Pause.

Is wondering like pondering?

I don't think so.

Wondering is akin to wandering.

Wondering:   trying to think

Pondering:  thinking deep

I watched the old man wandering around our street stopping to gaze intently for long minutes at a trash can.
I was more puzzled than he!  What in the heck is he looking at??

That was years ago.  Now I have more understanding.   Perhaps his starter button stalled out a bit.
I don't know.  Perhaps the gear slipped into neutral.

New Clue:  "Can I help you?"   (sort of akin to "are you lost?")
No, it is not about how I look.
It is about how I act.  I pause too long.  I look too hard.
I guess I am grateful for this "new attention", but somehow it seems like something I should wonder about. 
Maybe it's my eyes.  I have 20-20 with my glasses on, or so the doc says. 
I still make visual mistakes.
See, the eyes can take it all in and the brain can still make a mistake.
Yikes!

webmd.com

Got to get this posted fast before I wonder what in the hell I was wondering about!


Riverwatch

I miss Kate.

I went to see Margie because I had not been to her home in 3 years  Three years ago Margie was 98.
She was impressive.  Just got her Driver's License renewed.
Bright and cheery condo.  Expensive, of course.
Margie has always been first class and is the best dressed lady in our church congregation.
Blinds open.
Condo spotless.

Money helps and yes, at 101 she, dressed to the nines, still hobbles into church using her cane.  Except for that day she threw her cane aside in disgust.  On that day she hung onto pews and door facings, etc in order to navigate, but she did it!

Things had changed since I last visited three years ago.
Her hearing aid no longer works.
Her home, though clean, is not what you would call "shiny and spotless".
Blinds were all shut.
She had forgotten to make coffee.  She had invited me for coffee.  Coffee seemed to have slipped her mind.

 "Marg", I said.  "What is the best thing about being 101 ?"

"Best??" she said.  "Did you say best?"

"Yes."

"Well if you have a sense of humor, the best thing is it's funny."

"What is funny?"

"Waking up every morning to a surprise.  Surprise!!  Each day brings another surprise for you!"

"What is the worst thing about being 101?"

"Having people treat me like I am OLD.  That makes me so mad!"

"I miss Kate, " she said suddenly.
"My best friend and I could tell her anything and I start to call her and then I remember that she died."

Marg started to cry.


canocopegdl.com




"Well", I said as though I knew what I was talking about, "old age means we have no peers.  So you could write Kate a letter every week and instead of mailing it, put it in a box and save it for posterity."
Marg stopped crying.
 "I think I will do that.  Yes!!
I miss Kate."



"I miss Kate."           


Thank you for caring enough to stop at my blog,
Riverwatch

The Antiquity of Good

Earth Angels.  The Antiquity of Good.

Being blessed.

I am not saying that old is hard.

I am saying that sometimes people are hard,

especially if you are old,

or very young,

or ill, 

or weak.

~

People are also often wonderful,

divinely led,

magnificent.

And so, 

enter the earth angels.

It was kind of a sad day. 

Or maybe it was a wonderful day, but the chemistry of my brain was skewed because, you know.

I decided I would try to "get an uplift" by shopping.  You know, the Dollar Store.

I will trudge around in there looking at dollar candy and dollar shampoo and dollar greeting cards.

I will trudge around in there looking at fake cheap flowers & Halloween decors.

I will trudge around.  And maybe I won't cry.  Old people don't cry!

She passed by me looking up at my face solemnly.  She was only about 8.  I smiled a tiny little smile.

She looked back at me as she went on by me and down the aisle.  Suddenly she returned.

Holding out a card to me, she was silent, compassionate, kind.

She smiled.

"Thanks", I said as I looked at the homemade card entitled Jesus loves you.

There were peace drawings and a happy little family drawings.  

The drawing on the back was a angel flying through the sky .  Peace was all it said.

                                                                                 

I opened the darling card and found two five dollar bills stapled to the card.  

God cares, a child had written.  Have a good and great day.

I cried.  

Thanks for your visit,

Riverwatch

OMG!!

You may wonder why I seldom blog anymore.
Well, so do I.

I started this blog to track my own aging, the Big Slide.  But frankly I learned aging is not a big slide but an up & down track that leads.........to so many changes in the way we think and operate.

So....one of the horrors of advancing age is we can easily "overshare".  You know, talking about our bunions at the dinner table with others.

Oversharing is just as much about undersharing for such a long long time (since we eat alone and gaze out the window alone) that when there is finally an audience we seem to bubble out in unskilled ways that highlight our....ok, our stupidity.  Filter: off.
Of course part of that is about the fading acumen of our servo-mechanism that for years allowed us to operate without conscious planning and thought, to use "habit" as a friend.....to let the car "lead us" where we want to go.
Not so good anymore is the servo-mechanism of our brain for a lot of us.   
We "forget" to lock the front door!  ( Forgot?? Hell, we never even thought about it!)
We "forget" to take our pills, and, I might add, other important daily things we used to do by rote.
We have to count our change three times and hope to have two matching results.  Or, we just go ahead and probably get robbed rather than reveal our befuddlement.  This is about "time constraints" not about stupidity.  Fast young people wait for us to slowly count and recount our change.

Time is doing funny things...fast, slow, swirl, even forgotten.  Damn!!

Why would you want to blog when your filter is "off" ?

Why would you want to blog when you are having to forego humor for pathos? 

I am still determined to overshare.
My recent shuttle trip had me sitting beside an 85 yr old whisp of a lady behind the driver. She was so spry getting into the shuttle as I had to lug myself in bit by bit and I am only 74!!
However, she just couldn't remember what town she was getting off in.  It was just a brief stop on her way to the last leg of her long journey.  
"Where am I going?"   "Draper", the bus driver said.    
"I forgot the name of that town again.  where am I getting off?"  
"Draper", he said again.  
I thought about saying, You know, Point of the Mountain,  Draper-Tech where the penitentiary is but she didn't look like she needed that witty crap so, feeling sorry for her, I consoled her.  "You are getting off before me because I am going to Magma."
The shuttle driver took his eyes off the road and turned to look at me and said, "There is no such place as Magma.  You are going to Murray."
OMG!!!

I kept my mouth shut the rest of the trip, like most old folks do.

Ok, so I watch the daily updates on earthquakes and volcanoes  and am fascinated with magma.  Is that where that stupid mismatched word came from??
Ok, so my sister lived in Magna....still not Magma but close....and she is on my mind since she is dead as is my brother....and I am having visuals of them (when they were young and we played cowboys and Indians) flit through my mind.  Is that where that stupid word came from, popping out of my brain like I was an executive standing in front of crowd, wowing them with my knowledge??
OMG.


hir.ma

It's always fun to get away especially when you are old.  And I learned somethings!
There is no such place as Magma.
85 and spry is possible  (not fat, of course).
Denny's is the same everywhere.
My daughter and her children made the trip worthwhile.

Plus I have made up a new big poster for my fridge.

Think before you speak.


It stands beside the one that says:

Pause.
You can always be rude later.


Ahh......thanks for your visit,
Riverwatch

Siblings and First Cousins

Siblings and First Cousins

We were deceived.

I mean, we let ourselves be deceived.

How can you not be deluded when the oldies live so long!

"We are a family with longevity genes!", we cried.

Wow!  

"Look how long they are living!"

It is true my own mom died very young, but then that was a fluke, a cancer fluke.  And maybe if my dad had treated her right, instead of beating her and leaving her with no health insurance, maybe cancer would have been held at bay.  Maybe.  You never know.

The decade of the 70's is kind of a telling decade.  

First my sister.   Then my younger brother.

Then my first cousin, Rod.  Well, we could all tell why he died in his 70's.  Rough living. 

 Mean. 

 But aren't mean people supposed to be extra hardy?

Now,two more first cousins.  A lump on the head ......probably metastatic from somewhere else.  Start looking and start looking BIG!

She won't even answer the phone.

Her sister,with a newly diagnosed aortic aneurysm right above the bifurcation.....big surgery coming up as they try to patch and stent.

I look briefly, oh so briefly, in the mirror.  

Who next?

 I ask.

But I really don't want to know.

awakeningpeople.com

I don't play around with rolling things.

Instead, I dye my hair.

To each her own.

Thanks for dropping by,

Riverwatch

Dwelling in Mystery

                                                    Feast on Mystery
 
                                          
                                                              NASA



One of the gifts of old age is, of course, no longer being quite as impressed with the answers as once we were.

Have you ever looked at a News From Science report and thought, "I wish they would make up their minds."

My son, the non-Christian, the non-impressed with the godly, the cynic disagrees with me. 
Shocker.
He says, therefore it must be true, that science does NOT change its mind, but builds upon knowledge.

My son is an interesting specimen for me to study.
The gene pool is gigantic and I will never live long enough on this planet to figure out where these people came from.  The ones from "my" gene pool.

No really reliable answers.  Just your best guess.  Make it scientific.
~

I love being old because I am not as impressed with answers as once I was.  
I have learned it is the question, not the answer, which feeds our brain and pulls us forward.
Mystery.  
Dwelling in mystery is more comfortable once we age enough to get jaded with the answers.

The mysterious surrounds us.  
Mystery is a resource, better than gold, better than silver.


It is the question that enlarges our consciousness, not the answer.

Feast on mystery.  Was Ralph Waldo right or wrong?
For?  Against?  Neutral?

Keep asking those questions.

But if you find out where my son came from, I would love to see that answer!



psdfanextra.com

Riverwatch

Thank you for your visit.

Change Your Personality

Change your personality, thank you very much!

Flitting through her numerous memories from living 89 years, she picked a particularly grievous one that put a smile to her face.

Her teeth are beautiful.  Money helps.  And courage!  

As one past-seventy gentleman friend told me about his recent roller coaster ride with his grandson, "Courage had nothing to do with it because I had none.  I just closed my eyes and did it."

Want to enjoy the ride of old age?  Close your eyes!  Just do it!

But I digress.

Hattie was smirking as she told me how, years and years ago,  the college tried to keep her from getting her professorship and the committee who ruled NO had one comment:  she needs to work on her personality for a couple  more years.

worcester.Consulting Group

Say what??

    freepngimg.com

Don't want to see an educated bitch fly up in your face?  Then don't trot out "personality" as a  célébrer la cause.

Yeh, she got her professorship. 

Her "legal case" had zero merit, but don't underestimate the sticky fear of bad publicity a big mouth can engender.

Ahh, memories.

She's making new ones because she just told her pastor in no uncertain terms the error of his ways.

Personality. We just can't change it.

Why would anybody even bother to ask?

Entrenched in laughing about the art of aging,

Riverwatch

I am who I am.  
I am who I was.

We are who we are.  

We are who we were.

                                   And that's OK.

With or Without

With or Without

What do old women alone do? 

 They march or crawl or drag on to the finish line, 

with or without.

http://www.princess-abze.org/uncategorized/safety-in-the-night/



Yeh.  Up in the middle of the night.
Not enough bitter chocolate to make me "ok".
Keep trying.

Thank you for your visit to the lonely watch,
Riverwatch

You know what my old but feisty cousin told me yesterday?  
Her only daughter is getting married to an ex-con who is already stealing from her.
My cousin said, "I tell God, You have the power to get rid of Satan.  It is time to call a halt to Satan and send Your Son back to earth.  Now is the time!  Send Jesus back to us. Today."

I did not even know my cousin was religious.  I knew she was smart, but this is a new out-loud refrain from her.

Ahh.....gettng old we are.

Cookie Cutter Kids

I'm really a nurse, but now that I am retired I work for the local school district as a substitute school teacher.
I love it.

To begin with I love children.  They are fascinating and so easy to love, understand and forgive.
Besides, there are only about 10 little cookie cutter kids and all the rest are replicas! 
It makes life easy when you only have to learn 10 basic forms and find you have aced the whole unending march of the little ones.

dreamstime.com

March.  March.  March.


http://nasentrelinhasdaalmaacollazo.blogspot.com/2014/01/danco-conforme-musica.html


Which brings me to the parade grounds. 
The parade grounds.  Known to me as the Twilight Zone, where reside the elders, seniors, oldies but goodies and other trolls. 

Good grief!  No two are alike!

Once upon a time I sort of wondered a bit about God.  He is magnificent and yet He seems to have not created as much diversity in children as you might expect Him to do, looking at the array of plants and animals and then seeing little cookie cutter kids.  Where is the variety?! 

But then I myself arrived on the parade grounds. 
OMG.
No two of us are even similar!   
                                                                                                                       alongatto

Aging.  It is the (final ?) brush of creativity to make sure we are truly unique.
The longer we live, the more unique we become.

No wonder we are a bit hard to understand.

No cookie cutter old people!


Withered and getting witherer,
I thank you for cutting me some slack.
Riverwatch

pinterest

More and more conscious....

becoming conscious

becoming more and more conscious & more and more conscious

Conscience is usually conceived of as an inner voice, which says “do this” or “don’t do that”. 

This may be a perfectly usable conception. 

But it may be more accurate to think of conscience as a voice that says 

“look at this”.

                                                                                                                   

                                                     "Behold"                                                                                                       



 One can manage to look away. 

However, we increase consciousness by listening to our conscience and seeing as it guides.

"Behold".

                                                                                                      poetrypoem.com

Pain. The pain of increasing consciousness.
                                                                      "They don't love me."

     

Pain. Becoming global in our awareness.

The East African









                                                                                                             BBC News


                                                                                      

Pain.     Becoming universal in our awareness.

Love will get you through.  Oh, not being loved, but loving others.  Be prepared to cry for them.
. 




Crying,
Riverwatch

I once read, therefore it must be true, that the smarter you are and the more aware you are, the more you suffer.

That's why they invented Red Wine and Chocolate Milkshakes.  

To dull the pain of beholding.