Warmth and The Day After

"Today was warm. With my coffee –warm, sitting in the sun-warm, feeling how both my body and soul are warm. I am in the perfect place to appreciate where I really abide.

To admire something beautiful with wonderment is part of every day, for me. We go through the day forgetting to ‘look’ and ‘admire’ those things that can amaze and warm the heart.

As I sit sipping my coffee, ready to recite my morning prayers of awareness and promises for the day, I see shining strings of spider webs stretching across the beams into the plants. As they glistened in the sun and waved back and forth, I remind myself of a saying that we often hear “You can’t get there from here”. And I think “sure you can – just build a bridge, spin a web, jump higher and further. The spider seems to be able to do the unthinkable from our human perspective (which sometimes rationalizes beyond positiveness), and while working all night to get someplace of interest. It could be that the spider just wants the pleasure of the journey, with no agenda once arriving or it could be the spider wants to search for a new place to reside, live and feast on something out of ordinary and take on a new perspective in life. And no doubt, whether the spider is just along for the ride, or intends to take on a new place, a new perspective in life is the result.  Accident or Intent – we learn a lesson and experience life to carry on and grow.

A few weeks ago during a storm, one of my plants was blown off the porch ledge onto the deck. The pot broke and soil scattered. The plant, a cactus called crown of thorns, lay on its’ side for a few days. Once I found the plant, I picked it up, splashed it with water and set it in a larger pot. The pot was too big. The plant leaned sideways for more days, almost a 45 degree angle. I splashed it was a bit of water. Days later, with coffee in hand, I picked the plant up and placed it upright in another container. It was time to look closer and admire beauty. I didn’t think it would come from this plant. But in amazement, the plant had twisted itself over the weeks to reach for the sun. With gnarled stems that twisted in quirky ways for a cactus generally straight and lean, I took notice of the blooms on top. No matter what, the plant’s desire was to move to the sun, receive daily life from something that we probably take for granted so often.

I think that no matter what we go though in our lives, we move towards the sun. On a day we cannot see the sun, we forget it is there and remind ourselves that it is not ‘sunny’ that day. But the sun is there and will return. The sun is there on cloudy days, and even in the dark of night, often seen in the moon, reminding us that is it there. On the nights where no moon is present to reflect the sun’s light, we are to hold still, breathe deep and walk slow, because we know it will come back for us in just a matter of hours. Do not worry.

Never are we without what makes us grow."

This was written this week by my first dance teacher-Laurence E. Miller of Maine, who taught my husband and I for eight years before he left the studio and went to Boston and then Portland, Maine to start his own business, a dance studio. Now besides doing that and is at age fifty-four, he has decided to add another career to his resume. He is going to be a chaplain/minister after a two year course and also will be still running his dance business. His is also a melding of two thoughts and ideas. Dance and chaplaincy. A good combination as is the story I have written below this beginning article.

We went to a great party recently in Northern Virginia. My two youngest grandchildren’s birthday party. It was all you can eat Chinese buffet and the most delightful and plentiful buffet I have ever seen.

It was fun seeing the other side of the family and eating and gorging and having a pleasant and happy time. No one tries to one up another as happens many times at American parties. These people are Asians and are my daughter-in-law’s family and so it is our family now too. No one shows up in fancy clothes or uppity attitudes. No one is there to brag other than to show off the children or grandchildren that are present there. No one has to cook or clean the house before the arrival of the guests.

Everyone there is happy to be there and grateful that they are there. Everyone is delighted to be sharing in this event that is important not only to the six year old Ethan or his four year old sister Ava who are sharing this party for their birthdays in August. Ethan is well behaved and delighted to have a party and Ava is acting like good, sweet and loving and after having sampled some Asian food that Mommie put in her plate is munching happily on Cheerios. A good commercial for plain Cheerios because little ones enjoy them especially at restaurants while the others are eating the excellent food.

Everyone there is going to fill their tummy to the limit and when they drive home all filled up with various foods; they will wonder why they ate too much and be now reaching for the bottle of Tums. We are all thrilled to be related to these two little darlings, us and the other grandparents and an assorted group of aunties and uncles and one great auntie.

All are one and one is all, because we all are there for the same blessing. We are related to these children and their parents one way or the other. In my case, this is my baby and these are his babies. My baby is an attorney and a CPA and even though he is forty-six now, he will always be my baby. He is my Jeffrey, the father of Ava and Ethan.

From one person-me who joined with my husband Jerry, then my daughter and her husband and her two teenagers, to my son and his wife and these two birthday celebrants. We are seniors now, my husband and I, and the two older boys are teens, age sixteen and nineteen so it is a blessing at this moment in our senior mode to have young grandchildren ages six and four. It is our gift, our love and our good luck at this point in our lives.

So eating at this buffet honoring both of their August births is surely a prediction of our future and our lasting happiness at this senior age. Even though seniors in my mom’s time were considered old and aged and sickly and on their way out, we new seniors are considered more positive, more healthy, more invigorated and more knowledgeable and even younger in heart. We can teach our young grandchildren and even teen ones too little things of the past and this enhances their lives by knowing what was then and how things differ now.

So the Chinese buffet of extensive pans of food and delicacies and desserts and fruits and anything wonderful in the food line was only part of the event. The pleasure of being there and witnessing the blowing out of the candles on the cakes by the kids and the wonder and happiness on their faces was just as important as the moment could make it.

This event is a melting pot of two families, one Asian, one Caucasian, one of the Catholic faith and the other one of the Jewish faith. This is America 2011 and this is the way things are now and that is one of the positive blending of two cultures, two families and two religions.

These beautiful young children Ava and Ethan will be the beneficiaries of the two aspects of their combined heritage and will and are blessed in the unity.

I always insert dancing in my articles and I can do so here too. When we as seniors or soon to be seniors take up dancing we blend into our lives the component and ingredient of a hobby that is beneficial to our health and soul. We meld together one culture of everyday living, working, being and doing all the necessary things we need to do to survive. When we decide to take up dancing we are inserting in that daily life another aspect of living, something that is exciting, and hard to learn. By excelling in it we create another melting pot of two different lives. One,where we are, us working and living and the other where we are doing a specialty diversion in our leisure time and we are using our brain to accomplish this feat for our feet, our arms and mostly for our mind.

When our minds are active and happy and still learning, then we have blended good times with educational thoughts. There is a saying that learning is a companion on a journey to a strange country and is an inexhaustible strength. We seniors have this strength and we are proud to exhibit it whenever we can. This is not a strange country we have found, this is ours because of our dancing we are in new territory in our same location.

So the melding of my two families, of my half Asian grandchildren can be said is like ballroom dancing for seniors. We merge, mix and mingle and then we are blessed because we are happy, happier and then the happiest seniors there are.

We are exuberant, ecstatic, euphoric and Thomas Jefferson said” happiness is tranquility.”

Tranquil we are.

Just as the article I have included with this one by Laurence E. Miller called Warmth, Laurence is blending, melding and including in his life at the now age of fifty-four, his two loves, one of dancing and the new idea of being a chaplain/minister where he can inspire people not only to ballroom dance but to enjoy their lives with happiness and warmth and contentment.

I say this is all a prescription for added good health, enduring happiness. Plato said “contentment is natural wealth. “We can be wealthy and even though it would be great to win the lottery; we have the lottery when we are serene