Memories and Aging Well

The Christmas Pageant

Backstory

This Christmas story is absolutely true. Daughters Cheryl and Lisa and son Michael acted out the skit. We have the photos that captured it. All Cheri’s ideas were based on the Christmas teachings that had touched her heart. Their actions touched ours. Listen in or read the text, please.

Christmas Pageant

It was our first Christmas in our first real house. The children were 7, 4, and 3 – quite a handful, and so full of the Christmas spirit.

The oldest had learned in school about giving gifts from the heart. She wisely brought home the message that gifts need not be the biggest or the most expensive, to show love. She wanted to give her mom and dad a Christmas gift from the heart. She convinced her little sister and brother to put on a Christmas pageant for us, as our gift.

As the oldest, she played the key role of the virgin Mary, dressed in one of my frilly white nightgowns. Her sister, complete with aluminum foil halo, was an angel holding a wooden spoon, no doubt representing something angelic. Their toddler brother was a shepherd dressed in brown towel tied at the waist with a jump rope. A doll wrapped in white towels represented the baby Jesus in swaddling clothes.

They were so little; and yet they understood the true significance of the day and played it out so lovingly for their dad and me.

All grown up now, they have taught the true meaning of Christmas to their children as well. We all still sing Happy Birthday Jesus on Christmas Day, celebrating Him as the reason for the season.

What a joy are memories of significant Christmases past that still bring smiles to our lips and tears to our eyes.

[Show #467]

Scent of Christmas

Backstory

I love walking into a home when there’s a delightful whiff of cooking and baking coming from the kitchen. It tells me that someone is treating me special and I am welcome here. It doesn’t work if you’re serving cookies from the box on the shelf. But when they are freshly baked, and the scent of anise, chocolate, and pralines is still in the air, wow what a treat!

Scent of Christmas

Christmas has a field day with your olfactory receptors. The scents of the holidays are everywhere, and your nose knows! These are special fragrances and aromas that don’t exist, at any other time of year.

What are your favorites? The scent of pine trees and pine wreaths makes it feel like the forest has been brought into your house. I love it.

The smell of fresh-baked cookies . . . or even better, cookies as they ARE baking.

In my family, treasured recipes have been passed down for generations. Some of them are just too involved to undertake. Others would be too expensive.

My mom made something called Christmas rocks. They were baked around Thanksgiving and allowed to ferment until Christmas. They contained four different kinds of liquor and more nuts, raisins, and currants than could fit my budget today.

But I can still remember the pungent and enticing aroma when Mom opened that tin of Christmas rocks after its gestation period. Whew!

The roasted turkey is high on the list of holiday essences and may even be trumped by the smell of special recipe stuffings made with cornbread or oysters or minced chicken livers mixed with the other ingredients. Oh, and wonderful winter root vegetables.

So, long before you get to eat the holiday goodies, enjoy just smelling them and all the memories they recount.

P.S.

You know what other winter scent I love? The smell of cold. When you go outside after the first heavy snowfall and no one is out cleaning up yet. That crisp, clear air is wonderful and smells delightful. Gone too fast, but there for a moment of pleasure.

[Show #548]

Obsolete Words

Backstory

It all started when I said to a young person, “Aw shucks.” It was meant to be a joke. But she had no idea what that meant. I realized she had probably never heard the comment. Oh dear! I had used language that is no longer spoken. I’m a dinosaur!

Obsolete Words

Someone sent me an email with obsolete words. They are the words or phrases that were common in our youth, that are never heard today.

Some would be considered politically incorrect – Like the Honeymooners’ threat to “send his wife to the moon.” When there was a guilty person to be found, you might hear – “The milkman did it.” Today’s kids would have no idea who that was.

How about – “Hey! It’s your nickel: . . . “Don’t forget to pull the chain” . . . “Knee high to a grasshopper.”

A junk car was known as a jalopy. When was the last time you heard – jalopy?

To someone repeating themselves, you might say – “You sound like a broken record.” Sure has no relevance today.

Believe it or not, a darn good cuss word was – “Fiddlesticks!” A really cool exit greeting – “I’ll see you in the funny papers.” A caution – “Don’t take any wooden nickels.”

And now, those words are obsolete. The words we grew up with have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues. our pens or our keyboards.

P.S. For any parent who wants to masquerade as cool, Hugateen.com has published Ultimate List of Teen Slang Meanings Every Parent Should Know. That should keep you in the groove –at least for another month or so. Use the slang in the wrong context and instead of cool, you’ll appear Cheugy – out of date, trying too hard. There may be no hope!

[Show #648]

Nanny Wrote It Down

Backstory

There’s a beautiful stained-glass butterfly hanging in my office window. I enjoy its vivid colors and romantic aura every day. It occurred to me that after I go, and the baubles go to an heir, they will have no idea where it came from or what it meant to me. The thought inspired this story.

Nanny Wrote It Down

My grandmother used to write it down. When it happened, where it came from, who gave it to her. We used to laugh that the boxes in her dresser drawers all told who a gift was from, what she felt when she received it, and when it was given.

Statues and vases had their little labels on the bottom telling their mini-story. The events of the day scribbled on used envelopes and stuck between the pages of the family bible.

Well, long after Nanny wasn’t with us anymore, those messages were an important source of knowing who my grandmother was and what was important to her.

With computers transmitting so many of our messages today I wonder if we’ll lose those important insights shared in handwritten letters or labels on the bottoms of vases. I hope we don’t.

Maybe I’ll just go write something on the bottom of a vase, so my kids will know why I wrote about this very thing today for you to hear.

Maybe you’ll be moved to do the same thing!

P.S. It’s probably more likely that I will leave behind records of my thoughts and emotions, rather than labels on my relics. If my heirs listen to a dozen or so of the hundreds of Consider This stories, they may get a good idea of the ideas that bubble up in my head, rather than the things that go through my fingers. Yep, that would be more significant, I think.

[Show #168]

Coming Into Your Own

Back Story

How were your teenage years? Were you the cheerleader or football hero? Did you hate wearing glasses? Bleach your teeth? Did you study or glide through classes on pure luck? What things pop up when you place yourself back in your youth? We explore those times in this story.

Coming Into Your Own

What do you remember about your youth? I remember being a sponge; soaking up everything around me, trying out different styles.

In early times, the sponge soaked up someone else’s look, mannerisms, and values. I wanted to look like this movie star or sound like that rock star.

Then do you remember coming into your own? What age was that for you? When you took control and decided for yourself how you wanted to look, sound, think, love, and behave, distinctly from those around you.

That coming of age was a wonderful revelation. When you actually drop the adaptations and create yourself. Here you are, years later. Are you still that person from your early adulthood?

Or have you reinvented yourself more times over the years? If there’s anything you don’t like about what you created, change it. There’s still time. Every day you live is a chance to get better, a chance to change.

Be a sponge again. Try out new habits and new looks. Take up new pastimes or passions. Soak up the joy of the day and make it your own.

P.S. In Woodstock, there is an annual event where non-profits present their missions and troll for volunteers. It’s the perfect place to find a cause worth supporting. New volunteer activities lead to more ops for social contact and new friends. In your town, there is also a source for discovering volunteer opportunities. Your next passion may be waiting for you right there.

Show #218

The Panini Generation

Backstory

An aging population and a generation of young adults struggling to achieve financial independence are putting middle-aged Americans smack in the middle. Nearly half (47%) of adults in their 40s and 50s have a parent aged 65 or older and are either raising a young child or financially supporting a grown child (age 18 or older). A stressful situation lightened up by a beloved cartoonist.

The Panini Generation

There’s a book out that takes a humorous look at the struggle of the sandwich generation – middle-aged people charged with caring for aging parents – and one or more adult children who have returned to the nest.

You may remember the cartoon, Cathy. It was a mainstay in American entertainment for 34 years. In 2010, cartoon creator Cathy Guisewite (Guyz’white) retired, to focus on caring for her family. Now she mines the life she spent sandwiched between aging parents and an adult daughter, all of whom needed her.

Guisewite’s new book is titled, “Fifty Things That Aren’t My Fault: Essays From the Grown-Up Years” The amusing, self-deprecating observations that were in the Cathy cartoon are now applied to life in transition.

The author says the ‘panini generation’s days are completely different from what they expected at this time. Facing responsibility from both sides, trying to be a loving guide, yet still making time to have a life and take some selfies.

Guiswite confesses in her book that “the job of letting go and hanging on is wrenching.” She hopes that her essays can bring a beam of humor and understanding to an otherwise potentially depressing situation.

Good to have Cathy back in the game.

P.S. A new study reveals multigenerational living nearly quadrupled in the past decade, with the pandemic playing a strong role. https://www.gu.org/app/uploads/2021/04/21-MG-Family-Report-WEB.pdf

[Show #657]