Beautiful Old Broads are icons.

Dear Ones.

When generations gathered around our kitchen table for birthdays and holidays, the talk eventually turned to the immutable fact that “they just don’t make things like they used to.  Plastic is what they use nowadays.”  Grey haired heads would nod in agreement.  Being a younger whippersnapper, I’d eye my dishwasher and self cleaning oven  and quietly chuckle.

Fast forward a few (okay quite a few) decades and I can hear myself echoing those same sentiments.  Oh my, those old dears are no doubt laughing their halos off somewhere out in the cosmos when I bewail all the new technology that swamps my brain.

Take the washer (I wish someone would).  It has a plastic button to turn it on and it sticks at times.  Once on though, the lid locks up like a dog’s jaw when you want to give him a pill. Leaving the lid open while you check the clothes hamper is not an option either.  The machine empties out with the lid open.  My old machine was much simpler. It had metal knobs to turn on and off and I could open it any time.

Moving on to my new printer.  Let me be clear.  I’d jolly well like to hammer and beat it into small pieces. Where to start.  That’s my first complaint.  Starting it takes longer than my dad’s old Plymouth to warm up on a winter morning.  Just like that old car, the printer gurgles and churns and grunts.  I’ve learned to push the button and then go brush my teeth while waiting for it to rumble into print mode.  And turning it off?  Simple you’d think.  No way.  To turn it off…you turn it on.  Really.  There are 12 functions on the top of the printer plus a small display screen.  Not one of them says OFF.  No.  To turn it off you press ON.  And if you don’t press it hard enough, oops, the next time you use the printer, a snarky message in the display warns you that printer was turned off improperly.  The rest of my thoughts about this printer are…..unprintable.

 Living in an icon studded world is stressful for word folks.  I yearn for dials and knobs that are easily identifiable.  Instead there are pictures that befuddle me.  My DNA is not wired for icons.  Take lips.  Yes lips.  When I see a picture of lips I immediately think of lipstick or kissing.  How wrong is that?  Let me explain.  A few years back I bought a GPS and the clerk said all I needed to do was pop it into the car and plug it in.  I should have been wary of anything that simple but I’m an optimist and off I went, plugged it in and wham, he was right.  It was very easy if you were Polish.  That’s right.  Every thing came up in Polish. I hit all options but failed.  So short of learning Polish, I needed help.  A phone call brought clarification.  Go to Menu and hit on the icon showing lips.  Excuse me but why lips I asked?  That’s the option for language.  Of course, anyone knows that except me.  I hit on lips and up came the language selection.  So easy if you’re an icon person. 

So it goes as we wade through oceans of new technology and try to stay afloat which I manage…just barely.  One thing gives me satisfaction.  The fact that a few decades ahead there will be oldsters gathered somewhere in a Starbucks sipping their decaf lattes and complaining about the state of the new technology and wishing they could have more naps and less apps.   

                        Survival is a succession of temporary measures”

           

Beautiful Old Broads March Along

Dear Ones,

March …many weathers….and many events.  There’s March Madness and The Ides of March and Nation Pi Day on 3-14.   Add to that  the first day of spring and spring forward day which I understand was dreamed up by no less than Benjamin Franklin.  A pox on old Ben and our Congress. It’s a disturbing and disruptive practice leaving millions sleep deprived each spring.

 My favorite day in March is the 17^th, the feast of St. Patrick.  I settle in for Irish music from my albums and lately from Pandora too.  It was a challenge to find Irish music on the radio. Now with streaming and the internet, it’s not a problem but years ago, not so easy to find the traditional Irish music my mother yearned for.  Except for the beloved Karl Hass.  Without fail every St. Pat’s day he would do an hour program of classical Irish music.  Mother would beam as his melodic voice filled the house.  He’d chat about the Irish composers and then that haunting lyrical music would coddle your heart. 

Nowadays, while listening to the music, I first get down the Irish Belleek teapot which is lighter than the voice of an Irish tenor.  It almost glows with ivory translucence.  Next I set the cups and saucers out.  Each cup is so delicate weighing about as much as one green shamrock.  Then I warm the pot and pop in an Irish teabag and wait while the brew steeps.  Not to be rushed, my Irish tea.  Savoring that first sip stirs up the memories and I settle in for a talk with my mother.  That’s been my custom, these last few years.  I usually get a wee weepy as memories flood my mind.  My dad used to say I had the Lakes of Killarney stashed behind my eyelids because I’d cry easily.  Now I don’t cry as often.  Takes something major.  I wonder.  As we age, do we keep our emotions tighter in check?  Less likely to share, more guarded about opening up?  Do you agree?  But not when I sit with my dear old mother.  I tell her all.

When the tea grows cold and the music ends, I put the china back on the shelf.  You’re probably thinking it’s on to an Irish dinner but the sad fact is I somehow didn’t get that strand of DNA that spelled boiled dinner.  I do not like corned beef and cabbage.  Yes, I cooked it for years…till Mother died.  Then I made a brave announcement.  No more corned beef and cabbage.  Perhaps lamb chops and green asparagus.  I think it’s the smell of cabbage that turns me off.  Don’t tell my mother…please.

We all have traditions; some cherished family ones, others recently acquired that though newer are meaningful and reassure us that there is a pattern to this unfolding of daily life.  Many are connected to the seasons.   Take the hummingbirds.  I put my feeders out mid-March and yesterday, they were at the feeder causing my spirits to lift and flutter just like their tiny wings and promising months of bird acrobatics. Also March means Lent to me and Lent means hot cross buns.  I can’t wait till I see them at the bakery.  That memory goes straight back to childhood.  Anyone else remember this song?

‘ One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns, hot cross buns.  If you have no daughters, give them to your sons.  Hot cross buns.”

On that note, I’ll close and say Happy Spring.

                        It is in the shelter of each other that the people live

                                                            An Irish Proverb

               

               

Beautiful old broads go remembering

Dear Ones,

What causes memories to pop into your head?  Unbidden, like apps on a i-pad, they appear without warning tossing you back years or decades to some distant place in your past.  A snatch of a song, a familiar scent or maybe a voice can catapult one down the memory lane. On a recent misty drizzly morning, it was a voice, my mother’s voice that did it.  Oh what a moist day it is, she’d say whenever the rain came down.  No matter if it was a deluge-- to her it was a moist morning.  And it was indeed I thought zipping up my rain jacket and pulling down my hat and letting my mind drift back to those growing up years.

On a rainy afternoon, I’d race in from school, change out of my navy uniform and settle at the kitchen table with a library book until Mother appeared and airily announced she needed carrots or maybe sugar for my sister was bringing home someone for supper. But Mother, I’d complain, it’s pouring outside.  Then she’d lift off her apron and step out on the back porch to proclaim, tis only a moist day. I’d mutter and groan to no avail.  Finally I’d get on my raincoat and rubbers and head three blocks past the church and then turn on Grand River Ave. and there one block up was the A&P. where we shopped.  Along the way I managed to splash through lots of puddles pretending I was Gene Kelly dancing and singing or Elizabeth Taylor racing her horse.  I truly didn’t mind the rainy errand for I knew when I got back home, mother would fuss over me and make me cocoa and spoil me. She always did.

Mother liked the rain probably due to her Irish upbringing but the heat was another story.  How she disliked it.  If the temperature in Detroit hit 80, she considered it a heat wave.  Once the temperature went up, at our house all the shades came down, we had cold cuts for supper and I was instructed to play in the shade on our front porch lest I get sunstroke.

Now the drizzle was turning into a steady downpour putting an end to my walk and I ran for the car.  But first I looked up into the trees where perhaps mother’s ghost was hovering and said, Yes, mom, it is a most day and all this remembering has given me some moist eyes.

            Into each life some rain must fall….that’s why I have a rain barrel