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Friday, April 24, 2015

Day # 114: Change of Living Paradigm

#114

Did you see the photo of Archbishop Tutu and the Dali Lama dancing together?  Boy, do I wish I had taken those photos, I wish I had been there with them.  I would love to have them for dinner.  I suppose the menu would be difficult, but I'd want Judi Dench there, also, and Jimmy Carter.  I used to play the game of "who would you invite to dinner if you could have any ten people" with Mom on rides.  My list has changed with each stage of life, with each new passion or focus.  My focus now is wisdom.  I'm not quite old enough to be one of the wise women, but I am old enough to appreciate them

I've been thinking about organizing an old ladies home.  If I could buy a one story house with a few bedrooms and some wide open living space I would invite a couple of the older women I know to join me so that they would not be living alone, but would still have space and privacy and wisdom. They would have others to go to medical appointments with and to remind them to take their Vitamin D and to eat properly.  I would have people with whom to eat properly.  This is my newest obsession. Of course, at the same time I cannot imagine sharing space again.  I grew up with 6 other children and went immediately to living in group situations.  When Jason went off to Japan to live i was faced with living alone and I was incredibly frightened.  But now I cannot imagine not having my own space.  And I know that that is becoming a luxury and too expensive for all of us, and being a member of a home environment is probably not the worst idea.

I also still think about running a home for parenting teens.  If I just had a little bit more energy, I would do it.  I would run a program that was set up as a living situation with good child care attached to it.   Once a program creator always a program creator.  It gets caught in your bones and you can't ever rinse it out entirely.

I read my 2010 blog from this week.  Mom was in the hospital in New Haven 5 years ago.  I wrote about this male nurse who got Mom from the beginning and saw that even though she was having difficulty speaking, her mind was in tact and she had plenty of wisdom to share if you were interested.  He was.  Mom had a certain smile that was extremely engaging, people flocked to that smile.  She didn't want crowds around her, but she knew how to draw someone out, she knew how to listen.  She would smile and strangers would come to meet her.  By April 2010 she was gaunt and you would have thought that smile had lost its power, but for this nurse it was still there.  That day she told me about terrible nightmares, though.  Her dreams were like bad trips.  But awake and interacting with her nurse she was present and at peace.

 I'm almost to the point where I can share some pieces of stories.  I will do one more grateful list and then I will do another week of poems.  By then I hope to begin to share adoption stories.  We will be a third through 2015.  Time is rushing by all of a sudden.  Keep your eyes open for the stories and please feel free to comment.   I need some comments, readers.






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