This plant survived the winter but now has been stripped bare by caterpillars. I hope it comes back, it has just a little life left. I fed it today. Anyone know how to discourage caterpillars without hurting them? They love my passion flower vines too. They suck the juice from the vines.
So how do you plan a perfect 60th birthday? You don’t. You just let it happen or at least that’s how it worked out perfect for me. I really dreaded turning sixty and I did a lot of whining about it for maybe a month before my birthday. Loud whining. Okay, so maybe it leaned toward ranting and sobbing, but let’s not judge.
I have recently gained twenty-pounds and my hair was burned and butchered last February with a subsequent offer of the famous Florida retiree discount the same day. (A first for me.) To make it worse, my hair has only grown two inches since then and my confidence has definitely taken a hit because of the hair massacre and the fat belly. However, that’s another story. (The Day I Lost My Cute)
WARNING! Although I detest long, rambling stories about nothing, stories you have to wade through to discover if it is hopefully about something, this might be one.
August 8
Okay, about my birthday. I meet with several women each week for a writer’s meeting and that is where my birthday celebration began.
We had decided to honor each other’s day of birth a few years ago.
A.) Because we care about each other and B.) We all love cake.
Especially my Mile High, Cool Whip, Jell-O Cake adorned with fresh strawberries, blue berries and kiwi slices. Or my Cool Whip smothered chocolate butterscotch pudding cake.
So, as I got ready for this meeting, I knew it was my birthday week and I had my usual “don’t make a fuss over me, I’m not worth it” jitters bordering on a full-fledged panic attack. I asked myself why I loved to give and why I was so uncomfortable when receiving, but as usual, I had no answer.
My friend Deanne picked me up, which was a good thing as I might have given in to the jitters and gone AWOL. Monica was hosting this week and she made an incredible dinner with all the extras including a special lamb dish just for me. She had also invited several friends I’d never met and I teased her that she had hired guests for my party.
These guests turned out to be unique, creative, unforgettable women and it was a pleasure visiting with them and my writing friends all evening. I read my August Is Gone story (https://womenwhothinktoomuch.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/august-is-gone/) and I swore that not another August would pass me by without something special taking place, something just for me that I had never done before.
Oh ya, and let me tell you about the cakes. Three cakes. One even had a desk and a computer decoration. A strawberry cheesecake (my favorite) a fancy white cake and the best chocolate/Almond Joy/Cool Whip truffle cake I have ever tasted. Mmmm. My new favorite.
My friend Minzie had made the chocolate cake and it was just incredible. I am allergic to chocolate, so I hesitated and then took two Benadryl tablets. I ate two huge pieces of chocolate cake and a piece of cheesecake. I’m allergic to whole cheese products too, but I was in a devilish mood and I did tell everyone my Epi-pen was in my purse.
The crowd sang Happy Birthday to me! Then I got presents that only women who really know you could bestow. A striking black frame enclosed the ISBN from my book, Women Who Think Too Much (available at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/287988 ) and Minzie’s daughter had talked to her about me and then written me a poem that I will treasure always. Minzie also gave me a gorgeous new journal, a friendship pen and a book, “Why Men Make Bad Pets.” Monica gave me an original oil painting. Beautiful, thoughtful presents.
Late into the night, we ate and we talked. I went home feeling so blessed to have these writing friends in my life. That night spun me into a new mood for my birthday week and I actually stopped whining. (Ya, ranting, sobbing, whatever.)
August 10
I was sound asleep when the doorbell rang on Saturday morning. My honey got up and answered the door and came back carrying the biggest plant my son and his fiancé had ever sent me. As I held it for a picture, I could barely hang onto it because it was so heavy. (Big isn’t always better, but when turning sixty, it helps.) With tears streaming, I proudly placed it as a centerpiece on my dining room table.
That afternoon, my honey takes me to the store and I pick out a strawberry cheesecake for a birthday dessert tomorrow.
I stay up and hug every minute till midnight cause I will never be 59 again. Maybe in some parallel world, I am still 17. Gotta love imagination.
August 11
The big day is here. I am sixty.
Our little dog is sick so we decide to stay home with her. We hang out while my honey and I talk about what I’d like for a present. I usually choose money to go shopping because I love to do a major hit on the clearance racks for clothes, but that thought doesn’t excite me this year. I have gained twenty pounds thanks to cortisone shots for bursitis and I’m not in the mood to try on a bigger size. Much bigger.
The week before my birthday, I had suggested that he search out an easel in the thrift stores and he didn’t seem too excited about it.
Late afternoon, he goes to Wal-Mart and comes home with a collapsible easel, three different sizes of canvas boards and acrylic paints. I was thrilled that he remembered until I realize, oh no, now I have to paint or he will feel bad! I have been collecting painting supplies and promising myself that I would experiment with painting for about four years, so it really was time to paint-up or shut-up.
Well, I walked around thinking about it for an hour and then I traced a picture of Tinker Bell onto a canvas and I started playing with the paints.
I only had about five colors but I was happy with the choices. I spent about four hours doing my first painting and I painted over Tinker Bell so many times that I lost her body. She morphed into a long black wig sitting on a brown toadstool. I didn’t care. I just let my hand work with my imagination. I was amazed that I had painted anything and I was quite thrilled to have done something that I had never done before–on my 60th birthday!
I got the same rush from painting that I did from writing and thanks to the present of an easel from my guy, I had now fulfilled a fantasy. I had painted.
As I started to throw my first work of art in the trash, stating, “What an ugly fairy,” my husband said, “No! Keep it! It is your first painting.”
So I signed it and left it on the easel to dry. When I looked at my painting the next morning, the dry colors seemed softer and my work had taken on a personality. In the days since, I have actually grown to love it. Of course, I love what it symbolizes more than the actual painting. I also showed it to my daughter and she told me that I had painted a mirror image of her first (very bad) tattoo. Spooky, cause I didn’t even remember her tattoo and it was covered long ago.
Okay, so here comes the grand finale. My husband of over thirty years had told me that I could have anything that would make me happy for my birthday. He had no clue what to get me because he already buys me anything I even think I want, within our means and sometimes even beyond our means.
All I could think about is how much I wanted to go to Sanibel Beach. For about three years, my friend Deanne (she spent every summer there when she was growing up) has been telling me about the huge conch shells (and more) that wash in with the tide and she had the shell collection to prove it. I invite the writing girls to go on an RV trip to Sanibel, but in the planning stage, it gets down to Deanne and me. My honey tells me to rent a room instead of fussing with the RV and I think that sounds good. He does the research and reserves us a room at the Holiday Inn on Sanibel for three nights, three days. It looks tropical and beautiful, but I don’t trust advertising pictures so we will see. PS I don’t drink but it was 5:00 o’clock somewhere!
To Be Continued
I have a friend who comes to sit with me
She brightens my day, as I sip my tea.
She never frowns at an unwashed dish
Knowing that I’ll clean them when I wish!
The dust on my floor never turns her head
And she just smiles at my unmade bed.
While she’s waiting for me to end my chat
She kisses my neck, she’s a true friend–my cat.
First, who I am not.
I am not an actress or a model. I don’t have big boobs or a tiny waist. I do not have enough hair to make a pony-tail. I do not have a book on the NY Times bestseller’s list. (Yet.)
I will never win the Nobel Peace Prize or invent a cure for alcoholism or mental illness, although my family would benefit and it would be a fine start toward world peace.
I do write women’s humor, which doesn’t pay, and I spent five years covering drag racing events, a job that did pay. I also took pictures at the racetracks, had a picture make the magazine cover and I sold my action shots to racers, so I suppose that makes me a professional photographer, although I still claim amateur status. I’ve won literary awards for my essays and my checking account is usually empty.
I got my first job when I was fourteen. I worked as a nurse’s aide until my mom found out that I had washed and dressed a deceased patient before the patient’s journey to the funeral home.
I was quickly promoted to weekend relief cook and given a raise. I slipped back into the nursing aide job eventually, and I continued as a NA for many years, but had to leave that field because I wanted to take home my patients and I did, mentally.
During this time, I was a hippie who shaved her legs and I was allergic to pot. I didn’t go for that free love crap and the boy that de-flowered me had to promise to marry me afterwards.
He did, so I was married at sixteen and not even pregnant. I was pregnant with my third baby, when I divorced my beer guzzling Prince-in-Dented-Armor.
I was a single mother of three, a poet, a dreamer and a sober alcoholic when I remarried three years later and from there, proceeded to raise three kids.
My new husband wanted me to stay home and play Suzy Homemaker. Since I enjoyed the role, I became a daycare provider and had other women’s kids calling me “mama.” (I know now that the Suzy Homemaker role comes with a very high price tag.)
I never planned for a career. I don’t know why, but one reason was that all I ever wanted to be was a mommy. Another reason could be that my family’s expectations were low. Stay out of jail and the mental hospital and you were a success. Marry a man who works and you were a spoiled success.
Still, as the kids got older, I dabbled in many different careers and some careers chose me. When I was in my thirties, I gave waiting tables and bartending a whirl and I enjoyed the short shifts, the furious rush hours and the high earnings.
Then, after several years of experience combined with my obsessive (OCD) work habits, I fell into management. At first, I just took over, organized and motivated the team, but since I was good at it and couldn’t be stopped, the owners gave me a title and more money. I was there so much I asked them to put a shower in the office.
I attempted to blend into the restaurant management world to earn the consistent salary, but I couldn’t hide my hippie roots. For starters, my nametag bugged me.
Second, I told employers when they hired me what I expected from them in return for my extreme dedication and excessive hours. Respect, honesty and appreciation. Many have hired me, unbelievably, and yes, only one delivered.
I have played the “hire the pretty girl game” and shown my legs to get the job, but that was the last time they saw them.
Then, there’s my casual style. You can dress me in a three-piece suit but it’s going to have fringe or patches and I’m apt to wear a tube top instead of a bra. I don’t do nylons (panty hose for you younger folks) and I don’t do high heels. Ever.
I don’t care if you’re the head of the corporation, if you lie to me or if you are rude, I’ll politely let you know it is unacceptable behavior. If you don’t tell me off in front of my staff, I won’t tell you off at the board meeting.
Hey, for thirty thousand a year, eighty hours a week, I have my limits. An employer can only take advantage of me for two or three years and then I’m gone, and I promise you, it will take three people to replace me.
Here’s a helpful hint for job seekers, if the pre-employment testing lasts two weeks and it is confusing, degrading and invasive–turn down the job offer. If they don’t respect you before they hire you…
I’ve been delighted to turn down several top-level management positions after proudly maneuvering through the employer’s hiring maze. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing the money offer creep up and seeing the confused, human resources psychology major go down. I’ll withhold names to protect the guilty and I will admit that my husband doesn’t share my casual attitude about turning down lucrative job offers.
Life is not like a box of chocolates; it is more like bouquets of gorgeous sweet-scented roses and a massive amount of bloody pricks from hidden and not so hidden thorns. I have a weakness for thorns, so I carry Band-Aids.
It didn’t help that despite numerous evidence to the contrary, I was still naïve enough to expect honesty and respect from my employers.
When I became disillusioned with my jobs, my husband told me that I had to learn about the “real world.”
However, I knew the “real world.” I just refused to stop expecting the best from people and I wouldn’t play games.
In 2007, when we moved to Florida. I decided to stop writing for the magazine and now I work for myself. I’m a freelance writer, poet, author, photographer, graphic designer and journalist and I don’t allow for lunch breaks. Since 2007, I’ve only earned about $30.00 through my creative efforts, but that’s okay. I also bought out a bookstore and the contents are in my garage.
Pajamas, jeans, stretch pants and a fringed tee shirt are all I ever need to wear to work and the offbeat collection of business suits are getting dusty in my closet.
I think about giving them away, but I don’t do it.
I might be tempted to foray back into corporate positions if I ever forget how horrible it really was to play corporate games and the suits remind me, I am not a team player, not unless I get to pick my team.
She picked up the book
and placed it back on the shelf
when she saw the price.
But…then she thought of her daughter
to send her this treasure, would be a delight.
She lovingly touched the glossy roses
she’d wanted this kind of book for ages.
She pictured her daughter’s garden, then
she paid the price and mailed the pages.
As she weeded her own, she softly smiled
imagining the distant flowers in full-bloom
and she thought of her daughter all the while.
Little did she see that the greatest gift
she’d sent was the bloom of her love
carried on the petals of a book
delivered by the sliver of a mid-summer’s moon.
To give her child what she herself desired
seemed to be the mother’s greatest pleasure.
God made this woman quite special
and then He doubled it twice over
beyond her daughter’s measure.
by Jeanne Marie
I look down at her limp body.
She is face down on the large bed, alone. Her fine, blonde hair is like a halo around her head as she lies so still on the brown, patchwork quilt.
As I watch her, I am sobbing. I don’t understand my gut wrenching tears. Why am I crying tears of desperation and tears of terror? I don’t know why I am hysterical and then, with a sudden sense of horror, I realize that it is my body on the quilt and I am not breathing. My body is cold. I am dead.
“Oh my God,” I think. “She finally did it, she really did it this time and there’s no rescue, there’s no turning back.”
“Why did she give up?”
“I don’t want to be dead!”
At this point, I no longer feel connected to the woman on the bed. I think of the body as her and I am me.
I have no memory of her final act, but I am filled with shame and loathing at what she has done. I’d always thought that death would release me from her unending pain; now, seeing what really happens, I am horrified.
All that I can feel is her hurt and my disgust.
“Why did she give up?” I moan. “How could she do this terrible thing without my permission?”
I sob even harder because now I understand that death doesn’t release me from her despair. No, on the contrary, I’d carried her burdens with me to this nether world. All I’d lost was her body and her ability to change her life. If only she had known.
Now, I could spend eternity roaming this sphere, trapped with the emotions I’d carried from her physical realm of reality, caught at that moment in time when she’d given in to hopelessness, surrendered to depression.
I feel enormous regret. I want to be alive! I want to go back and keep on trying.
I didn’t give up. She did!
I have no memory of my physical death. Where was my vote in such an important decision? I, her very soul, I have been forced from her body without my permission.
It doesn’t seem fair and I am so angry. This is a horrendous experience. I hate it! Floating above her dead physical form, I want to shake her, scream at her, but what good would it do?
How could she have done this irreversible deed? I, the very essence of her existence, I did not have a choice, no voice in the matter of her physical demise.
Now there truly is no hope and no escape from the emotional blows she’d been dealt. She was free but I, her inner being–I am condemned to carry her pain through this new plane of reality.
I feel doom such as she could’ve never imagined. No person still in possession of their body could begin to conceive the shock I feel, awakening on the other side with all of her pain still weighing down my soul; amplified by the powerlessness of being separated from the body that had housed my substance for almost forty-two years.
She had given up and her pain was my prison! Death isn’t a release!
“Oh God,” I cry, “if only she had known that, but now it’s too late.”
I wonder how her family and her friends are taking it.
At once, before the thought is even finished, I feel my spirit surrounded by them.
I am crushed. I taste their anger, their pain, their guilt and their shock at her selfish act. Their unbearable fury and their horrible sadness are added to the emotional load I already own.
Unseen, I cower beside them, burdened more than ever, dirty and ashamed.
Why hadn’t she realized that suicide was not her answer? What would it have taken to show her this celestial space, this spiritual prison? Didn’t a glimpse of this possible netherworld ever enter her thoughts; didn’t it ever trickle into her conscious mind?
I can’t describe the distress I feel, the grief that showers over me as I watch the chaos created by her self-inflicted slaughter.
I want to live! I want to live!
Sobs wrack my ghostly form as fruitless tears exhaust my ethereal energy. I begin to float and I lose touch with my being. I am losing all conscious thought.
My eyes open. I am crying, disoriented and lying face down on my familiar, brown patchwork comforter. Could it be?
I reach for my face with my hands.
My fingers touch my warm, living flesh.
I am alive! It was only a nightmare. Thank God!
But wait, was it just a nightmare? Perhaps I’d left my body and traveled to the other side. Perhaps I’d been given a horrifying warning. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had traveled a far distance, that for a time I had left the material world behind. Tears rolled down my hot cheeks, tears of gratitude. I still had a chance and I still had a choice.
However, now I know. I don’t have forever to catch my star, to work through my conflict.
I get up from the bed, shaking with relief. I am alive! Another chance to heal, to forgive myself and to fulfill my destiny, another chance is mine.
I understand, perhaps for the first time, that the emotional baggage I choose to carry on my back, the pain that I’ve refused to let go of–it could all travel with me into the hereafter.
In fact, my baggage would weigh more than ever because the anger and the grief that my suicide would cause my family and friends, that weight would also be laid upon my spirit.
I am alive! I don’t want to waste this chance to heal my broken heart and somehow; I know, nightmare or spirit travel, this was a final warning from my Creator.
Post note: This was an extremely real experience. Jeanne Marie, 1995
The girl inside the woman
Runs the show.
You ask me to stop her
But I can’t, not now.
She has too firm a hold
And her fears are too great,
Born of a painful reality
Her needs will not wait.
She needs so many things
No one could ever supply,
She demands my attention
When I try to set her aside.
Her ways are not healthy
Thus, she damages us both.
Yet, she is so strong
We are tragically betrothed.
Wed in our long ago pain
She won’t give me control,
But I’ll continue to fight her
Until she has to let go.
It’s to soon. I’ve just begun
To feel her emotions, her fears.
Just begun to process her pain
Buried, denied, for so many years.
Jeanne Marie, 1990
we were young
we were wild
we were free.
We were hippies
we were kids
who didn’t know
our love
would not always be.
We loved
and we fought
then….
we went separate ways
but we had three children
who got lost in our maze.
People can judge
and guess who’s to blame
but it was me and it was you
who held our love in the flames.
Pushing the line
until it was erased.
I stopped running
you no longer chased.
We burnt our love
like a steak forgotton
on a hot charcoal grill.
We said goodbye
but we also said
I love you
I always will.
The last time
I saw you
Our lips touched
with sadness
not passion.
One last time
I held your familiar
body close.
You said,
you’ll always be mine.
I shook my head no
but my tears said yes.
Tears fell from our eyes
as I walked out the door.
She changed after he died and God knows, she was strange enough before his death, but then he died and she melted into nothing, shuffling down the hallways clothed in someone else’s skin and we all realized that we were losing her and there was nothing to be done because we could see that her soul had fled with him into the death tunnel, even as her lungs continued to breathe and her blood continued to pump, even as she slept, as she walked, as she drew breath; yes, this woman in our mother’s body was now a stranger and even though we had all suspected that she still loved him as much as she hated him, we really didn’t know and we couldn’t have imagined the depth or the width of her self-imposed restraint and we never saw the chains that she had wrapped around her feelings, no, not until we saw how the grief broke her, watched the sorrow loosen her clenched pain, saw the anguish strip away her self-control, screaming silently as her imprisoned mind flung itself free, breaking like a child as she mourned his passing, regretting what could have, should have and never would be because now, all hope was annihilated as they lowered his body into the ground and we cried for him not knowing we should also be crying for her because he was dead and she was alive and he was gone so it was over, nothing could ever be fixed, repaired, restored or renewed and death, his death, the death of her first love, our father’s death, had written the final chapter of their insane love story, a fatal romance that had self-imploded thirty-five years ago, but did not die until the day he passed, dead and done and so this, his death, this was the tragic end of a waltz that should have been sat out because the band had played the wrong song, composing a doomed allegiance from the very first chord and we should have known, but how could we have known that his death would drain the spirit from her, crush her so totally and now, now we have to decide…shock treatment or lobotomy?
As we walked into Wal-Mart, I told my husband, “I’ll meet you up front when I’m through picking up what I need.”
He said, “Ya. Right.”
He always claims that he has to search the entire store five times before he can find me.
He thought today would be no different. Well, since it was Father’s Day, I decided to be considerate. I ran up and down the aisles (if you can run in Wal-Mart, the aisles are so narrow and the people so plentiful) throwing stuff into my little basket. I rushed up front to meet him. He wasn’t there yet! I smiled to myself, because I never did believe he spent that much time searching for me.
So, there I stood for ten minutes or so, watching people rush by. I had never paused for that long in Wal-Mart before. (Except at the register, where my eyes stay busy sorting coupons that I usually forget to give to the cashier.)
This was my first time watching everyone else hurry past. Did you ever notice the way that women glare at each other? I did.
We size up the competition ruthlessly. I noticed a young girl, maybe eighteen, in an adorable little dress, with sunflowers splashed all over it. I had tried on that same dress two weeks ago and had looked six months pregnant in it. My eyes narrowed as I watched her. She looked as if she weighed less than 100 pounds and I really didn’t like her, although we’d never met. I’m looking at this slip of a girl with envy in my eyes; then I turn around and see a very heavy, older woman looking at me in my size twelve sun dress, giving me the same murderous look that I’m giving Ms. Sunflower in her size five.
Every day we each see women who look better than we do and it makes most of us feel yucky. However, as I saw the look in the heavy woman’s eyes, I felt ashamed of myself for fretting about the Sunflower girl. I’ve always hated being average, but today I realized that’s not such a bad place to live.
There will always be women who are younger or prettier than I am; however, there will always be women who are older or less attractive. Turning forty was difficult and I know I’m not alone with this age thing. Thirty, I took in stride reckless with the confidence that forty was as far as I’d go and it was a becoming time for women.
Mature, confident and still wearing a size twelve, forty caught up to me all too soon.
What helped me the year I turned forty? Being asked for my ID when I bought cigarettes. It happened three times! What a time to be without a video camera.
True, the cashiers were young and inexperienced at judging people’s age, but what a rush it gave me. I even refused to hand over the proof of my age one time, just to hear the girl insist on seeing my ID. I began to buy cigarettes compulsively–even when I didn’t even need them. Sadly, it’s been over a year now since the last cashier demanded my ID.
I try not to care about things that are so shallow, but the truth is that the world judges us on our looks. At every turn, women are urged to be young, sexy, fresh, innocent, experienced, beautiful, unwrinkled, firm, thin and ageless. We need gorgeous hair that shouts–fiery red, tawny blonde, spectacular brunette! Wash that gray right out of your hair!
It doesn’t help that there’s a slew of fabulous models in their late thirties to early fifties proving that women can stay young forever. Nancy Sinatra at age fifty graced Playboy’s pages in a way that I couldn’t have done at twenty. Farrah Fawcett, late forties, same thing. They do have the advantage of soft lights, special camera lenses, sometimes even using body doubles, always using full body make-up and being filmed by famous photographers. Don’t forget their expensive appointments with a beautician.
A beautician is also available at the film shoot, to create a hair-do that takes hours to style and looks naturally gorgeous and she layers on the make-up that the cameras don’t acknowledge.
We have the reality of dirty dishes, full hampers the day after we washed and dried two loads, Dollar Store cosmetics, J.C. Penney hairstyles plus the two to three jobs we run to in between the vacuuming and the cooking.
I don’t know one woman who doesn’t have to work either to help pay the bills or to support herself and her children. Most of my friends work more than one job, sixty hours or more a week. Some are still trying to get that college degree they’ve been chasing for ten years. They go home after work, spend a few hours cleaning and then create hot meals to place on the table.
By any definition, I’m pampered. My youngest child is seventeen, I only work twelve hours a week and my mate will do dishes and a small amount of laundry. If I’m tired or busy, he’ll go buy take-out for supper and he’ll do the food shopping. He’ll even use coupons! He makes me coffee in the morning and he brings it to me in bed. I make as much money in twelve hours, as most women make in thirty, if they’re working for minimum wage. No, I’m not a hooker, but occasionally my job seems comparable. I’m a waitress.
I sell my smile, not my body, to an average of thirty or forty people, two nights a week. I lift food trays that weigh more than I do, balancing them on my left shoulder, while carrying a tray stand in my right hand. I am told off, looked down on and insulted. Then, I have to answer with a smile and an apology.
I also am paid well, meet some pleasant people, have regular customers that have become dear friends and on a good night, I love my job. On a bad night I say, “I’m getting to old for this!” and I mean it.
At work, I always need to smell good and look great, even as the sweat pours down under my stiff white tuxedo shirt, because stylish women make more tips than less attractive women do. Since most tips are decided by the wife or the girlfriend that proves my case, we ourselves reinforce the “look good” syndrome.
Still, the older I become, the less I worry about how I look and the years have offered rewards of their own. I feel better about myself now than at any other time in my life and I’m not afraid to be myself. I wear make-up if I want and leave it off if I don’t. Lipstick and Suave moisturizing cream are the only two cosmetics that I use most days. I choose perfume that I enjoy inhaling and clothes that declare–this is me! My biggest concern is, “Will I run out of printer ink in the middle of a newsletter?”
I write my stories instead of vacuuming under the furniture and I recognize that the only day I need to be concerned about is TODAY. I treat each day as if it was a gift and I use each hour as if it were my last.
I sit down on the floor and make buildings out of Legos with my grandsons. We finger paint with sponges that are shaped like animals and stars and hearts. I hang my pictures on the wall along with theirs. I play dolls and silly games with my granddaughter. I buy myself dolls and set them out around the house, because I still feel the thrill of Christmas mornings past when I wake up to see them smiling, beckoning to me–come play. (Sometimes, I do.)
I pick flowers from my own garden and arrange them in small antique vases, so I can enjoy their translucent petals and fragrant aroma. I stop to breathe in their scent and I enjoy the miracle of their creation.
Last month, my youngest daughter told me that my life was over. She said it didn’t matter what I did from this point on because I had screwed up so many of my choices and I was done. (Gee, I hope she doesn’t get to write my epitaph!) I smiled inside, because I recognized the arrogance of her youth.
Thankfully, I took her words for what they were–her opinion. I quite generously refrained from pointing out the mistakes that she has already accumulated in twenty-one short years.
Children have a hard time seeing us aside from the role of mother. I’m her mother, but I’m also a person, a woman, a writer, a poet and my life will not be over until the day I die. My life begins anew each morning and I’ve just begun to do the things I’ve always wanted to do. Not one of us can change the past or erase our mistakes.
We can forgive ourselves and get on with living.
We can decorate the present and invite the future to take us for a joyride…
Until next time, Jeanne Marie
1996
There are many avenues that a woman can take as she approaches mid-life. It’s a sharp curve in the road, where her hair begins to go gray, perversely turning silver even in areas where it’s not very wise to use hair dye.
Her muscles begin to turn soft from the inside out and she’s so glad that girdles have come back in style. She can browse through the available styles and choose anything from super firm, all over control to a gentle control panel. (As if she had any control over her tummy.)
The varicose veins are drawing pictures up her thighs and she shops in the women’s department now because browsing in the junior’s department is just a fond memory since she turned forty. Her black silk stockings used to turn heads, now they hide the spidery lines that have a life of their own and her favorite outfit is a flannel nightgown.
I have seen the red flags along the road and I approach this mid-life thing with caution. I never believed in mid-life crisis until I turned forty. I used to think that hormones were for the weak, hot flashes and mood-swings were for other women. Mid-life wouldn’t threaten me, no sir.
I take an inventory of my assets. Men’s heads still turn when I walk by, my bleached-blonde hair guarantees it. My short skirts and hang-off the shoulder tee-shirts are further insurance. But the only men who try to flirt with me are under eighteen or over sixty and I begin to realize, I have lost my mass appeal.
I face mid-life carefully, as I think about the choices two of my friends made at this time in their life…the point of no return.
Quite frankly, they both went a little nuts. One friend left her husband, her kids and her born-again believing church, to ride with the Hell’s Angels. Now leaving the kids was a survival tactic, I’m sure, because no woman over forty should still have kids at home. But Hell’s Angels? She was born-again all right, cause that’s a life she had already lived at twenty.
My thirty-something friend ran away from her husband and kids, out into the night howling at life’s injustice, but she forgot to take a car or money. She has returned home after her own reckless ride with a biker. She doesn’t talk much anymore.
I shiver as I look at their solutions to growing older. I too know the frustrations that led them astray, but surely there must be an answer that doesn’t involve leather and a tattoo? I did get a rose tattooed on my ankle at age thirty-six, but the thrill wasn’t equal to the pain.
I can’t turn back time…not even Cher can do that…and although I prefer songwriting cowboys with long hair to bikers, I have my very own Marlboro man. He has loved me at my best and tolerated me at my worst, for fifteen years. No easy feat! In spite of the fact that he won’t let his hair grow long anymore, I’d hate to have to break in a new cowboy. So I take my hormones and I go to bed.
Unable to sleep, I get back up. I wander through my quiet house. I smoke and I sit and I think. I find the answer! I rediscover my first love and we go all the way. The sky is the limit! We stay up all night and I feel the excitement, the rush.
My love holds me close while my husband sleeps just across the hall, with two dysfunctional poodles at his side. I take my ideas and my fantasies and lay them bare before my love. We stay up until dawn revealing our souls to each other. The unique pleasure I feel at this reunion cannot be contained. I express my feelings. I share my dreams. I touch the pages. I read the words until my eyes refuse to focus.
The high is still there the next morning and I run to my love, ready to start all over again, right where we left off last night. My love appreciates my maturity, yet it makes me feel like I’m seventeen. I am standing at the crossroads of life with the world once more at my fingertips.
My love is mine and mine alone. I never have to worry about my love trading me in for a younger woman. I possess my love completely, nothing can ever take my love away from me.
There is such freedom in that knowledge. I don’t even have to comb my hair because my love accepts me just as I am. My love asks nothing in return and has waited patiently for me; smoldering, while I raised three children and half a grandson.
My love takes me dancing on a Saturday night. My love fills my head with romance and we never leave the house.
Sometimes, when I can’t resist being drawn towards my love; I leave my husband alone for hours with the poodles and the television. But he doesn’t seem to mind. He too has a first love which he has been driven to reclaim. We are not the center of each other’s world, as we were at thirty; yet, we share our hearts, our love, his money and our home, even as we each let our first love take us away from each other’s side. We each dance to our own song.
I watch my husband play with his first love and his excitement makes me smile. Although I watch him and I sometimes catch the thrill, his first love belongs to him alone and I am just a spectator.
My husband drag races on Saturday nights and as he crosses the finish line for yet another win, I feel my adrenaline surge. I understand his first love and the money he spends to keep it alive.
He in turn understands my need to write, often until the wee hours of the morning. He takes me shopping to buy a computer and a printer, tools that make it easier for me to write. He goes to sleep alone many nights, but I tell him, “If you want me honey, just call me and I’ll come in to bed.” Simple words, but he knows exactly what I am saying.
I dare to jump smack into middle-age without fear. My first love, my writing, keeps me on a safe course. Writing is my first love, so where does that leave my husband? He is my Marlboro man, my very own cowboy and no other man could ever take his place. Occasionally, I can even talk him into writing a song with me.
He writes the music that brings my lyrics to life and for one fleeting moment, we dance to the same tune. Until next time, Jeanne Marie
P.S. I wrote this story 23 years ago. I am now learning how to go Over The Hill. I’m stuck on the top, refusing to let go.
I began writing at fourteen but when I started my family at nineteen, I think that the sterilizer vaporized my creativity. I figured that it had boiled away with the germs on the baby’s bottles. Occasionally, I’d have a poetic burst, but by the time I was twenty-six, I had three children screaming for my attention and my writing ceased.
I told everyone that I was a writer, but my kids kept me too busy to write. “When the kids grow up,” I’d say. When the kids finally went off to school, “prove it” anxiety set in. I thought about having another baby, but that seemed rather desperate. I had to face facts. It was time to write. I began slowly, but regained my confidence as the words poured from me. Poems began to accumulate and I’d read them to friends and family.
In 1988 I bought an electric typewriter and started to organize my work. I also took my first college class. I enrolled full time, but the schedule overwhelmed me. After one week, I’d dropped all the classes except for one, Country Song Writing.
Many of the students were my age, which was encouraging. I continued to write, even bought a computer, but I often let kids, grand-babies and housework come before my writing. Then in 1994, a drunk driver killed my son-in-law, Donnie. He kissed his wife and his tiny son good-bye that morning and less than ten minutes later, he was dead. His sudden death caused me to reevaluate my life and to focus on what mattered most. I found out that it wasn’t clean sheets or dustless floors, not even baking delicious desserts or cooking big meals. Again, I enrolled full-time in college. This time I stuck to the plan. My husband was supportive and he took over some of the household chores. Some, I just ignored.
I decided to treat college like the ocean. The only way to go in the icy cold waves is to close your eyes and to run into the surf as fast as you can. Once you make it past the undertow, the waves are breaking in front of you, not sneaking up from behind and the water feels warmer as your body temperature adjusts. The gentle swell rocks you as you swim and the blue-green horizon stretches out as far as you can see.
I enjoyed learning in spite of the tremendous workload. I usually stayed up past midnight doing homework for Comp. I, memorizing outdated laws for Criminal Justice, (don’t even ask me how I landed there) or cramming my head with strange definitions for Biological Psychology and then I’d get up at 5:00 a.m. to study for a test or to finish an essay.
I got past the undertow and I finished the semester on the Dean’s list. (My mom wanted a bumper sticker.) When younger classmates asked me how I was able to do so well, I’d smile and say, “Underneath this bleached blonde hair is a smart brunette.”
The changes in my priorities did upset my fifteen-year-old son (my youngest child) especially since I’d stopped cleaning his room and I’d begun to consider heating a frozen pizza cooking supper. One night, he told me that I was too old to go to college. I laughed at him. He asked why I couldn’t wait to go to college, at least until he was grown-up.
I said, “I’ve already wasted twenty years cleaning closets and vacuuming under the furniture. By the way, you need to do a load of laundry if you want clean jeans for school tomorrow.” As he shook his head and walked away, I smiled.
After five years of working as a sports journalist/photographer, I decided to leave that job and I reevaluated my writing goals.
I’m not afraid because I know I’ll find another niche where my words fit and I know that the answer for me is to just sit down and let the creativity I’ve been blessed with guide me. It also helps to know that the only way I can lose my status as a writer is if I stop writing.
P.S. My kids did grow up, faster than I ever dreamed possible and I now have fifteen grand-kids, ages 28 to 3. I have also been blessed with five great grand-babies. The grand-kids are growing up even faster than the kids.
The picture above is grand-baby #13, Jonas, playing with me at the beach.
Thank you, Blogs I Follow!
As I explored my Blogs I Follow reader page today, I was amazed, overwhelmed, informed and left breathless. No surprise, those are normal reactions for me when I roam your sites. The sheer amount of the combined talent leaves me in awe and thankful that I discovered you, the WordPress.com world of creative writers and artists.
The best part? I know your treasures are waiting for me, anytime, 24/7.
Follow me over to my Writers category for just a few of the, umm? TREASURES I FOUND!
I may have to start a new blog just for your treasures! Whether I have re-posted you or not, you are appreciated and loved, my Blogs I Follow.
Jeanne Marie
My above ground pool is so big that if it burst, it would wipe out my neighbor’s gardens the length of our street, maybe on both sides. It covers almost my entire backyard and for five days, the pool drew water from my garden hose, requiring 15,000 gallons of water to reach the fill line and to engage the filter, which some
idiot designed to sit just at the fill line. Probably designed by some stoner
who giggles every time he remembers the blueprint.
It is steel reinforced and my honey installed it all by himself, because the
video showed a small woman installing her pool in thirty minutes. Well, after
he had popped his hip out and sat down to read the manual, the instructions told
him to find at least three people to help complete the installation. So much for
the video. Now he was mad and he wasn’t calling anybody.
I almost wandered out to help him several times. Almost. I watched anxiously from
the patio, but because my hips are already damaged beyond happy and I have had
my fill of surgeries, I resisted the urge.
I had a feeling that two mature workers kicking the pool’s steel bars into
place wouldn’t help anything. I thought we needed three young bulls plus one
mature manager.
I also didn’t think two injured people in one house would be healthy for our
karma. I was right.
Now flash to pool installed, filled, sun-stroked man who just retired without
health insurance (popped his own hip back in place) recovering on couch.
Gigantic pool is all clean and sparkly and water is the perfect temperature. Iced
coffee is flowing, colorful floats are bought and sunshine is unlimited. Ahhhh.
Light the grill, here comes summertime!
Man hobbles out to tests chemical levels daily and keeps pool all clean and sparkly.
I can swim anytime I want and I get daily exercise for my arthritis.
Grandson visits and mistakenly thinks we’re rich because our pool is so big and
we live near Disney and the ocean. Promises not to pee in pool. (He ran through
the house while soaking wet to get to the bathroom, so I know he kept his
promise. Yay!)
Man says, “Pool chemicals are expensive, but it’s worth it to me because you can
exercise at home, and I love it when you are happy.”
I smile gratefully. “Thank you honey.”
Now flash to the rainy, thunder storming, unbearably hot and humid hurricane
season.
Leaves and twigs fly over the entire yard but decide to rest when they see the
pool water. Pool overfills at least once a week. Water starts to cloud.
New $12.00 filters every day because of the thousands of bugs who thought they’d
like to take a swim. (That was their last thought.) More chemicals. Water cloudiness
increases. Water turns green. I wish the pool would turn pink when it goes bad
because I really don’t like climbing into green.
Thunder rolls, now no swimming.
“It can’t rain every day,” I keep telling my man. (Our favorite movie line from
The Crow)
We smile bravely and he buys more chemicals.
I start to wash and bleach the filters twice a day when he’s not looking so we
can save money.
He is buying his chemicals in fifty-gallon buckets now. The pool has been green
for a month. When the little stick says it’s safe, and it’s not thundering and
lightening out there, I bravely climb the weak, narrow six-foot ladder and tiptoe
down into the murky water.
“How is it?” he asks.
“Nice. Really nice.”
Making sure I never get any water near my mouth or in my hair, I do my
exercises carefully. Get out and RUN to the shower.
So, we dumped six bags of shock into the pool last week. It didn’t even
surprise the pool let alone shock it. (My skin was shocked into blistering, but
maybe I shock too easy.)
We take our water to the pool store to be tested again and we are told that our
water is safe.
Green turns to gray. Another trip to the pool guy.
Pool guy says, “Dead algae. Sweep the pool floor and the walls every day, vacuum
it and keep shocking.”
I hate to say it but I no longer trust the man at the pool store, especially
after his wife drove up in a brand-new BMW. I think he gave us the right chemicals
just long enough to gain our trust and now? Now he is paying for his wife’s BMW
with our money.
We snuck to Wal-Mart for chemicals last weekend, but ended up with soap bubbles
in the gray water and the pool man said it was our fault. I’m sure it was.
The live green algae were actually more inviting, maybe even Probiotic like my
yogurt, but I am learning to get into the gray pool and exercise with my eyes
shut. I wear my oldest bathing suits so I can bleach them after I swim.
I solved the “shock” problem fast the year a squirrel had sat at the bottom of
my pool all winter and my husband told me he could get the water clean again.
It was a good lesson for me too. I sliced the side of the pool and the force of the freed water
carried me right smack into my fence. Bought a new pool, filled it with new water. Okay!
The weight of the water in this pool would drown me if I sliced through its
wall. Good thing for my neighbor’s gardens that I learned that fact.
I even tried running around it naked, howling under a full moon but that didn’t
help at all and now the neighbors aren’t even saying hello anymore…
Well then, how do you shock a pool back to behaving so it’s shimmering with sparkly,
clean water?
I don’t know.
I was hoping you could TELL ME!
My first published piece was a poem in moonchild, an anthology of women’s verse and prose. It was published by Suha Publications in 1976. I gave my oldest daughter my only copy of the book because the poem was about her.
Recently, I was searching for another copy, never believing that I would find one, but I found several copies on Amazon.com. I bought two and I was as excited when they arrived last week as I was when my book arrived in 1976.
My first words in print. The experience taught me that I could be published. It validated me as a writer, handed me proof that I was a poet.
If you haven’t been published on paper yet, do it. Submit until you are published. It is not only possible but very likely and the experience will give you wings. You don’t have to be published to be a writer, of course, but it sure is fun!
I’d like to connect with any other women who had her work showcased in this anthology. Are you here on WordPress.com? Odds are against it, but so were the odds of my finding copies of this book anywhere. Maybe we are already following each other!
If you were published in this book and you see my post, contact me here or email me at womenwhothinktoomuch@yahoo.com.
Thanks, Jeanne Marie Pages 69-70.
I want to be a storybook mother
With model children who never cry.
I want to sew and read them stories
Then cook and clean until it’s done.
But I can only be myself
And let my babies be too
Beautiful sweet lovely brats
I couldn’t live without.
I start to cook but have to stop
To wipe a runny nose.
I take a bath and the baby falls in
While supper burns on the stove.
Out for a night I should be glad
But can anyone take my place?
Will they be safe till I get home?
They are in my heart wherever I go.
Jeanne Marie, 1979
I grew up in New England and if we were lucky, the summer lasted for two months.
In my more abundant winter memories, I see an African Violet on each mother’s kitchen windowsill.
I don’t know the reason for the flower’s popularity; maybe the women were trying to hold onto the illusion of warm weather, but African Violets were not easy to grow. They had to be nurtured, babied, misted and watered.
These women all had their secret tricks with this plant and only best friends shared their intimate knowledge of the mysterious African Violet. I remember playing under the table and listening to the coffee klatches’ swap advice. I remember hearing many different tips when Mom and her best friend were alone.
The African Violet produced bright pink, white or purple blossoms most of the year and if your African Violet was plump, green, velvety and flowering, you earned the respect of all the housewives in the neighborhood.
It was in the fifties and I don’t remember a single mom who didn’t have an African Violet or a single mom who left every day to go to work.
My mother-in-law is 80 something years old and she still drives from Florida to Boston and back to Florida every year. Her kids tell her that she can’t do it, but I tell her that she can if she wants to, because she is a great driver and clearer of mind than I am. LOL
Last year when she went home, I was entrusted with her African Violet. I was shaking in my sandals.
What if I killed it? Plus, I didn’t even have a kitchen windowsill.
Unable to ignore the fact that the plant had outgrown its pot, I bravely repotted the root-bound African Violet, using special soil and splitting it into two pots. I watered, I misted, I talked to them and I loved them. I was rewarded with plump, green, velvety leaves and dozens of hot pink blossoms all winter.
They smiled at me gratefully every morning from their perch on my kitchen counter, happy in their new green pots.
I kept them close to each other so they wouldn’t be lonely; after all, they had grown up together.
Each morning I would greet them and I would say, “I can’t believe it!
I can grow the impossible plant, the mighty African Violet from my childhood.”
Then, Mom stopped for a visit as she was driving back home to Haines City. She stayed with us for about a week and she never mentioned the African Violets. I saw her glance at them now and then with admiration but she never said a word. I never mentioned them either because I was afraid that she might be upset that I had split and repotted the fragile babies.
When she was packed and getting ready to go out the door, I said,
“Mom, aren’t you going to take your African Violets?”
“Those are mine? Both of them?”
Although I had toyed with the idea of keeping the small one, I said, “Yes Mom, they’re both yours.”
Besides, how could I separate them now?
Her face lit up with pleasure.
Looking back, I think maybe she had already resigned herself to the fact that I had knocked off her African Violet.
She put down the stuff in her hands and walked over to my counter. With a big smile on her face, she lifted the two pots into her hands and carefully carried them out her car. There they were tucked in among the clothes that covered her backseat, wedged in-between her tee shirts and her shorts, for their own safety.
With a last smile, away they all went.
I missed the morning smiles the plant’s bright flowers had given me, but I had always known that they were not mine to keep.
On my last shopping trip to Lowe’s I was, as usual, drawn to the distressed plants on display.
I picked up a badly distressed African Violet.
I really didn’t want to buy it and I kept putting it down and then picking it back up.
What if it didn’t like me?
What if it curled up and finished dying?
What would that say about my competence as a housewife?
I mumbled to myself, “How could a little plant mean so much to my mom and my mother-in-law, plus all the other housewives I remember and is it even really from Africa?”
I found myself at the register holding the plant so…I bought it.
It’s been a month and I haven’t repotted it yet. I haven’t even opened the African Violet potting mix, the bag still sits on my porch.
Maybe I’ll do it today because my distressed plant is no longer distressed. Its leaves are plump, green and velvety. One tall, straight, hot pink bloom stands proud, the lone survivor from the huge clusters that came as soon as I watered, loved and fed the mystifying African Violet.
I know now that when Mom’s plant responded to my nurturing, it wasn’t a fluke. I can be trusted with an African Violet. I have grown up.
Women Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie 
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