Wisdom of the Ages: Grandparents

Happy Summer! ~ I wrote this post last summer and I’m just now posting it. So I’m happy to report that my hydrangeas are having their best year ever despite the heat and last year’s questionable guidance from the garden store. Perhaps, I, myself, have become an old wise person figuring out my hydrangea woes without any reliable help. Wouldn’t that be something?! 

Anyway, this post isn’t really about hydrangeas or even being older. It’s about how much we matter to each other. I felt this most keenly from my grandparents. Maybe you feel it from a spouse or close friend, and ideally, we all feel it in our relationship with God. 

Still, I would like to acknowledge the unique role grandparents play in our lives. My own grandparents left an indelible mark on the parts of me that I like the best. And, as a mother who has watched her children grow up in the light of their own grandparents, I will be forever grateful for their love and influence. So for all you wonderful grandparents, pretend like I’m giving you some freshly cut hydrangeas from my yard. After all, it’s the thought that counts and I know your grandbabies think the world of you. I also know how right they are. ~ Love, Lara

I have always liked old people. They were nice to me. They knew stuff and never made me feel bad for all the things I didn’t know. Sometimes they would give me candy or money or tell stories that felt like a comparable treasure.

Grandparents were the ultimate old people. They were this magical mix of love and wisdom that assured me that the world was good and that I was too. I haven’t had a grandparent in decades.  The last time I did, the internet didn’t exist. If we wanted to know something we had to go to the library or ask an old person. I preferred the latter. This summer, my treasured hydrangeas that once boasted showy blooms and giant emerald leaves became stunted and deformed dappled by the powdery mildew of fungal disease and rust-colored spots.

I searched the internet and read until I was thoroughly confused by the array of diagnoses and conflicting remedies. For the sake of clarity, I went to the garden store fanning my sampling of diseased leaves like a bad hand of dealt cards similar to the one Kenny Rogers cautioned about in his song, The Gambler, “you got to know when to hold ‘em; know when to fold ‘em.” I told the sad story of disfigurement as if I were writing my own country song. All the while, the garden store employee hmmed and hawed making twisty faces with her mouth at all the right parts of my lamentation as if she understood both my plight and the solution that would cure it. When I finished, she pulled out her cell phone to do her own internet search.

I left dubious with a $20 fungicide and a deep longing for old people. I grew up when music television was the rage and neon clothes the norm so I hardly feel nostalgic for anything old-fashioned. But my longing isn’t so much for the good old days (whatever they were) but for grandparents. In these days of information overload, I miss the simplicity of the plain way that old people spoke that could tell you whatever you needed to know in less than a sentence. There was comfort in their knowing. Read more

Grand Plans: Have You Made Yours?

Most days I feel like I’m seventeen, only without the boyfriend drama and with a credit card that I didn’t “borrow” from my mom. Those are good days. Days where life still feels full of possibilities and bending over to pick up the clothes I’ve strewn about my bedroom doesn’t make me sigh or wince.

Then there are other days where I catch glimpses in a street window or store mirror and I’m so struck by the older version of me that I put my readers on and examine my reflection more carefully. I can’t help feeling betrayed like I just awoke from a sleepover where unbeknownst to me some mean girl drew lines on my face as some cruel practical joke. My eyes are puffier, my face thinner, and I try to reconcile these physical changes with the young, silly girl I still feel like inside.

And while I’m not quite elderly, I’ve aged enough to know that there’s nothing silly in this getting old business. It’s complicated. There are the pesky forms at the doctor’s office where you have to decide whether you want to be resuscitated; who you are giving power of attorney to when you can’t make decisions for yourself anymore; setting up wills and estate planning; who gets what and what the woo-ha do we do with the lifetime of accumulated stuff that the priest warned us we can’t take with us when we go but we bought anyway because it was on sale. Surely, God appreciates a bargain. Read more

Birthday Lessons for Everyday Life

I just celebrated another birthday.  Besides wilting skin, the imaginary birthday girl tiara on my head, and the presents I intend to buy myself, I think of the song Birthday by the Beatles on my 365th day of orbit around the sun.  Anthony Michael Hall sings it to Molly Ringwald in the film, Sixteen Candles.  “They say it’s your birthday, well it’s my birthday too, yeah!”

Whether it’s your birthday too, or just another day when age sixteen feels really far away, there are a lot of lessons birthdays teach.

This is what I learned from mine:

Birthday lists are important:  Every year my husband pesters me to tell him what I want for my birthday, and every year I can’t think of one single thing to get.  Yet, there are many things I want.  I just talk myself out of them because I don’t want to clean puppy pee off the floor.  Birthdays give us a chance to consider what we want.  For many of us, that feels uncomfortable.  Still, it’s important to know what you want in life, because it’s short, and precious, and as far as we know, we only get one shot at it.  What do you want?

Gifts are great: Who doesn’t like opening presents?! It’s so fun to size up the box, give it a little shake, and then rip the pretty paper off that is suffocating the thoughtful gift inside. I haven’t always thought of my life as a gift.  I have taken it for granted, given away too many days to sour thoughts and staid reflections.  But, birthdays remind me to give gratitude to the ultimate gift-giver.  I always try to offer thanksgiving to God, but on my birthday, I am especially humbled by his goodness.  I see the gift of each day: the sorrows, joys, trials, and the spaces in between.  All of it, a gift.  All of it inspires me to try to be a gift to others. Read more

Tell me what you want what you really, really want

My son drew this picture of Jesus of the Eucharist when he was 11-year old.  It hangs in my hallway.

I have a new computer and noticed at the top center is an icon of a little light bulb that reads, “Tell me what you want to do.”  Maybe it’s because I had a perpetually messy room as a child and watched too many episodes of “I Dream of Jeannie,” but I’ve been looking for a light bulb like that my entire life.

Haven’t we all?  How much simpler life would be if we could just get what we want, what we think we need, what we know will finally fill that persistent ache of our humanity.  When I look at my life, the things I wished for as a child, the vows of certainty I made as a teenager, the ambitious plans I made as a young adult, and the middle-age accumulation of decades of yearnings, efforts, achievements, and disappointments, I wonder why I long for anything.  It hasn’t been a ‘your wish is my command’ experience, but it has been magical, even if that magic felt black at times. Read more

Searching: Might as well be fun

80'sMy son’s school had an 80s-themed fundraiser a-la Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” admittedly one of my favorite songs growing up.   But that was four decades ago!  Now I am a middle-aged woman who just wants a nap.  I mean they’re pretty fun, too, right?

It’s hard to believe that I can count my life in decades now.  I still remember the thrill of turning double digits, the big 1-0.  It was the following year, 1983, that Lauper released the ultimate slumber party song, “They just wanna, they just wanna, oh girls, Girls just wanna have fun.” 

In retrospect, I don’t know how fun the eighties were for me.  My parents divorced.  I was a latch-key kid living off Stouffer’s frozen fettuccine dinners, ice cream bars, and Cool Whip. It was a coming-of-age decade with all the confusion, angst, and acne that accompanies adolescence.

More than having fun, I think what I wanted was to belong.  I felt a little bit like an astronaut floating around in a space suit trying to find my people.  More so, trying to find myself.

I like to think that now that I am in my forties, I am more grounded, and certainly my faith is a huge part of that.  But there are still days that I wonder what I am supposed to be when I grow up, what I am here for, and how to make the most of the time I have left.  While the gravity of those questions should be enough to bring me down, the promise of my faith, of an eternal life with God, keeps me afloat as I search.

I went to the thrift store with two girlfriends to find an outfit befitting the decade with a penchant for legwarmers and leisure suits.  There were no dressing rooms, so we had to try poufy, lacy, neon, garish dresses over our clothes in front of mirrors in the middle aisles of the store.    We were a spectacle worthy of our own music video.

Okay, it was less Robert Palmer and more middle-aged mayhem.  I tried on an orange neon dress with a center slit so high I am pretty sure my son would have been kicked out of school if I wore it, and my friend delighted in finding the absolute ugliest dress I’ve seen in a long time. Our other girlfriend was like a stage mom, accessorizing us, tucking our post-baby parts into cast-off prom dresses and saying things like, “Oh, the reason you can’t find anything is that everything looks good on you.”  You have to love a friend that can lie like that!

I didn’t find anything that Thursday at the thrift store, but eventually I found something perfectly hideous to wear to the event.  Just like I have faith that I will someday find the answers to the weighty questions I sometimes ask.  If nothing else, I was reminded of how fun the search can be.  And, after all, girls just wanna have fun!

What do you remember most about the eighties?  Are you still searching for the same things you were then?  I am pretty sure all I was searching for was a decent boyfriend.  In retrospect,  I think the meaning of life may just be easier to find!  

Want to watch Cyndi Lauper’s video for this iconic song. Want to read more on aging?

 

 

Aging – the art of wrinkles

I don’t know if there is an art to aging. Certainly, there is more science involved. Cells breakdown; muscle tone sinks further beneath dimpled skin; lines grow like vines– first around the face, then down the neck until they travel throughout the body wrapping themselves in and around every crevice– confirming the theory of gravity first introduced by Sir Isaac Newton himself.

Yes, there is plenty of science behind our journey towards decay. However, I have never been too interested in science. All those formulas, hypotheses and experiments don’t begin to explain the incredulous emotion involved in realizing that the image in the mirror is reality, while the one you identify with more closely can only be found in old photographs (like the ones taken with actual film.)

Pondering this is enough to give anyone frown lines.

I was stunned when I found my first gray hair. My hairdresser literally pulled it out of my head to convince me, because I kept insisting that what he was calling gray was actually a sun-kissed streak of blonde. Unfortunately there was no mistaking the silver, wiry thread pulled from my scalp. I took it home with me secured on the back of a hot pink post-it note. It sat on my desk for a month before I finally threw it out, more so because I didn’t like the clutter on my desk, than because I had accepted that my head was the origin of the hair.

Like an adolescent who is wavering between urges to become a woman or stay a child, I too feel confused reconciling that beauty and youth really do fade despite my ardent efforts to retain them, and our culture’s obsession with marketing them. Yet in some ways I feel more beautiful and youthful than ever. Not because I am, but because my chronological age has allowed me the experience and wisdom to feel confident about whom I am which turns out is so much more than how I look.

I can spend an entire day in workout clothes, no makeup and hair twisted haphazardly in a rubber band, without any shame. Sometimes I feign shame, but really I am only trying to be socially appropriate. I have no shame. I never could have done this in my twenties – neither the feigning nor the fashion faux pas.

In some ways I feel like I am at the perfect point in my life. I am still fortunate enough to be in good physical shape and I know how to successfully conceal the occasional blemish or circles under my eyes.

But best of all, I feel good. I am happy and somehow that in itself makes me beautiful and youthful. I finally know what I have and at the same time can benefit from the wisdom to know that it’s fleeting. The phrase “use it or lose it,” finally means something to me. Because of my age, I’m not afraid to do things that scare me, I am afraid not to.

I may not look as good as the girl I used to be in old photographs, but that poor girl never realized how good she looked.

Aging is of course, relative. For my children, it is a conduit to freedom. The oldest who is still plenty naive, idealizes the notion of adulthood. He doesn’t see the responsibilities it brings, but only the liberation to eat hoards and hoards of candy. (Like that ever happens in adulthood, at least without unsightly consequences.)

What is that old adage — youth is wasted on the young? Instead of enjoying the exploration of fantasy, imagination and all that is magic in childhood, he is lamenting the limitations of his youth.

Trailing him is his younger brother, who is so eager to do all of the things his older brother does that he gets upset when their age difference is relevant. We just tell him he has more happy times left than his brother, hoping it will teach him the joy of looking forward instead of feeling like he needs to rush to keep up.

Perhaps the real challenge is to learn to appreciate the advantages of whichever age you find yourself whether it’s seven or seventy, knowing that each offers something unique. And all the happy times that make up a life don’t come at a single age nor do they stop at a certain one either.

It’s not that I think aging is so terrible. It would be foolish to not to recognize the wisdom and perspective that it brings. It’s just that it is such a reminder of our mortality. And while I have been aging since conception, it is only now that I feel like I am on the cusp of really grasping the enormity of it. Not just the wrinkles, but the time that they define.

What have I filled that time with?

The answer to that question is where the art of aging is most brilliant. Coloring experiences within the lines of time to create the life you want.   That is an art. Not the life you have. Not the life you settled for. Not the life you squandered. Not the life of perfection. Maybe not even a gravity-free life. But the life you created following your own unique desires. It will be the true legacy that has left color on this world. It is what transforms the science of aging into an art form.

So whatever you decide to fill your time with, I hope you will make it your masterpiece.

 

If you need a little help embracing aging, this article may help: https://larapatangan.com/2014/09/04/one-word-you-nee…r-life-right-now/

 

 

 

 

Bucket List or not?

My son asked me the other night if I had a bucket list. This struck me as funny at first.

After all, he’s eight– what the heck does he know about a bucket list?  He doesn’t even have all his teeth.  I am 40 and don’t think much about them.  Of course, I saw the movie and understand the expression, but I can’t say I ever bothered to make one.

Partly because when I make grocery lists, I inevitably leave them on the kitchen counter and when I get home I find they are only useful for checking off the items I forgot to buy at the store. I am not sure what happens if you lose your bucket list. Do you forget what’s so important for you to see or do, the way I forget to buy Q-tips? Read more