A Sense of Style

My niece's wedding is Saturday. Lisa will be a beautiful bride. She has a perfect figure, great hair, and a lovely smile. She also has an inherent sense of style that she may have inherited from my mother. It is one that bypassed me. There are some women who seem to have it all together as far as appearance goes, and I admire them. I really do. They know what looks good on them and they accessorize well to boot. Maybe if I had had different experiences from the beginning, if my feet hadn't been so big, my wrists too large for pretty bracelets, or arms that no long sleeves would fully cover, I could be like them, too. Maybe then the love of clothes would have come easier to me, and I would have found my style. But nothing ever seemed to fit quite right, the way it did on my mother whose model thin size and shape just naturally never changed. One of my most consistently repeated New Year's resolutions has been to find and define my style, but I dropped it a couple of years ago when I realized that whether I liked it or not, I already did have my own style. It just wasn't one that I wanted. I would call it more of a shabby-chic with less emphasis on the chic. But an aunt must look nice for the wedding festivities, so shopping for the right dress I went. I found one, longish and graceful, a deep red with thin black lines whirled about in some sort of pattern that reminds me of classical music. Today I walked around in it in the hopes that I will adapt to it and it to me. I tried on various pieces of jewelry and settled on an old (antique) necklace, an odd piece that I inherited from my grandmother. This is the first time those twisted links of black celluloid have looked good with anything, and it is a sweet way of taking a piece of Mama to her great-granddaughter's wedding. And I must find something of Mother's to wear also. No matter...the older we get, the less likely people are to assess our looks. And there will be plenty of youthful beauty and style to be admired on Saturday.

Words of Wisdom From Mother

Today would be my mother's eighty-sixth birthday. Her life ended October 2006 in the hospital where my brother's life began. Within the week following her death, he and I discovered that she had been more of a diarist, writer, and collector of writings than we knew. Quotations, childhood memories, feelings, poetry, Bible verses, dreams, and snippets of her life were written randomly in her pretty calligraphic style throughout her many journals. She passionately loved the arts, referring often to them. This is one of her entries that we read at the memorial service. I, the apple, know that she, the tree, would be glad for me to share it. After first quoting from Longfellow, I hold the remaining words to be her own.

"Art is long
and time is fleeting"
We stay on earth
our appointed time
but the pictures we painted
the poems we write
stay

We may move on
but we leave our love
Our genes, our traits
will carry on in
those we've loved and left

The words we've said
may linger long
and get passed down
by pieces and bits
and we are never really gone
as scraps of us are found.

January, I love you!

January has become my favorite month. Time has done it to me. Once when I was a cute leggy thing, I welcomed summer. Now January seems the best month to cover it all up. But more than the vanity, I find that as the new year settles in, so do I. Except for high power bills, January is a minimal pressure, low maintenance month, and I can deal with that. The longer period of dark has a calming effect on hyper ol' me, and I would choose to hibernate like the bears for a while if only I could. But I mustn't let myself fall into that quite yet. On this gray, overcast, cool - maybe some would call it blah - morning, I took a nice walk around the block. I have been reading about the importance of Vitamin D, and I hope some was able to get through. All seasons are lovely. Today the deciduous trees were strikingly disrobed, showing only where the squirrels nest, but the magnolias, pines, a few live oaks and Savannah hollies splashed the neighborhood with shades of deep green. The Bradford pears already have tiny buds, and in a couple of months their sweet fragrance will be causing all sorts of respiratory problems. Underneath their lack of vibrancy, they are all busily alive. Blah? I don't think so. I call it renewal and comfort. January. I thought you would never come!

Tending to Home

Today I am not away working and am quietly at home alone. It is good and will help to balance my head and therefore my life - for life is in the head. (And you may quote me.) I will be cleaning, doing laundry, putting things back where they belong, and finding places for new stuff. What a wonderful day it will be. When I was embarking on adulthood and eager to have my own home to tend to, I kept a little poem that I read often - it must still be in my archives somewhere - that reflected on the joys of sweeping and of keeping a house. It had a positive effect on me throughout the years. Even though I can't quote the exact lines today, its essence instilled in my psyche so that when I do housework, I feel happy to be able to take care of the home that takes care of me. I know that something is built into us females that socio-cultural trends cannot extinguish, though it seems as if it has been tried. We like to nest and we like our nests. It is instinctual, grounding us.

Just Can't Wait

There are times when anticipation for a big life change makes the days seem to pass slowly. Like when you just can't wait to become a teenager. Then you can't wait to be old enough to get your driver's license. Aahhh...the freedom of the wheels! Then I just couldn't wait to get married and have a baby. All of my can't waits eventually turned into reality and life happened. It has been many years, but I am having an old familiar thrill churning inside that I recognize as that can't wait feeling. Now I can't wait to be old enough to get social security! Some people seem to know that one day they will reach a certain age and they plan for it. Not me. I guess I believed the future - if it was really going to come - would take care of itself. Maybe it will. I will find out soon enough. And I have enjoyed the work I began mid-life and didn't see any reason to leave it in the dust. But slowly I have become ready. Once again I see a new life ahead that is marked with freedom. (I have worked with the aging populations enough to know the bad things so don't spoil my dream.) For now I am just trying to be patient even though I just can't wait.