable basis for future mobility bolstered by a temporary metal plate. All this just two months before a son’s Maine wedding! Rereading my cards Tuesday, I was stunned by the number, by who sent three or more well spaced cards and by how many senders’ names I either did not remember or could not read.

Most of all, however, I remembered the pleasure they brought me at the time, and the warm sense that my presence in their lives somehow mattered.  I displayed cards everywhere and I remember seeing cards and feeling better, hopeful and on the mend.  Email messages simply do not convey at least to me, the degree of care and warmth that a card in the mail carries, even in a re-run 34 years later. I want to share a wonderfully kind, very prompt note I consider practically perfect!  I was working with the writer on a benefit for Young Life but we were not close friends. This was the first of four from her.

“Phew! What some people won’t do to get out of their Raffle selling obligations! The mind boggles!”

“What a nasty thing to have happen. Don’t worry about a thing – Cynthia is in high gear and everything is under control.”

“Concentrate on healing and we’ll see what can be done to be helpful when you get home.   With love,  Rae”   

I buy cards in quantity and with abandon but I don’t think I have ever penned anything resembling that supportive, comforting  note. I love the comment about the raffle tickets and the card itself was a gem about someone attending a Tuesday night class “where we explore the different uses of hamburger.” (inside) “Last week, I made an ashtray!” I lean to humor in cards, feeling that the act of sending is heavy with thoughtful, loving sentiment. Commercially expressed sentiments seem to say too much to ring true, mostly and make me squirm.  

May your card collecting remain for outgo and you inspire minimal inflo except on birthdays or card-sending holidays. Have we a date for Tuesday?  I’ll be here.  p

Get Well card image by Suzy Spafford

A Date To Remember

Tennis Partners

PROLOGUE- 1949-1951:

I made a deal with my parents to go home for a year after college, after my graduation present of an 8 week post tour of England, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and France –now ready again for visitors. I was to join the Junior League, improve my bridge so I could play civilized grown-up bridge, and let everyone “savor the results of all that Eastern education.” Somewhat to everyone’s surprise, I loved the League provisional course and all I was doing and learning so I stayed home in West Virginia a second year, beginning, however, that fall of 1950, to plan for my “future” which we all recognized would involve leaving Fairmont. To my shock and outrage, Harvard Business School snottily declined my request for an application as “Women are not admitted.” (As women could not enter until the fall of 1963 my scorn of “that stuffy male chauvinistsl debating club” seemed amply proven.) My father, a Yale Law School graduate who firmly believed I could do anything I really wanted to do, urged law school as an equally useful training for business, gamely accepted the cost of an extra year of schooling  and generous loving father that he was, if he hoped I would apply to Yale rather than Harvard, he never said a word about it, recognizing, perhaps, it was a choice of Boston over New Haven rather than Harvard over Yale.

 THE INTRODUCTION:

Jump to a Friday night in mid-May 1951, in Crestwood, NY where I was a houseguest of Ted and Sallie Brophy, who had invited another Smith classmate and her husband for dinner and a law school/law firm friend of Ted’s for me to meet and to even numbers. I had been told that the friend was “very good looking and a wonderful dancer” (these from Sallie so ballroom not ballet) and “a terrific tennis player with a wonderful sense of humor – someone I really like” according to Ted. As Ted and friend came through the front door I came out of the master bedroom where a phone call from my excited parents had announced a fat envelope from Harvard Law School, which when ripped open invited me to attend.  Heady with my success, I looked at the tall, dark-eyed man with Ted and thought “He’s not so handsome: he looks like Daddy’s pictures when he was young” and then was amused by remembering old wive’s tales about girls marrying men who reminded them of their father. But in conversation after dinner Howdy quizzed me about why Harvard Law, why law, and proved himself to be one of those wonderful men who really listen to your answers and respond to them rather than just waiting to say what they plan to say next. By evening’s end, I thought him more likeable and attractive than anyone I had previously gone out with, and, really, remarkably good looking, as well!  

DILEMMA!

Why was I going to law school in Boston when this man was in New York and when I had a solid invitation to make a fourth with 3 New York based Smith friends in their new apartment for four come September? Why indeed! I tossed and turned the required eight hours, woke up knowing what I must do and managed not to let Sallie worm my decision out of me.  I had known Sallie since second grade in Fairmont and knew she suspected my problem.

PURSUIT:

I cautiously deferred my law school entrance for a year, moved to New York in September,and began to hunt for a job. Giving up my chance to be the first Smith graduate also to graduate from Harvard Law School – I was the first Smithie to apply – was the only real regret my decision produced. However, I pursued my chosen course enthusiastically, and with great determination and only one major lie. The week after meeting Howdy, staying as planned all along with my future roommates in New York, I called Howdy and invited him to use a spare theater ticket that night as my theater companion and friend had a nasty sore throat and cough.  The sick friend was a fraud but Howdy had to work so I didn’t have to spring for an extra seat for her. We gave a housewarming party in October and I, of course, invited him– he was off to Baltimore for the weekend. In November I saw him at Princeton where I’d gone to the Yale-Princeton game and said a friendly “Hello, Howdy” as I passed within two feet of him.  He looked startled, could clearly not remember my name and possibly even me, and I moped the whole way to the city in the car with my Yale educated date so deep in despair over the 0-27 score he never noticed. Fortunately my social life had picked up as I was out of ideas for further pursuit.  

In March, when another Harvard Law classmate of Howdy’s was coming from Boston to see me for the weekend but staying with Howdy, Howdy called on Monday to invite me to come to a little cocktail party he and his roommate were giving.  Could he finally be asking me for a date, I wondered? After thinking hard and fast and then remembering his nice manners, I said “I think we’d love to.” A long silence followed that apparently unexpected response and then “Who is ‘we’? ” Howdy asked cautiously. “Jack, of course,” I said. “He’s coming down to see me, you know.”  Howdy had not known. Hesitation “Oh. Uh, we were going to ask him and his date anyway!” he said, but it did feel odd on Saturday night at the St. Regis Maisonette where we all ended up for dinner and dancing, to be seated between Jack and Howdy and hold hands with Jack aware that Howdy had noticed this.

ABANDONING THE CHASE: 

So when in June Sallie called to ask me to a house party at Ted’s parents cottage in the Catskills and asked whom they should invite for me, the only single invitee, I said “Anyone but Howdy Marshall!” “I thought you really liked him,” Sallie said, surprised. “I do”, I admitted “but he’ll think I put you up to it and I’ve made every move the law allows and do not want to give him that satisfaction.” “Okay”, said my good friend, sounding reluctant, “I’ll tell Ted.”  A week later she called back to report.  “Bad news. Ted saw Howdy at work, wanted him for a tennis partner and asked him anyway I’m really sorry, P”  She sounded anything but. Fighting down a surge of hope, myself, I assured Sallie that perhaps it would work out for the best, praying it would but doubting it very much.

A SELFISH CHOICE OR A SCHEME AFOOT?

Howdy picked me up on Friday, July 11, after work and we chatted pleasantly for the two hour run to Merriewold.There were three couples plus Howdy and me and we had a delightful time together with good weather, good sports, collaborative good food and lots of somewhat uncomfortable sly teasing of the “marriage hold-outs”. Saturday night Howdy paddled me around the small lake, mainly focusing on a huge beaver lodge we were both fascinated by. Getting closer than the sentry beaver thought safe, we were drenched by a mighty tail slap right next to the canoe and as the mountain night was cooling, my teeth started to chatter. Back on the dock, Howdy grabbed a dry blanket we had not thought we’d want and draped it over my shoulders, apologizing for having caused us a soaking. I reminded him I wanted to see as closely as he did and “I could have stopped you from getting too near if I had wanted to” Howdy grinned skeptically at me, “You could?” he said. “Well, maybe,”  I said less assuredly. “Yes, maybe” he allowed, smiling.

Talk on the trip back to the city flowed easily and clearly we had become friends over the weekend. We worked only a few blocks apart and when Howdy called me for lunch together on Tuesday, it was the beginning of perhaps the happiest summer of my life.

Lawyer as Pilot in a Favorite Rhode Island Farmer’s Field

DUH It was only when writing this that it suddenly became crystal clear that Sallie and Ted connived and lied and never intended to invite anyone but Howdy Marshall as my “date” that July weekend 65 years ago.  I have totally believed the story about Ted’s preferred “tennis partner” all those years! No wonder they have been so proud of their matchmaking – they hatched a highly successful scheme. So today is my major Memorial Day when I think of clever Sallie and Ted and the wonderful best friend and husband they found for me. Sure beat law school!  

For those of you who get hung-up on details, I’m pretty sure I told Harvard I wasn’t coming. I’m absolutely sure that despite our best efforts, it often takes a little help from our friends to arrive at the chosen goal post. More at nearly ninety than ever before! Be good to your friends, ALL your friends. Back on Friday – see you?  p

 

Rescue by Rockefeller in Rye

If one is destined to be stranded, a lone island in a sea of convivial togetherness, it is a great and rare blessing to feel you are looking your very best! My navy chiffon flowy pantsuit was “very becoming, glamorous even” or so my husband had assured me when I bought it and I had remembered to pack the right underpinnings, jewelry and shoes and, incredibly, I was also having a great hair day – wow! It was comforting to feel this arriving at the formal awards dinner of the 2003 Garden Club of America Annual Meeting in Rye, NY.  My good friend Beth and I were representing our Maine garden club and Beth, who had previously belonged to a California club, told me as we stepped off the bus bringing delegates from our nearby hotel, that she was deserting me as she’d promised to meet her California friends for the cocktail hour.

Seeing no one I knew well enough to feel I could break into their conversation, but as yet undaunted by the lack of a companion, I sauntered up to the nearest bar where I disappointed the young bartender by removing the fun of meeting a real Maine woman by admitting to having lived across the county for 40 years but he perked up on hearing that I had come to New York from West Virginia.

Drink in hand I moved away from the bar, checking the crowd before me for a friendly group to join.  I could see no one I had ever seen before which made me momentarily wonder if the bus had left us at the wrong party’s door. I considered my options.  Faint gracefully if I could manage it and see what happened next? Too drastic.  Stand there looking at ease but occasionally check my watch as if I was waiting for someone who was supposed to find me there and see what …

A man’s hand was suddenly stretched out to me and a friendly male voice spoke. “Hello”, it said, ‘I’m David Rockefeller. Should I be welcoming you to my home state or are you a fellow New Yorker?” “Hello, Mr. Rockefeller”, I responded happily, thrilled to be so wonderfully saved. “I’m Penelope Marshall and I was a neighbor of yours in Irvington for forty years but now I live In Biddeford Pool, Maine.” Mr. Rockefeller smiled. “Still a neighbor then, just farther to the south!” Smiling back, I told him how happy I was to see the Rockefellers being recognized for their support and gifts to conservation and the recipients of the GCA conservation award.

“I should also tell you” I continued, “I applied for a job with your wife the first year I was married and living near you in the city.”  Mr. Rockefeller looked surprised but interested.  “Why didn’t you take it? I assume she offered it to you?” “Yes, she did,” I answered, “and I liked her very much and would have loved to work for her.  But what she needed me to do I was not good at, and I hated the idea of disappointing her and her keeping me on to be kind or her having to fire me,” I confessed. “You should have taken it,” Mr. Rockefeller said firmly. “She would have found you something you liked to do better if she liked you and I know she must have.  It wasn’t all our children that worried you was it?” “No,” I grinned, “I have five myself”  He nodded.  “She was the best thing in my life, much the better half of our marriage. She made me a better person because she always demanded I be my best self.  I miss her very much. I don’t think most people quite understand what it’s like to feel so wonderfully partnered. Are you still married?”  “Yes and no. I still feel married but I’ve been a widow for six years.”  He smiled wistfully at me. “That’s it, isn’t it?  When a marriage feels like that, it lasts forever.” Fighting back tears, I nodded. Mr Rockefeller stood taller, visibly willing himself out of this mood.

“I need to get back to my friends,” he said, “and someone is hovering behind you who hopes I”ll let you go.” Sticking out my hand I said, “Thank you, Da-Mr. Rockefeller, for your kindness in rescuing me. You’ve made me even more sorry I turned that job down.”  “Kindness, Penny? Rescue? I’ve no idea what you are talking about!” Mr. Rockefeller gave my hand a friendly squeeze. “Oh, thank you, indeed!” I said.  “Goodbye, Mr. Ro –David.” “ Goodbye, Penny, ” he agreed and we both turned away.

Once in a while you meet and share a part of your heart with a total stranger making a connection you never forget, a friend you only meet once in your life. Because I already knew of and admired David Rockefeller, this is a precious memory to me. I like to imagine, however, that hearing me recognize and affirm that I felt about my marriage and Howdy as he did about his marriage and Peggy was, somehow, a tiny gift to him.

Serious considerations for the end of a Holiday Weekend!  Real life. Maybe Friday will feature something lighter?  God only knows, I certainly don’t!  See you – -?   p

📸 Click for image credit

The Fine Art of Knowing Yourself and Leaning on Others

Lyndhurst’s concentric Rose Garden, maintained by the Garden Club of Irvington-on-Hudson  

Just looking at the picture of the garden above makes my knees quiver when, in the day, I ran hundreds of times around it as my almost private fiefdom, chair or vice-chair for 12 years, possibly more. Most of us know we are changing to less active, less powerful but recognizing that our attitudes, interests, views AND abilities have also evolved or otherwise changed is not always so easily recognized.

Had I known how nit-picky I have grown in the past ten years about comma placement and the exact right word (le mot juste), I would not have been so ambitious in beginning with four blogs a week for two weeks. Things to write about are in ample stock for this – I have a long and excellent memory and opinions and ruminations galore! – but patience and time to produce a thoroughly edited and proof read piece are in shorter supply. After this week when this is all you get, I will aim at two and promise at least one blog if life is fairly serene. When things go to hell as happened last week, all bets are off.

When my sister first heard about this venture, she was startled that I would have the know how and hutzpah to handle the mechanic of producing a blog. I don’t. The good looks of this blog, its connection with WordPress, everything after I push send on an email are the work of a dear, generous, encouraging, multi-talented friend Barbara Stroud whose own blog, ArtFoodHome appears daily. I said if she’d get me going, I could take over that part after that. (Rash remarks are imbedded in my DNA. It’s the 19% Irish in me.) She can do figure eights backwards around me in this area and may be stuck with me forever. So I am devoting next week to not pestering Barbara and hopefully locating a few of the presently unfindable things in my life, like my back up car key. Wish me luck, please!

Meanwhile, I feel a surge of patriotism coming on! To make your fourth more glorious, find a copy of the early cast recording of the Broadway musical 1776.  Listen to it the whole way to the end and see if it doesn’t sort of get you in your gut. My generation was taught America’s (as we called it then) history over and over and every year in every way possible then until it became part of our own history. We knew how unique and how special the USA is and took personal pride in being Americans. I’ll hop off my soap box now and leave you to revel in the beauties of June and 1776. See you June 27!    p

Clifford Pickett Photography  |  Image is not for reproduction, it is property of the photographer.

Read This If You Think Astrology is Bunk!

A Taurus beauty (related to me!) in my idea of an appropriate hat for today’s supernatural topic.

PURSUIT OF DESTINY by Muriel Bruce Hasbrouck was published by E.P. Dutton in 1941. A copy was in our annual pre-Christmas box of new Dutton books from the publisher, my grandfather’s best friend, (Uncle) Johnny Macrae. The box opening was something of a family event so when PURSUIT appeared, and someone snorted, I asked if I might, please, see it first. With no competition, I had time, not to read it, of course, but, having spotted it as a book on astrology, to look up the horoscopes of everyone whose birthday I knew. I remember my surprise and awe at the uncannily on-target descriptions of people born under the different astrological signs of virtually everyone I “researched.” I was hooked!

Pam, a close friend from school and college was not only hooked but a student of astrology with real talent at discerning birth signs and casting accurate horoscopes, even seeing the future. At an informal dinner one night with just my five teenagers and me, something one of my sons said amused Pam, and, laughing, she said, “Well, of course you would feel that, you’re a Taurus!” “What’s that?” my son asked suspiciously. “It’s your birth sign,” Pam responded,“everyone has one and you were born between April 21 and May 20. And I do know all of you but only your mother’s birthday.” A loud garbled chorus erupted. Everyone wanted to be diagnosed!  Saying she was remembering things said or done since she arrived, Pam correctly pegged a Cancer and a Libra, then a Pisces. As a shrill “NO” rocked the house an equally loud “No, don’t say it!” came from puzzled Pam. Silence for a moment. Then she asked young Not-Pisces, “But didn’t you say blank de blank? He responded pointing to a sister, “No, she did.”  Turning to the sister, Pam asked, “But I thought you said blah do blah?” The revealed Piscean, shook her head.  “Oh, I DO apologize,” Pam said,” then you’re the Pisces, he’s the Virgo!” Five for five.  

Roughly 15 years later, I sat in Pam’s apartment in La Jolla, CA, pouring out my concern that our house and suburban New York life were too much and too expensive for us. Ours felt like “a falling down life.” We had been young, married only three years when we bought it, far more agile and able to cope with the snows and loss of power and phone. (We lived in the former superintendent’s cottage on an old estate where all utility lines were ancient.) “Could you possibly do a horoscope that might tell me when this might actually happen? I need hope!”  Howdy was suffering the aftermath of Lyme encephalitis and wanted to stay put so there was a lot of strategic persuasion ahead if we were to move as I hoped. “I could try” said Pam tentatively.  “It’s a process, you know, and is going to take time.”  I nodded.

The next morning over coffee, fresh orange juice and croissants, at her window table facing the sparkling sunlit Pacific, she said, “I think I’ve got it! Actually, I know I’ve got it!” She gave me a truly mind numbing explanation involving celestial bodies entering some of my astrological “houses”, while other astrological bodies – Pluto, just a tiny chap was very influential, I believe – and summed it up in an exalted tone.“You will be in your new home, the process complete by Thanksgiving, 1996. Can you last that long?” “I guess I’ll have to, won’t I?” I replied. That was two and a half years away.

Although we moved into our winterized summer house on September 29, 1996, the final workman, having removed painting debris from the just finished upstairs hall bookcases, wished us a happy Thanksgiving as he left on Wednesday, November 27, 1996. Gospel truth. Still gives me goose bumps!

Did you say “Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit” first thing today?  You didn’t??  Oh, my!! Good luck! See you back tomorrow, I hope.  p

Philosophy of Friends You Need

Penny surrounded by younger friends.

When I think of this group of friends to prize as you age, it’s as a “Support of friends” as in a “pride of lions”.  I believe that our friends pick up where family leaves off, that they provide the continuum of love, support and joy that makes life livable. These may be in addition to family or in place of family that is far away or even just gone. Everyone as they age, if they are truly lucky, will have at least one good friend from each of the following categories.  These are the kind of friend who, when they see something amiss – spinach between your front teeth. peanut butter or a whisker on your chin, something unzipped – will immediately warn you or fix it. When you tell them a secret, it remains one.

Someone younger to help you stay “with it”and to drive or help you when you need it. They slow your aging process and add sparkle and companionship to your days as you outlive your own age group! Indispensible!  Find one!

Someone older to be your role model for aging gracefully, wisely, happily, healthily and with class, dignity and humor despite  aches or ailments. Although challenged, they still find life fun and full of opportunity. They are game, involved and radiate enthusiasm even in their nineties. Uplifting.

Someone about your age.  Being of the same vintage, you will remember many of the same events and styles, share similar milestones and be able to compare notes both on things remembered or forgotten  and aging issues.  Comforting!

Someone who knew you when you were really young, growing up at home, in primary or middle school and who, therefore, knew your hometown and its values, your parents and theirs.  They understand the forces that formed you. They literally know where you are coming from.  They keep you honest.

Someone who knew you “in your prime” or successive primes whenever they were! They will always regard you as the capable, vital person you were then. They help you hold on to and actively remember your strengths, skills, successes and even power so that you don’t leave them buried in the past. Strengthening!

And the luckiest people of all will have a friend, usually younger, perhaps a young relative, who sees THEM as a role model and has told them so. “I want to be ‘just like you’  when I grow up!” These, perhaps more than any of the others, help you reach and hold on to your full potential longest. They make you stretch so as not to let them down. Their admiration and expectations keep you growing, learning and giving of yourself, not just growing old. To have such friends is to be rich indeed.

May you be so blessed.  More soon!