N is for nostalgia

 L P Hartley said “The past is a foreign country” but I can’t agree.  The past is so familiar.  Old friends, old faces, old voices.  There are so many in my memory.  All it takes is a smell, a song, an old photograph or even a phrase not heard since my youth.  

So many things from my youth would be strange to youngsters.  Telephones with curly cables.  Televisions with knobs.  But they are not foreign to me. 

I remember childhood summers that seemed to last forever. By the time September came I was well ready to go back to school.  But during those long weeks there were picnics, bike rides, visits, family gatherings. 

Nostalgia wears rose coloured spectacles or rather she takes the ordinary bits of our past and gives them a gentle golden glow.

I sometimes miss things I didn't even appreciate at the time. Waiting for two ounces of sweets to be weighed out from a big jar.   School milk drunk from a bottle with a straw.  Trotting to the letter box to post mother’s endless letters

But I think nostalgia is less about wanting to go back and more about remembering who we were.  In retirement life is no longer quite so full of rushing from one responsibility to another. There is space to remember.

Sometimes those memories make me smile. Sometimes they make me sad. Sometimes they remind me of people who are no longer here.

And that's all right.  We don't have to push the past away just because we're living in the present.  Maybe we can invite those memories in and share a cuppa with them . 

Then, when the reminiscing is over, we can get back to the present.  Nostalgia is a lovely place to visit.  But I wouldn't want to live there.

M is for mums

 No, not mothers:- chrysanthemums.  Gardeners often call them mums.   And I forgot to get some this year!

They are one of those plants which give a wonderful autumn burst of colour, along with sedums, Michaelmas daisies, dahlias and rudbeckias.  Summer doesn’t have it all her own way.  These flowers are the garden’s final burst of colour before winter takes over.

Many gardeners grow wonderful specimens to enter the local horticultural shows but mums aren’t necessarily demanding.   They simply get on with flowering while the rest of the garden is collapsing around them.

As the years go by, I find myself increasingly sympathetic to plants that bloom a little later in life. There is something rather appealing about having your best moment when everyone else has gone indoors.

Chrysanthemums come in all sorts of colours — yellow, bronze, red, pink, white and rather alarming shades that seem to have been invented by someone with a fluorescent paint box. They are wonderfully cheerful.

When the evenings are drawing in and summer already feels like something that happened somewhere else, mums provide a little reminder that there is still plenty of life and colour left in the year.

Alzheimer's disease

When I went to the COWs lunch yesterday I sat next to a lady who has Alzheimer's disease.  She is a wonderful woman: she has been a headteacher and a magistrate but that dreadful disease is robbing her of her dignity.    Another friend fetches her from home and we sit either side of her, making sure H doesn't wander off or purloin the cutlery.   The other ladies are glad she can still come but are also glad that someone else will sit next to her and take care of her.

Today I am going out to lunch with another friend who also has Alzheimer's.  J isn't as far advanced with the disease as is H but the conversation may become a little bizarre.

I have other friends whom I would like to visit but I just send cards or letters or make phone calls.  I wish I could do more, but the bottom line is that the person's for whose health I have most responsibility, is me.  

Please don't think I spend all my life as a ministering angel, but I have also been a carer myself for someone with dementia and I remember the gratitude and relief I felt when someone else visited and gave me a little time for myself.  It's just that two such meetings occurred on consecutive days and they have left me thinking.  I know my friend is slipping away and I want us to make the most of each other for as long as we can.  

I have to admit there is quite a bit of selfishness in this: I hope that if the time comes when I am housebound, others will remember and care about me.  

Did you just call me Twinkle?

 It used to be the custom for our local newspaper to include an article about anyone celebrating their hundredth birthday.  But no centenarian ever said anything: according to the reporters they always "chuckled" it.

The last time I went to our local chemist's with a prescription the assistant persisted in calling me Twinkle.  Eventually I called her Petal which caused amusement among the other older people in the shop but the assistant was none too pleased.

According to The Guardian yesterday, this is "benevolent ageism".  The speaker means well but is unwittingly patronising when s/he uses "elderspeak".  

It's not always easy.    In some places calling a stranger Love is elderspeak but around here you can be Love at any age.  Disability also brings verbal discrimination and people with disabilities often find themselves being treated like children.

There is no malice intended and usually the speaker is trying to be kind and show him/herself willing to help and "make allowances".

But I still don't like it.  How about you?

F is for Fitness - or not!

Often in the winter I struggle with the blues but that hasn't really been so this year.  'Orrible inertia, yes.  The blues, no.  What I have struggled with is physical fitness.

At the beginning of the year, I was walking around the block most days but alas! no more.  This year the cold has affected me more than I can ever remember.  If I get cold, I take several hours to get warm no matter what I do.

And the cold has affected my joints.  The batmobile looks very tempting at the moment!  On good days I get around the house unaided but I've needed my stick a few times recently.

But, all that is better than the winter blues!  I'm happy to phone friends, zoom a bit, sort my stuff and be cheerful.  I'm making myself get out of the chair a couple of times each hour and Fitbit tells me I'm doing around 2000 steps on the better days.  I'm cooking.  I led worship yesterday.  

I may not be fit (to be honest, I'm definitely not fit) but life looks pretty good.

O is for Older Than I Was

 I'm 71 so there is no denying that I am older than I was.  But no matter how old you are, you are older than you were.

There are things which I can't do now which I could do when I was sixty one, but I don't want to get to eighty one regretting that I didn't celebrate the the things I could do when I was seventy one but can do no longer.  I still drive, have days out, manage my finances, very occasionally wear heeled shoes, dance around the kitchen, and terrorise people when I am on my trundle truck.  One day some or all of those things will no longer be possible but they are fun as long as they last.    

There are things which are even better as I get older.  I have more time to make things, to linger over a coffee in the garden, to experiment with recipes.  I am happier to say"no" to things I don't want to do, I can savour the things I do want to do.  and I have lots of time each day to sit and relax knowing God is with me.