Say yes to mammograms...

This was written in 2009. I know there's not that much to it and that it's not Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but it is my month to make my appointment. And, truth to tell, I remember every month of my life that my mom died from breast cancer. And I remember every month of my life that my friends Dottie Eberle and Inge Pitman left us way too soon because of breast cancer. 

I also have friends who have survived. As much as in memory of the losses I mentioned above, I'm posting this--and urging you to make your appointment--in celebration of their wellness.

Okay, I know this is pink. I know it looks dumb on this blog, but, hey...we're talking about breasts here. Boobs. Jugs. Tatas. Other euph--I've forgotten how to spell that word--that are even less elegant. And we're talking about breast cancer. You know, that nasty disease represented by that ribbon over there?

We've got some "experts" saying don't bother with mammograms, don't examine yourself. I'd venture to say most of them have not buried their mothers or sisters or daughters. Most of them don't know and celebrate the survivors the way those of us do who knew and loved women who didn't survive.

So make the appointment, okay? And make the jokes and maybe go out for lunch afterwards, preferably a lunch where you laugh a lot and get a little loud and drink a toast to yourself because you've done something for yourself today. Maybe your husband or partner or your kids will make the toast--because you've done something for them, too.

"Don't miss it--don't even be late."

Next week is fair week here in Miami County. It's a lot different from when I was a kid. It's way earlier, for one thing. Smaller. The rides are...I don't know--less? I volunteer out there now, as a member of Extension Homemakers, but we didn't go for a long time. Until this year back in the 90s...

Last night my husband and I went to the fair. We didn't get there until about eight o'clock. We were going to get something to eat, take a quick run around the exhibits, and be home in an hour and a half or so.

After all, we said, the fair Isn't What It Used To Be. We don't ride on the rides anymore, or play the games offered on the midway. Since our kids are all out of school, we can't even look up many of their friends 4-H exhibits anymore. It's just not the same.

When I was a little kid, a hundred or so years ago, the fair took place during the week of my birthday. On one day during the week, not necessarily my birthday, my mother would work in one of the the food places at the fair and I would take my birthday money and run wild until she came and found me and told me we had to go home.

I never got to run wild very often, so I always took full advantage of it. I picked up duckies and won wonderful little bamboo canes. I laid nickels on numbers and went fishing with the little crane and threw more nickels at shell-shocked goldfish. One year, I talked one of my brothers into taking me on the Bullet--I was scared to death to go by myself--and I lost all my money while I was on it and a whole bunch of cotton candy and caramel corn as soon as I stumbled away from it a couple of traumatic minutes later.

It was probably a good ten years before I braved the Bullet again, and then only after I'd left all my worldly goods with someone intelligent enough to remain on the ground and before I'd had time to eat anything I stood a good chance of losing the hard way.

The fair remained wonderful through my teenage years. There was nothing more romantic than smooching with someone on top of the Ferris wheel or toting home a hideous teddy bear won for you by someone. Another side to that romantic thing was fighting with someone while you were there and having to ride home with your girlfriends while you cried and said you never wanted to see him again. Ever. (Note from 2017. If this happened, I don't remember it. That's either a sign my memory's truly gone or indicative it wasn't all that serious of a relationship.) 

But then things kind of changed. The only time we went to the fair was on family day when the rides wouldn't entirely break the bank and the only ones who rode were our kids. Except for when their dad rode the Bullet with them while I held everyone's money and a good supply of wet paper towels.

Pretty soon the kids were going to the fair without us. We would manage to go out one night to eat pork chops and do a quick run through the exhibits and get home in an hour and a half. All the way home, I would complain that It Just Wasn't What It Used To Be.

Until last night.

When we spent some quality time talking to people we hadn't seen in years and remembered how much we miss them.

When I stuffed myself with a tenderloin the size of a dinner plate that tasted just as wonderful as they did that hundred years or so ago I mentioned up there.

When we walked, not ran, through the exhibits and marveled at the talent and hard work of those doing the exhibiting. When we looked up our favorite 4-H members' entries and crowed proudly at their blue ribbons.

When we strolled through the midway and smiled at laughing babies in strollers and their excited siblings on the rides. Their parents waited patiently and tiredly with the strollers, talking to others doing the same, and we knew what they were saying. "The fair just isn't the same anymore."

When we sat in hard chairs in a big tent and watched dozens of cloggers doing their thing. The noise form their shoes was deafening. And rhythmic. And pretty-sounding. The bobbing black ponytail in the front row was captivating, nearly as much so as the smile on the face of the ponytail owner.

Exhibits. Smiling cloggers. Laughing babies. Good friends. Good food.

Maybe the fair's not the same anymore. But it's still the fair. I hope you don't miss it.

Thanks for coming by. Here's the website for the fair. I hope you go and have a good time. And eat a tenderloin. 

Once upon a time...

This was from August of 1994. The grandparents I wrote about here were born in 1869 and 1873, which sounds incredible to me now. It makes me wish I'd asked a lot more questions and written a lot more down.

Have I ever told you about my grandmother? Well, that's a silly question, when I already know I haven't, but it was a good way to give you a clue I'm going to tell you about her now.

Her name was Elvira Pontius Shafer. She died in 1957 at the age of 84. I wore

Photo by Annette Wise

my favorite blue and white dress to the funeral and sat next to my cousin Ronnie and had to be really quiet for a long time, even longer than if I'd gone to school that day.

She used to sit in her kitchen and drink coffee out of a big white cup with a long crack down the side. I asked her why she always used that cup and she said it was to save the good ones for company. Evenings, she would sit in a small rocking chair near the stove in the living room and take down her long white hair and brush it while talk and noise went on around her. She never paid any attention to me and I was pretty sure she didn't like me.

That's all I remember.

Photo by Annette Wise

But I know she and my grandfather, William Washington Shafer, had two stillborn babies and that those babies were buried in the garden. "How could they?" I demanded of the person who told the story. "How could they have done something like that? We're talking babies here, not goldfish." I don't remember the answer, but years later, my sister Nancy told me how much time Elvira had spent in her rose garden. Alone.

When Amy, Elvira and William's firstborn child, was 23, she became a statistic in the influenza epidemic of 1918. Amy was buried in the cemetery, not the garden, but I'm sure Grandma grieved for her out there with her roses.

One time when Elvira was pregnant, which she was at least 10 times, a fire broke out in the house. According to pictures and to my memory, Elvira was a skinny little thing, but when the fire erupted, she picked up the sewing machine and carried it downstairs and out of the house. In those days, sewing machines were big things in heavy wooden cabinets with a treadle attached underneath. We have one of them sitting in the hallway downstairs. I, who haven't been pregnant in 20 years and who am by no one's measure a skinny little thing, can lift one end of it.

I know that when William went blind and spent most of the rest of his days on the couch in front of the big living room window, it didn't make any difference to her. They still laughed and had a good time until he died in 1952, when they'd been married something like 58 years.

That's what I know about my grandmother. It's not much, but I'm glad I know it. I'm glad I listened when aunts told stories in my hearing. What I know has taught me a couple of things that I'm sure she never intended. One, that I hope none of my grandkids ever think for one tiny minute that I don't like them. Two, that I never save anything for company, because there's no one more important than family.

Talking about Elvira makes me think of my roots, something I never gave much thought until recently. It makes me wonder if she's the reason I think it's so very important for women to be strong--like she was. Strong enough to survive the most grievous emotional assaults and still laugh with the man she loved. Strong enough to carry a sewing machine down the stairs.

So, if you get a chance, take a long hard look at the pages of your past. Listen to the stories told by those who remember things you can't. Then tell the stories again so that they live on. Tales of the past embroider the fabric of our lives today and lend them a little richness they wouldn't have had otherwise.

Thanks for listening. Pass it on.

Summertime, and the livin' is...busy @Liz Flaherty

This was written in June of 2008. It makes me realize that often, the more things change, the more they stay the same. I'm still reading Kathy Seidel and Pam Morsi books (although they don't write nearly fast enough to suit me), still spending family time where I can, and still hanging hummingbird feeders with hope every spring. But the grandkids are growing up way too fast and the days are still too short.

...you'll spread your wings and you'll take to the sky...
from "Summertime" by Heyward, Gershwin & Gershwin

Someone mentioned that I don't blog much, and she was right. I'm sorry, I moaned back, but the 24 hour days just aren't long enough anymore. And they're not. I'm just so tired all the time, I whined to a friend recently, and she said yes, everyone is. We are.

I remember summers of going to 40-some baseball games when my sons played on two different leagues. I remember the summer I sewed dresses for two flower girls, four bridesmaids, and my daughter the bride. I remember when we had a garden the size of--oh, I don't know, but it was way too big. If memory serves, there were only 24 hours in a day then, too, but somehow they lasted longer.

Well, complaining aside, it's a nice summer here in North Central Nowhere. The days are lovely and warm and the nights are lovely and cool.

I saw Mari, my oldest granddaughter, graduate from high school. I sniffled through the whole thing and I am so proud of her.

My daughter Kari and I went to Shipshewana, Indiana to the biggest flea market I've ever seen. We walked around until my feet were falling off, but I got two sets of sheets and we ate some truly excellent chicken and noodles for lunch.

My third grandson, Connor, played T-ball this summer. He played for the Yankees, and my husband said the Yankees were a big team from New York. Connor gave him a disapproving look and said No, they were from kindergarten.

I hung hummingbird feeders on the front porch as I always do, and was disappointed not to draw the usual crowd of the little birds. Until I realized we'd drawn another crowd. Two pairs of orioles feasted on hummingbird nectar for several weeks. They left as suddenly as they'd come.

Deer congregate in our three-acre yard. They drink water from the low spot and chomp on whatever deer chomp on. (Last year it was two new trees; they apparently don't like the ones we planted this year.) We sit on the back porch and watch them. They stare up at us once in a while, then go back to whatever they were doing.

Oops, I need to throw a reading commercial in here. Kathleen Gilles Seidel's Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige is a splendid addition to the keeper shelf. Likewise Pamela Morsi's Last Dance at the Jitterbug Lounge.

As I read this, it seems as though I'm spending these summer days watching life rather than participating in it. And maybe I am. But I'm enjoying it, every single too-short day of it, no matter how much I complain.

I hope you are, too.

Will you still need me... @Liz Flaherty

This is only 10 years old, downright new in the scheme of things for this reopened Window. But now I'm 66, even more than the song says.

And it's still exciting.

Me at 64--I'm sure I look even better now!

"Will you still need me, will you still feed me,

When I'm sixty-four..." - Lennon / McCartney

It was exciting when I was six. I got a doll for Christmas and a new red wagon for my birthday. My sister worked at a department store and bought me cool clothes and married the mysterious stranger who would raise my brother count to four. A huge limb came through a kitchen window during a storm and I climbed my brother Joe like a tree, knowing beyond all doubt that I was going to be taken care of.

Sixteen was exciting, too. I was able to date as soon as someone asked me and I could drive a car on the road instead of in the back pasture. I could wear makeup as long as my mother wasn’t paying a lot of attention, and every now and then I used swear words in public. I’d already witnessed that long, sad weekend when President Kennedy was shot, and the even sadder one — for me — when my grandfather died, so I knew by then that my brother couldn’t keep me safe anymore.  

  

I loved being 26. I was done having babies and we were buying our own house. Vietnam was finally over and I could vote and even drink if I wanted to. My oldest son started playing baseball and what fun that was—I had no idea I’d be spending the next 12 or so summers on bleachers. It was an exciting time.

It wasn’t long till I was 36, ten years into my bleacher time, and I was getting wrinkles. My kids were in varying stages of adolescence and my hair was getting really, really gray. At least, I think it was; I’ve never let the roots get long enough to be sure. It was the best of times, being young enough to get up and down without groaning but old enough to try and talk someone else into doing it for me.

Fifteen minutes later, I was 46. I was catching onto having grandchildren, using a computer, and cooking in one-quart saucepans. My husband and I rediscovered ourselves as a couple and found out we canceled each other out in the voting booth. I discovered Walmart and he discovered golf and the grandkids found out just how easy it is to run over both of us. We started making a lot of age jokes even though they’re not all that funny anymore and the veins in my legs took on a spidery look. And it was exciting, being a couple again, with no one in the back seat criticizing our driving.

And in the blink of an eye, it’s 2007 and I’m 56. I remember my mom being 56 and she was a whole lot older than I am, a phenomenon I haven’t quite figured out. My veins are worse, but I don’t care, and we’re not even going to talk about my roots. 

We’ve seen more horror in the past few years than any of us can bear to think about. More than we can begin to understand. There are more things in life to create anger than I can remember there being before: terrorism, gas prices, politics, greed, “not my job, man,” and the cost of prescription medicine, to name but a few. I catch myself saying, “It wasn’t like that when I was your age,” because ... well, because it wasn’t.

But you know what? It doesn’t help a thing for me to wax nostalgic about what once was. It doesn’t bring back good service, reasonable prices, or kindness. Like the generations before us, we’ve made a bunch .. .oh, good grief, a huge bunch ... of mistakes that our kids and grandkids have to clean up after. When I was your age, we were messing up the air big time then because we didn’t know any better. But you do. Littering was rude and inconsiderate; now it’s downright dangerous.

And there are things that have stayed the same. Although cherry cokes and ice cream cones cost a lot less when I was a kid, they tasted just the same. Pizza is just as sinfully good now as it was then, even if you eat it cold the next day. Hot dogs and hamburgers still taste special when they’re cooked on the grill and there’s not much that’s better than a burned-to-a-crisp marshmallow. 

Oh, and then there are the things that are better. My car was seven years old and had 165,000 miles on it when I got a new one, and we kept the old one because there was nothing wrong with it! I don’t remember cars lasting that well when I was young. And this computer, while it does have its tantrums, is so much easier to deal with than a typewriter. My oven cleans itself and I have a machine that washes the dishes. Oh, yes, much better.  

 

So, like I said, I’m 56. And you know what? It’s fun. Healthy days are not things you take for granted and sunshine is a joy that fills your soul, not just your eyes. Grandkids are the reward you get for having done something right with their parents, and if you don’t have any of your own, it’s perfectly all right to borrow someone else’s. 

We’ve just passed New Year’s, so spring will be coming up soon. Days will be longer, grass green and new, and the sky even bluer than we remember it from last year. Flowers and children will cover the landscape with bright colors and sweetness. We’ll eat ice cream and strawberries still warm from the sun and we’ll hold close the beauty of springtime graduates and early summer brides. I’m 56. And it’s exciting.

Till next time.

How not to be a grouchy old person @Liz Flaherty

I'm not sure when I wrote this, but since the granddaughter I mentioned is--gasp--21, it's been a while. 

"The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time." - James Taylor

In the seventies, Gail Sheehy wrote a book called Passages. Since it was a period of life for me that involved three children, one husband, a house, and a full-time job, I didn’t read the book. It didn’t sound very entertaining, and believe me, if I had the time to read in those days, I wanted the subject matter to be entertaining. 

Now, in the last decade of the century, I still haven’t read the book, but I do think more about passages these days. A death in our family of someone who left us too soon, before his life was even in full summer, caused some of this introspection. The births of my second, third, and fourth grandchildren in scarcely more than a year created more.

    

The passages make me sad.

I followed a school bus the other day and thought about all the years my kids rode a bus. For the entire 13 years I had students in this school system, they had the same driver. The bus I followed the other day didn’t even slow down when it passed our house and the driver who kept my children safe all those hundreds of days — not counting the ones my little darlings skipped — has passed away.

This morning, eating breakfast in a restaurant, I watched a father with his four children. He drank his coffee, ordered for the two youngest, kept the baby from taking unscheduled flights out of the high chair, talked with his kids, and chatted with people at other tables, all without blinking an eye.

Unless you’re a caregiver or a teacher, I suppose being able to keep up with a horde. Somewhere, somehow, the ability to think about all those different things and keep track of reaching fingers and kicking feet while still maintaining a grip on both a coffee cup and some semblance of reality passes you by. of kids isn’t a marketable skill when you’ve finished raising your family, and after a while you lose it.

For all of the at least 100 years that my kids were adolescents, I thought teenagers were the smartest, neatest, funniest people in the world. The times I spent with them were some of the most productive and memory-producing years of my life. I still think spectator entertainment doesn’t come any better than high school sports and that most clothing looks better on 17-year-olds than on anyone else on earth. But nowadays I catch myself thinking things like “why doesn’t he wash that hair?” or “I wonder if he can speak a complete sentence without using a four-letter-word” or, worst of all, “if that was my kid, I’d — ”

I’d what? Who am I to criticize anyone’s parenting skills when I made every mistake there was to make at least once, more often two or three times? Is this what passages do? Do they turn you into a grouchy old person who forgets how things were once upon a time?

I guess, if you let them, that’s exactly what they’ll do.

But they can do other things, too.

I recently saw both of our sons dressed up at the same time. They wore suits, the one with a beard had it neatly trimmed, their shoes were freshly polished. While we sat, necessarily quiet, I didn’t have to tell either of them to stop kicking the chair in front of him, to stop whispering, to not smack his gum, to leave his brother alone. Their father did not have to point the finger that promised trouble later on or deliver on that promise. When we took them to lunch and they both ordered beer, I didn’t feel compelled to deliver the alcohol lecture I’d perfected over the years.

When we separated later in the day, I told them, “I love you. Be careful driving home,” just as I have told them since the first time they palmed a set of car keys, but the pressure was off. Although I love my children more and am prouder of them than I’ve ever been, they are no longer my responsibility.

And when I held my newest granddaughter and counted her fingers and toes as I counted my endless blessings, I looked at her wonderful, tired mother and thought about how she was just beginning.

I’m glad it’s her instead of me. I’m glad that when the baby stiffens up and her face turns red and she lets out a wail, I can hand her to one of her parents and say, “Here. Do something.” I’m glad that although she fits my arms like a warm and comfortable sweater, I’m not cold when I hand her back.

A few years ago, I had to drive my youngest son to his home an hour away during a snowstorm. It was black dark and the roads were getting nasty. When I let my son out of the car, he leaned back in before closing the door, looking at me in the glare of the interior light, and said, “I love you. Be careful driving home.”

Did I say passages made me sad? Maybe, sometimes. And sometimes not. Sometimes the discovery that things have indeed passed can brighten a gloomy day or brighten a dark night. It might even keep you from becoming a grouchy old person who forgets too much.

Deepening the dash @Liz Flaherty

Unlike the person I've quoted below, I do hate funerals. My faith tells me they are celebrations of beginnings, but the truth is they still feel like endings to me. That being said, I think things are different now--we laugh during funerals without trying to hide it, because the memories people leave behind are often both precious and funny; we really do celebrate the lives of those we've lost. 

Photo by Annette Wise

Some people hate funerals. I find them comforting. They hit the pause button on life and remind us that it has an end. Every eulogy reminds me to deepen my dash, that place on he tombstone between our birth and our death. - Regina Brett

Do you ever wonder what people will think and say about you after you've died? I never did, either, until today.

My aunt died this week at 97. She'd lived a full and happy life, working outside the home and remaining childless during a time when those just weren't the things to do. She loved and cherished her husband, but after he died, she carried on for over 30 years without him.

Today was her funeral, and the minister who officiated there had never met her. She wasn't a churchgoer, and since she came from out of state, the man who spoke the usual words of comfort and parting was a stranger both to her and to most of us who attended. I thought he did a great job. But the one who did the best job was the one who signed the card accompanying a floral arrangement with the words, "For the best friend I ever had."

On the way home from the cemetery, while the mud dried on my high heels and I tried to keep the hem of my dress coat off the not-very-clean floor of my car, I thought about those words. And, since I've spent the last 24 years of my life, since the day my first child was born, feeling either guilty or worried or both, I got worried about the whole situation.

Would my sons remember that I drove them to at least 10,000 games and practices or would they remember that sometimes I yelled at them because I was just too tired to cope one more minute?

Would my daughter remember all the fun we had shopping and talking and being together or would she only recall the times I'd grounded her "for life, not one minute less"?

Would they remember the movies I took them to or the ones I didn't?

Would my husband mourn me forever, which I wouldn't want him to do, or forget me in the space of time it took him to learn how to buy his own socks, which I wouldn't want him to do, either?

Would my mother-in-law remember how much I loved her or would she remember my hit and miss (mostly miss) housekeeping, so opposite of hers?

Would people say, "she tried hard," or would they say, "she never could get anything quite right"?

Fortunately, it's only about six miles from the cemetery to my house, so that was all the time I had for worrying about things like that. But I thought about them all evening, as I thought about my aunt. I thought about the eulogies I've heard--both the ones that moved me to tears and the ones that left me cold and wondering who or what on earth the officiant was talking about.

It's nothing you can control. You just do the best you can and hope it's enough. You don't, or at least you shouldn't, worry about things like the ones I fretted about today in the car. You should worry about what you do while you're alive.

And if you have a best friend, maybe you should send them some flowers or a card and tell them how you feel about them. Soon. Because while it was a lovely eulogy to my aunt, they are words that should be spoken among the living, too.