Taking time to reflect
By MARCELLA BRUCE
Contributing writer
The Christmas decorations have been put away (and there weren't too many of them in the first place). Christmas cards received have been sorted and boxed, and Christmas cards I had intended to send lie packaged and ready for use next year.
For the first Christmas in my memory as an adult, I sent not one greeting card. I hope that friends and family will forgive and understand.
Between the long vacation and followed by a couple of hospital stays after returning home, the time for sending Christmas cards just didn't develop.
But now, I'm feeling very well and glad to report that I felt so good at my last hospital dismissal I walked home. It was only about a block and a half so I really didn't over extend myself.
*****
Now it's almost Valentine's Day, and I have placed my only two special reminders in my apartment. One is a small shimmering tree of red hearts and the other a cloth Cupid doll, replete with a bow and arrow that my late husband gave me a number of years ago.
*****
I count my blessings every day, particularly as I lie awake in the morning and think back in time to wonderful memories, like at the breakfast table when my father pulled my mother closer to him, saying "I haven't given you a kiss yet this morning." Or how they supported me as I followed my love of music in college and beyond. Or how he delivered our son and daughter and earlier (me as well). He and mother were so special.
*****
I never was privileged to know grandparents. By the time my parents married, their respective parents had died, his when he and his twin were four years of age and hers by the time she was out of high school.
Mother told how she, her parents, and her two brothers left their home in Barnes, Kansas, and traveled to California by train in 1900, where they took up residence in Monrovia.
On the trip out they had also reserved a boxcar. On half of it held their furnishings, the other half housed a cow, a prized horse with "Morgan blood," and a yellow cat.
They made the change in residence because of her father's battle with tuberculosis, having been told that the move to a warmer clime might be of benefit.
*****
Brenda Hiebert, here at Parkside handed me an interesting e-mail she had received recently that lists some of the things that senior citizens cannot be blamed for. They include: "Taking the melody out of music, the pride out of appearance, the courtesy out driving, the romance out of love, the commitment out of marriage, the civility out of behavior, the refinement out of language."
This is only part of the list!
*****
Forgive this column so full of backward glances. After all, there's a future ahead: lots of business to be taken care of and lots of decisions to be made and hope for a better tomorrow.
