Separate Homes for the Holidays

For many individuals who were married in the 1960's, divorce became an all-too common occurrence by the 1980's.  Women's liberation, men who set their sights on unlimited earnings or men who failed to earn enough to support their families, all contributed to this trend.  Add to this the increased emphasis on sex and the near-glorification of promiscuity that led to some people feeling like failures if they hadn't had more than one sexual partner, and the stress on marriages brought many to the breaking point.

What broke, though it was hard to see at the time, were the hearts of the children whose parents became embroiled in these situations.  Some of the wounds have been repaired through counseling or the insight and understanding that comes with adulthood.  But many families will never be the same.  Ours is certainly one example.

I, as a parent and grandparent, have had the events of the 1970's and 1980's, come home to roost in 2008. 

When my divorce became final in 1984, I had four sons.  The eldest had already largely separated from the family and gone to live in various places from the age of 14 on.  For the other three, I did what I could to keep them together, but the jealousies that developed between my third and fourth son (who were six years apart), eventually led to son number three going to live with his father.  

My second son and youngest remained at home and built a close bond that has survived, though now somewhat weakened by marriage and geographical distance.  Divorce necessitated my working full-time, so my youngest lost not only the companionship of his father but the wonderful times that a non-working mother can share with her children every single day.

So today is the day after Christmas and I ponder these events and the differences between families who stayed together and those who came apart.  It is obvious that each of my sons is working very hard to build his own traditions and his own lifestyle.  

I am waiting and hoping for a phone call from my son who is here in Tucson, visiting his father's home with his wife and three children.  

As for my other boys, one is in three feet of snow with his wife and three dogs high up in the Colorado mountains; the other is in Los Angeles with his wife and three dogs and the fourth has decided never to talk to me again, but he too is somewhere in Los Angeles. 

 It has been many, many years since we all were together for the holidays.  I remember those days of little boys in pajamas with feet, each trying to decide which gift to open from their pile of eight packages for Chanukah (one for each day) and my parents and extended family coming to eat the traditional potato latkes and brisket.

I had hoped to relive such memories with my grandchildren, but for some families, even the superglue of a mother's love and regret can't put us back together again.  

Oops

I just looked at my little box of toothpicks.  It says "made in China".  I guess that's the way of the world and a long, long way from Minnesota and Maine, but maybe we're saving a few trees.

This Humble Little Toothpick

We are surrounded by things, things that make life easier, more decorative, sometimes even things without which our lives would be pretty unbearable.  Autos make life easier; beautiful materials on drapes and bedspreads add color and warmth; living day to day without indoor toilets is pretty much unimaginable to those of us who are younger than ninety.

I sometimes think about all these things in my life-who invented them, designed them, built them, all these things we take for granted?

As I was engaging in my daily dental floss and toothpicking routine, I gazed at my little white round toothpick.  I could see variations in the color of the wood and I got to thinking about how this little toothpick, one of two hundred fifty in a little box that can be bought for $1.00 (give or take a few cents),  came to be.  What kind of tree gave up its body, its leaves and its

view of the sky so that I could clean my teeth with its remains?

Turning to the trusty internet, I found excerpts from a 2007 book "The Toothpick", by Henry Petroski, a professor of civil engineering and history at Duke University, who chronicles the history of this little item and in this process, shows the reader how the history of the toothpick is a paradigm of American manufacturing from idea to invention, mass production, marketing, and ultimately, success and failure in a global economy.

Archaeologists analyzing the skulls of Neanderthal man found grooves in their teeth and concluded that once man started eating meat, he needed something to get those annoying shreds out from between his teeth and chewed sticks, bone, ivory, shells, bird claws or walrus whiskers to remove them.  Graves in Italy and Switzerland were found with bronze tooth cleaning devices.  By the 17th Century, toothpicks were a luxury item, made from precious metals and set with gems.  While the wealthy used these exotic toothpicks, the common man generally whittled a stick to care for his dental needs.

But one Charles Forster, a New England chap who worked in his uncle's import-export business in Brazil, noticed that the natives had beautiful teeth and attributed them to their use of handcarved toothpicks.  Mr. Forster decided he could mass produce toothpicks and make a fortune.  He went back to New England, bought the rights to an invention that was capable of mass producing them and by 1870, he was churning out millions of toothpicks in one day.  (One log can produce one million toothpicks.)

But nobody was buying his toothpicks, as sticks were still readily available to be whittled.  So Mr. Forster went to Boston, hired Harvard students to dine at elite restaurants and had them demand wooden toothpicks at the end of their meals.  If none were available, the diners threatened not to return.  Restaurateurs had to comply with customer demands and started buying Mr. Forster's toothpicks when he visited the restaurants to sell them the next day. The rest, as they say, is history.

The uses for toothpicks have evolved.  The humble wooden toothpick still cleans our teeth.  But we have fancy plastic toothpicks with which to stab hors d'oeuvres,  wooden toothpicks with little papers hats on top to keep sandwiches together and hold olives in martinis and toothpicks are used to test baked goods for perfection before removing them from the oven.  

Alas, there is only one toothpick factory, Diamond, left in the United States.  American toothpicks are made of cleaned white birch but today, the cost of manufacturing them in the U.S. almost exceeds the sales price so the other brands we see are made in China and Southeast Asia of trees not as sturdy or white as the birch tree.

They say you can see the whole world in a grain of sand or maybe, in this case, in the humble toothpick. 

Driving Along in the Country

Somewhere along Colorado Highway 50 between Buena Vista and Gunnison, I came across the following sign:

"For Sale

400 Acres

Girten Land and Cattle Company"

So I wrote the following:

Dear Mr. Girten:

Can I buy the gold in the Aspen trees?

Can I buy the green in the new spring grass?

Can I buy the silver shadows of the branches

on new-fallen snow or

The diamond drops of dew on the morning's

First sunflower?

What are they worth?

Dear Ms. Starr, he replied:

A Glimpse and a Sigh

As  your car goes hurtling by.

Public and Private Places in Your Home

I once read that things in your home are superfluous if they don't have particular meaning to you. I have tried to take that advice to heart:  in my livingroom, the items on display on my large coffee table and on the end tables are special gifts, items that I have purchased at a particularly memorable time and place, family photo albums and books published by my daughter-in-law and son. Of course, you have to make allowances for the things that add a decorative touch or bring some kind of union (in color or shape or kind) into the chaos.    

On my bedroom dresser, there is an oval mirror (a wedding gift from 1964) that displays special little decorative things, each with a special meaning or message.

These are my "public spaces."  If people inquire as to the item or its origin, I'm happy to explain.

Now, let's go to the "private" places.  In the movies, there are frequent scenes depicting a house guest who is in the bathroom, opening up the medicine cabinet to quell his/her curiosity about their hosts or to look for an aspirin, antacid or band-aid.   In my book, these are violations of privacy; something we may suspect happens, but don't necessarily take that seriously.

If you have a nightstand with a drawer in it, open it.  You  may be quite surprised.  I decided to do just that today and was surprised by what the contents reveal about me:  "Snore Relief",  a leg cramps supplement, Tylenol PM, nail files, yellow markers, a collection of paper clips, a plastic dog my kids had many years ago, a collection of buttons that go with clothing long discarded, an old hand brace for dealing with tennis elbow, a note from a friend written in 1984 and ahem, some things even too private to mention.   

While I felt surprised, I shouldn't have.  As both a senior move manager and a geriatric case manager,  I have come across this same thing time and again-nightstand drawers with the most personal of things, some ancient and faded, others still necessary to get you through the night. 

It's up to you:  are you interested in discarding some of this stuff or at some level, is your nightstand drawer still one of your most private places.  Mine is.

HALLOWEEN

Halloween.  A holiday that almost everybody in the U.S. recognizes in some way.  Your doctor's office may have spider webs strung across the receptionist's desk and treats in a plastic pumpkin; your neighbor may have three pumpkins on his doorstep; the family next door (who have several young children) may sport blown-up ghosts that light up and wriggle when the sun comes down. And of course there are the haunted houses-your newspaper probably has a special insert featuring haunted houses at churches, community centers or malls. Then, there are the ready-made costumes that you can buy for yourself or your children, many at a hefty price.

I still enjoy Halloween.  Yes, I have three pumpkins, two scarecrows, one witch candleholder on my front porch and inside, a stuffed witch grins from the old antique radio, alongside a pumpkin candle and a few ceramic ghosts.  

I will go to Costco tomorrow and buy two huge bags of candy. And on Halloween night while the chili is simmering on the stove, I will answer the door and fill the baskets of the goblins, ballerinas and Star Trek characters who come to my door.

But now that I'm a senior and my grandchildren live far away, Halloween has become bittersweet.

From the time I was a child until my own sons were in their teens, our family made an annual trek to the Mahan's farm-a magical place on Highway 34 in Greeley, Colorado, across the road from my dad's cattle feedlot.  There, amidst ducks and geese swimming in small ponds, horses in the barn and cattle in their pens, were HUGE piles of pumpkins, colorful ears of Indian corn and bales of hay.  In front of the old farmhouse, relaxing on a swing, were the dummies-dressed no doubt, in the old clothes belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Mahan, who presided over their farm, its animals and fields until well into their late eighties.

I've never known whether the Mahan's Halloween enterprise was a moneymaker or done out of out of the joy of giving to young families, but that is of little consequence.    What matters is

the memories these wonderful people created for thousands of people.  

I can still feel the anticipation my children felt when we finally drove our car up the rutted road of the farm.  The kids could hardly wait to jump out of the car and rush headlong in those pumpkin piles to find the perfect pumpkin (however, their choices were limited by one rule we always followed:  you had to be able to carry your own pumpkin over to the old wooden scale to be weighed by Mr. Mahan, so your pumpkin was both a triumph in design and proof of your ability to carry something REALLY heavy if you REALLY wanted it).

Mr. Mahan's strong, gnarled, chapped hands would weigh pumpkin after pumpkin, while Mrs. Mahan took your cash and made change out of an old metal box. And they always had a special greeting for us and sent best wishes to my dad, who could no longer accompany us on our annual pumpkin trek.

On the afternoon of Halloween night, we would carve the pumpkins, christen them with special names, scoop the seeds and roast them in the oven and set them out on our front porch.  The kids would dress up in conglomerations of old cowboy hats, sheets, big shirts, fake beards, old canes, a little face makeup and head out to the neighborhood without the accompaniment of hovering, worried parents.  It seems as though they always came home quite cold, usually with the year's first snow frosting their fake beards.  We would have hot chocolate with some of the treats gathered in old pillow slips.  (I would always find petrified candy at the back of their closets sometime the next spring-still in the old pillowcases).

I guess I savor those memories like the kids savored their treats for months and months.  But my memories don't grow stale like old candy; they are still very much alive for me.

 

Landmarks and Messages

The other day I was driving from Denver to Pitkin, a very small town outside of Gunnison, Colorado where my son and his wife live, when I came across my own personal landmark,  new tree sprouts growing out of a dead tree whose trunk was split in half by lightening.  I make this trip frequently and the first time I noticed this unique sight,  I took a photo of it because it spoke to me of how life can spring anew from things long dead.  Whenever I make the trip, I look for this landmark to see how it changes with the time of day and each season.  Passing this tree marks the highlight of my four hour drive.    

The dictionary defines "landmark" several ways, 

one of which is "a conspicuous object on land that marks a locality".   I got to thinking about the landmarks I look forward to as I travel and realized that the ones most important to me define emotional localities, rather than just physical ones.  Perhaps the best thing about these emotional localities is that they don't change with the years. 

When my children were young, we had a place in the mountains outside of Denver and we traveled there almost every weekend for many years.  During our trip, we would pass an old house by the side of the highway that was in an obvious state of decay and had probably been vacant for years.  The unique thing about this house was that it was painted a bright blue.  

As we drove past, we used to tell each other stories about the little blue people that lived in this little blue house.  To this day (and it has been many years since we told our blue people tales) I cannot drive past that house without smiling as I hear my children's voices talking about the little blue house and its occupants.

When I was a child, there was a  Denver fire station at the base of a viaduct that extended from our community to downtown Denver.  It had "DFD" painted above its large open doors.  My cousin explained to me that DFD stood for "De Fire Department."  The building is long gone now; the viaduct has been rebuilt, but each time I make that drive from downtown to West Denver, I chuckle when I think of my cousin's well-intended explanation of the initials.

I hope I can continue to compile special landmarks as I journey through life.  What are your favorite landmarks?  I'd love for you to share them with me.

There Goes the Ashpit

The Fourth of July was a day the kids on our block always looked forward to.  They knew they could count on my Dad to provide us with a fireworks show in our very own backyard.  One year, we had the best (and last) show in our backyard.

In the early 1950's, there were no police patrolling the streets to catch and ticket fireworks "offenders"; no ads on TV (hardly any TV come to think of it), by well-intentioned fireman showing horribly maimed hands and faces of those who had been injured by fireworks.  Instead, there were fireworks stands all over the city-I think the one we went to was somewhere near Sloan's Lake Park in Denver or in its neighboring suburb of Edgewater.

My dad would take me to the stand where I would pick out "worms" (my favorites), sparklers and brightly colored cylinders promising marvelous explosions.  Then, we would go back home and have a family picnic in our backyard.  

We had old wooden picnic benches and a table covered with a new coat of green paint (it was my grandmother's ritual to paint the outdoor furniture green every other summer).    We would bring out an oilcloth tablecloth; old dishes and best of all, the summer metal glasses-they were ice cold to the touch and came in many colors-green, gold, blue, red, purple.  After a dinner of hamburgers cooked on the grill, home-made french fries, kool aid and lemonade in the metal glasses, and homemade applesauce for dessert, my dad would invite the kids next door to come over for fireworks.

First we started with the worms.  They were cylindrical tubes that you lit at one end-they burned and curled their way slowly along the sidewalk in our backyard, leaving marks that lasted for years.  Next, as it grew dark, Dad passed out the sparklers.  We kids twirled and circled in ecstasy as the sparks flew and made ephemeral designs in the air.  Then, the folding chairs were lined up; Dad warned us all to move back and he proceeded to his show-fireworks launched from our ashpit.

We oohed and aahed as each salvo went up in the air-colored sparks showered down on us, noise filled the air and the little kids clamped their hands over their ears.  

One year, having gone through the same routine, my dad reached his crescendo:  he set up a huge firecracker, lit it and backed off quickly.  Suddenly, a deafening kaboom filled the air, followed by dust and crashing.  The lit firecracker fell into the ashpit and in an instant, reduced it to a pile of rubble and bricks.  My grandmother cried, my grandfather vowed that never again would my dad bring fireworks home and the boys in the neighborhood laughed with surprise and delight.  From then on, we became spectators at the fireworks shows launched by professionals, but the year of the ashpit lives in my memory as the best 4th of July ever.

P.S.  For readers of this blog, do you know what an ashpit is? Those things have gone the way of firecrackers at home and kool aid in metal glasses.

Horses on Wheels

As I was driving to work recently, my progress up a long hill was slowed by a pickup truck pulling two horses in a trailer.  I was struck by the irony of seeing horses transported by wheels powered by engines whose strength is measured in "horsepower"  when it used to be that horses once hauled our wagons and goods instead and the wheels only turned because the horses pulled them.   These days, we have to haul our horses in trailers just to get to some safe open space where we can enjoy riding them or letting them run free.

I guess that's one reason I love driving trips that take me to rural areas and wide open spaces and fields where horses run free.   I got caught in an old-fashioned cattle drive last summer and here is what I saw:

Driving in the city and being slowed by a big truck, construction, roadblocks brings my blood pressure up.  But being stuck behind a cow and her calf (see the little critter underneath her) makes me realize there are still places left in our country where time moves with the rhythms of nature and peace abides.  

"Baby Mine"

I recently bought a CD by Alison Krauss called "A Hundred Miles or More."  I don't know how one would categorize her music (country, folk, light rock, etc) but I was really taken with the beauty of her songs.  One in particular brought tears to my eyes.

She sings "Baby Mine" beautifully.  Many of us will remember that song-it was part of the soundtrack from "Dumbo", a Disney movie first released in 1941 and beloved by children and their parents ever since.  

In the scene where the song appears, Dumbo, the baby elephant with the big ears, has been separated from his mother, who is confined to a cage because she flew into a rage when boys played with her baby's large ears and made fun of him.  Dumbo comes to see his mother and although they are separated by  iron bars, she sings him this beautiful lullaby.   A few if the lines go like this:

"Don't you mind what they say,

From  your head to your toes,

You're not much, heaven knows,

You are so precious to me,

Baby of mine."

I think this song evokes strong feelings for me, and probably for many mothers, because we love our children fiercely and want to protect them, as this elephant mother did, but our efforts don't always pay off and we can't always protect our children.

Children grow from beautiful babies to funny, frustrating toddlers to  cute grade schoolers and then they enter the awkward, gangly teen years.  Before we know it, they are adults, not always as cute and appealing as we would like them to be.  But for most mothers, our babies still remain precious. 

I have helped seniors clean houses and purge files and yellowed papers.  Among the papers, there is often a preschoolers drawings, a scrawled message on a Mother's Day card that says "Mommy, I love you", a wrinkled report card, school pictures of toothless, grinning kids.   

Our adult children question why we save those things:  it's because we cherish and love the memories of that little, helpless baby, that funny awkward kid, the days of high school proms and solemn college graduations. .."you are so precious to me, baby of mine."

Dust Devils on The Road

I was driving along a rural desert road on my way to work last week when the car was suddenly engulfed in a maelstrom of swirling dust, cactus debris and weeds.  "Yikes, I've been hit by a dust devil," I thought as I clung to the steering wheel for about 15 seconds without seeing where I was going.  And then, just like that, the mini-tornado continued on its vortex course across the road and beyond and driving conditions instantly reverted back to normal.

The Arizona Vacation Planner calls dust devils "ephemeral whirlwinds (that) can stir up trouble."  They are a weather phenomenon that occurs under sunny conditions during fair weather.  They rarely do damage and usually dissipate in less than a minute.  

I got to thinking about people who are like dust devils-they whirl in, drop a few choice words on you and whirl back out again, except your "driving conditions' don't revert back to normal instantly.  Instead, you are left puzzling over what just happened and feeling quite upset about whatever course of action you were on before the appearance of the "dust devil."  You now have lingering doubts about whether or not you are on the right road.

This happens with families a lot.   We might be making plans for the future of an older adult or plans for a family reunion and suddenly a "dust devil" who has not been previously involved with decision making, swoops in, makes some suggestion or comment

and leaves again, causing everybody to question previous decisions. 

Sometimes, dust devils play a necessary role.  They cause you to question or refocus and may have a valid point.   At other times, however, they can create brief, but unnecessary chaos.  

We all have dust devils around.  They may not be on a desert road, but they are there, waiting for just the right conditions to make an appearance.  The Navajos believe they are the ghosts or spirits of dead Navajos.  Depending upon which direction they spin, they can be good spirits or bad spirits.  I suppose it is up to us to determine in which direction our dust devils are spinning! 

"But That Car Belonged to my Dad!"

Today, in my role as a geriatric case manager, I met with the adult children of a gentleman who will be moving to assisted living because his Alzheimer's disease has progressed to the point where his wife can no longer care for him.

As we discussed this gentleman's possessions and what the family wanted done with them, I brought up the 1982 Audi that is sitting abandoned at a home in a rural area of Arizona where our client lived until two years ago.  When I visited this largely empty home, I saw the car covered with dust.   Children had written "wash me" on the rear window.  The driver's door was ajar and the car smelled both musty and dusty.  Back at the office, I checked the Kelley Blue Book value and found that at most, this car was worth about $1200.

But when I mentioned the car to the family today, they told me an amazing thing.  They estimated the car may be worth up to $100,000 because it was purchased new, in Germany, and is a model that was never made in the United States.  Our client's son said his dad had always wanted him to have that car.  

So I said, "why don't you sell it, if it's worth that much money".  His response, "but that car belonged to my dad."  Obviously, he felt he would be violating a special bond between father and son if he sold the car.  Perhaps the car reminds this son of the happiness his dad felt at having this new car; of rides they took together and times they shared.

In my own life, I had a similar situation. In 1966, my dad had purchased a 1964  bronze Cadillac Sedan DeVille for my mother from a wealthy friend who was going to trade it in.  My mother was so proud of that car.  She would drive to our house to pick up my three young sons, and they would bound into that car, eager to sit on the wide leather seats, push the automatic window and seat controls and ride like young princes in the back.   Even if they weren't going to be riding in the car that day, the second they saw the car turn the corner onto our block, they whooped it up, because their Grandma was coming to visit.

Well, my mother passed away in 1975.  The car couldn't fit into our garage because of its length and massive fins.  So it was safely stored until one of my boys went off to college and needed a car.  I gave it to him and he loved it, but reality soon outstripped his love affair when he found it was expensive to drive and when it broke, replacement parts were not available. 

So he drove it back to Denver and we took it to our family farm in Greeley, Colorado, where we lovingly put it up on blocks and covered it with a $300 car cover, locks included.

Fast forward- it 's several years later.  The farm is being sold and we need to move the car out of the barn.  When we took off the cover and opened the door, mice scurried to and fro.  They had eaten the seats, the wiring and had nested everywhere.  The car we had so lovingly preserved (we thought) was virtually worthless.  A wealthy car collector from Aspen bought it for $300 and had it towed away.  I'm quite sure he restored it.

Sometimes the things we save because they remind us of special times can become a burden. Better the memories than the thing itself.  Next time you have to make a choice about whether to keep, sell or give away a "thing", write down your thoughts about it or take a picture of it and send it on to its next life.  Nothing lasts forever except the memories  and stories we can pass down to the next generation.

Those Old Shirts

Today, I noticed three older adults, all of whom were wearing very worn shirts.  The shirts grabbed my attention because in each case, they were obviously from some athletic event that the person had previously participated in.

The first shirt was worn by a lovely lady, in very great shape, who was visiting the dog park.  Her shirt was from a 1992 Marathon in Tucson.  

The second was worn by an older gentleman, who walked in a bent position. His t-shirt commemorated a race up Mt. Tamalpais.  For those of you who don't know, "Mt. Tam", as it is fondly called by locals in the San Francisco Bay area, is a beautiful peak, north of the Golden Gate Bridge, that rises some 2300 feet.  It is a favorite for hikers, bikers and joggers and a very challenging adventure for anybody who tackles it.  I once rode it myself!

The third shirt was a cycling shirt worn by a grey-bearded gentleman who was struggling up a steep hill in Tucson on his bicycle.  It was from the University of Colorado cycling team in Boulder, CO.

Why do we save and wear these old shirts and discard garments that are much newer?  I believe the reason is that these shirts remind us that we were once younger and stronger and could do more than we can today.   But they also are a way of identifying with feats that we are very proud of having accomplished.  

It's not only us "older folks" who cherish these shirts.  One of my sons is a bicycle racer when he's not being a very busy lawyer or a loving father.   He's been racing for twenty-seven years.   On the days he's around the house, he is likely to appear in a torn and tattered shirt from one of his earliest bike races.  The sleeves are usually cut off; the material is worn thin by hundreds of washings, but he certainly loves those shirts.  He still races today, but I don't see him wear his "newer" collection of shirts-perhaps they'll make an appearance in another twenty years.

So, even if we ride up the hill more slowly, walk instead of run. hang out in the pool on a "noodle" instead of "doing laps", we are still doing something we love.  And those old clothes do come in handy for these activities, except maybe for that bikini some of us girls wore when we were a size 5 or 7!

Living Each Day to the Fullest

In the last few days, I have lost two women friends, both of whom I will miss very much, even though I have known both people well for less than one year.  What they both had in common was that they lived life to the fullest, making each day count in their own way.  

My first friend was 92 years old.  She was not somebody whose name you would recognize, nor will there be hundreds of people at her memorial service.  Her concerns and interests were mostly family, good friends and her faith.  She also loved the Broncos.  

She inspired me because she carried on with a strength and spirit and spunk that belied her physical ailments and age.   She lived in an assisted living community and each evening, she would choose the outfit she planned to wear the next day.  She dressed in vivid colors, with pins and scarves to accent whatever she wore.  She also had a matching handbag for each outfit.  Her hair had grown thin, but she even had a sense of humor about that, calling her wig "my hat", and always wearing it until bedtime.

Shortly after she moved to the assisted living community, she got on the elevator one morning, resplendent as usual, and another resident looked at her and said "Humph, another outfit." To which my friend replied "why thank you very much."  The resident looked at her coldly and said "that was not a compliment, it was an observation!"  

My friend recounted this story with great good humor.  She was a lady who accepted what life gave her; put on her "hat" each day and marched out to greet the world, dressed to the hilt.  But even more importantly, she always listened to what others had to say and remembered to ask how they were doing.  Wherever she went, people were glad to see her because she always had a cheerful smile and a kind word.

My other friend was only fifty-five years old.  Many of you knew her or know of her, Leslie Fishbein, the energetic, bubbly intelligent lady who, along with her husband, owned Kacey Fine Furniture company in Denver.  She was a highly accomplished, successful businesswoman.  

She had recently joined a book group I have belonged to since 1967.  She was a breath of fresh air in our group, a lively contributor who clearly cared about her reading and loved to discuss books with us.  One night, after a meeting at our home, all the guests but Leslie had gone home. She spent an hour with me and my significant other, talking about books, about family and sketching my livingroom so I could visit her store and know what kind of furniture to look for. 

These two ladies, one who had lived a private life and the other, a very public life, both were inspirational.  They made every day count, by approaching life with a positive upbeat attitude and by taking the time to care about other people.

Nobody in Tucson wears shoes

My shoes needed some repair (a little dog decided he wanted to taste red leather).  In my journeys about town, I kept looking for a shoe repair shop.  I saw strip mall after strip mall filled with hair salons, nail salons, tanning booths, cell phone stores, fast food.  Apparently, nobody in Tucson wears shoes (or their shoes don't get worn out or chewed by little dogs).

I stopped by the local auto repair shop in our little rural community to have the oil changed in my car and asked the proprietor if he knew of a shoe repair shop in Catalina.  "Yes, but he had to take his sign down near the road.  Look for the little street between Bubb's Grub and Player's Pub and turn left.  You'll see his house in the middle of the street."  

First of all, Bubb's Grub and Player's Pub are two real restaurants side by side, and note, they are NOT chains.  So I turned down the little street and there was a little sign in front of a modest home- "shoe repairs, open 9 to 5 daily.".  I knocked and a woman called, "I'll be out to help you. " 

Turns out, she was the daughter of an elderly Spanish-speaking man who does the repairs.  His teeny shop was crammed with boots and shoes and old, greasy, squeaky looking machines.  But he could indeed, repair the shoes and have them ready the next day.

In  the last twenty years of my life, I have found three artisans who repaired shoes.  One from Spain, one from Mexico and another little Jewish man who had once been the King of the Strip Clubs, all gentlemen in their 60's and up.  What will happen when this generation of artisans passes away?  Will we all toss our shoes out when they need a little fixing and just run out to buy another pair?  How about watch repairs?  

I even remember a little lady who had a "doll hospital" when I was a kid.  If your doll broke, you brought it to her and she repaired it.  It's been a long time since I've seen a toy repair person.  

It seems to me we are becoming a throw-away society where few younger people take pride in being artisans who practice and perfect a craft.  I suppose if you search hard enough, you can find these folks, but they are not on the main streets of our urban communities.  It costs too much to rent space in a mall so you can fix a customer's shoes for $8.00.  So, if you need a fixer-upper, just ask an "old timer", he or she will help you find the right person.

Musty, cold objects and kids who don't care

One of the clients of our law firm was a gentleman who led a long and distinguished life.  Not only had he served in the Air Force during World War II and Korea, but he was a studious collector of his family's personal histories, of artifacts of the Southwest and Asia and military items including badges, sabers and antique guns.  Sadly, he died of Alzheimer's Disease, leaving all these items behind.  His heirs are two natural and two adopted children.

As we set about collecting and cataloging the items in his home, we found history pamphlets written by his grandfather about the first settlements  in Arizona, catalogues and books about his sister-in-law who was a well-known feminist artist in Boston and Europe in the 1920's and a silver chalice with antler handles from his grandfather's Masonic Lodge in California pre-1900.

Our most surprising discoveries however, were pictures this young air force officer took of Hitler's house in Germany when our troops reached it, pieces of brick from Hitler's bunker and pictures of Russians in labor camps.  Yesterday, while looking for certain legal documents, I came across his military identification card-a proud, serious young man stared at me from those musty, cold files.

Sadly, his heirs are not interested in these items.  It appears that their wish is that these items be sold and the cash divided among them.  

I do not know what kind of relationship this man had with his family.  He could have been arrogant and degrading to them or he could have been the best of fathers.  Whatever those private circumstances, I find it astonishing that these people appear not to care about the past nor the role their family played in key historic events of the late 19th and 20th centuries. 

If we take the time to talk to our children and relive the roles our families played in our common histories in the United States, perhaps those things we leave behind will be cared for and cherished, and not allowed to moulder in cardboard boxes.

Are you an "old timer"?

When I was a kid, I used to hear my folks talk about "old timers."  I thought of them as my grandpa and his circle of friends, a bunch of old guys who enjoyed talking to each other.  Well, the other day, I met an "old timer" and I venture to say, he was not much older than I.

I had lost the keys to my car at one of Tucson's "gem show" sites-big tents where vendors of all types of jewelry, gemstones and other artifacts, hawk their wares.  It was getting cold and dark, so I took refuge in a temporary office that read "Gem Show Sales."   I found a husky, friendly, plain-spoken guy in a plaid shirt,  suspenders and jeans, who was taking reservations from vendors for the 2009 show.  (He had run gem shows since the idea first arrived in Tucson.)

 I asked him if I could wait inside till AAA arrived and we began an interesting conversation.  Turns out he lived in the community of "Catalina", a scattered rural town that surrounds the "active adult retirement community' where we live in Tucson.  This "old timer" told me he settled in Catalina in 1975 when there were a few mobile homes, three huge cattle ranches, little shacks with horses and other livestock, and plenty of wildlife-coyotes howling at night, deer running from them.  He told me about the great "flood" of 1983 that swept through the community from a summer afternoon "monsoon" and how it took out the ranches and the livestock of Catalina.  That day the water swirled 60 feet up a hilly road known as "Wilds Road" that we still use.  

I had often wondered why the county has condemned huge swaths of land along a road I travel daily and why there are the remains of barns, corrals and a few pecan groves.  This "old timer" filled in my puzzle.  

The dictionary defines an "old timer" as "a) an elderly person and b) a person  with considerable tenure or experience in a given place or activity."  I hope someday to be considered an "old timer" with some stories others relish.  Are you storing up some good anecdotes, recipes, pictures or stories so that you can be an old timer too?  I hope so. 

Cards You Sent are NOT Forgotten

When I am called to a home before a move or after somebody's death and there is lots of sorting to be done, one of the things I inevitably find is a bag or box full of cards, papers, report cards, family photos and letters that were saved by parents and older relatives and were received  from their children or from nieces and nephews.  

You may have forgotten the papers and pictures you brought home to your mother; the old fashioned glue and paste cards for Valentine's Day that you made in school or even the store-bought cards you sent as an adult.  But moms and dads and aunts and uncles loved (and still love) receiving these items.

The next time a holiday, or special occasion or just a thought about somebody dear to you, crosses your mind, put a little something in the mail.  It's not the cost or format that matters-it's that personal touch that says "I'm thinking about you."  (This is not an ad for Hallmark; it's a reality that we forget in this age of communication technology that looks down upon "snail mail.")

Cabin Fever

In my business as a Senior Move Manager and in my work as a Geriatric Care Manager, I often see people who are biding their time in a darkened room with worn furniture, sitting wordlessly in front of a television set, wondering, every so often, what time it is, as they look forward to the next TV program or their next meal.  

Today, I visited a "younger" senior; a man in his 60's with a PhD in a scientific field, trapped in his body by an advanced case of Parkinson's Disease.  He sat in a chair where his head slumped downward, no matter how many times I helped move him back to a sitting position. 

His clothes were slightly soiled, his hair greasy and disheveled, his eyes had trouble focusing.  He sat in a room with three much older women, one of whom repeatedly asked for the time.  Not a pretty scene.  Yet, when I talked to this man about the UFO meetings he used to attend, his eyes brightened.  Then he leaned closer to me and whispered  "I have cabin fever.  Can we go to the Korean restaurant next week?"  

The next time you feel bored or angry or slightly ill with something temporary, give thanks that you can walk outside, take a breath of fresh air, make a phone call to a friend or read a good book.  There are so many people hidden away inside stuffy rooms who would give anything for the freedom of choice you have every day.