A GLAD DAY RATHER THAN A SAD ONE

These are all normal feelings. One day, many years ago, my friend went to see her mother and she brought the woman’s newest great grandchild. The baby had just had a shot and was of course a bit cranky. The old great grandmother said “he sure is crying a lot.” She did not mean anything by it. The first time grandmother, who had brought the child to see its great grandmom, replied “even babies have personalities and they can be cranky if they feel like it.” Just then the baby stopped crying and smiled at both the grandmother and the great grandmother and they were elated. The baby smiled at them for the first time and the sun was shining and the moon would be bright that night for sure. The grandmother was taking care of her firstborn grandchild and thus the visit to her mother, so she could enjoy her firstborn great grandchild. The smile lit up their afternoon and from then on, she brought the baby every Thursday afternoon when she was the caregiver for her grandchild. It made the old lady happy and as she held the beautiful child, she cooed and ahed over her new bundle of joy. She was happy to have lived to see this moment and her smile was constant all afternoon. She bottle fed the infant and the daughter took a beautiful picture of the two. She entered it into a small photo contest a few months later and won fourth prize for the way the great grandmother looked down upon her new great grandchild. When my mom was sick and was at Johns Hopkins Hospital over twenty-eight years ago, my niece, her granddaughter brought her child who was about three to visit her, the great grandmother. Mom was so happy and in my young days; hospitals did not allow young children ever to visit because of the germs there, the germs they could bring in etc. Once when Mom was in the hospital in her younger days for a minor operation, I brought my two children to see her and to cheer her up. I tried to sneak them in, because children were not allowed. I went on the elevator with them and went down to the basement where the cafeteria was and outside people or visitors could get a snack. After we finished, I rode them up on the elevator to Mom’s room for them to say Hi and to make her happy. As we approached the room, the stern head nurse said to me “I caught you, trying to sneak them in. Go down.” I told her if Mom could see them for five minutes, it would make her recovery easier. She said no and no it remained. Now days, newborns are visited by their siblings immediately. My how times changed. When my mom got a bit cranky one day, the nurse said to her (28 years ago time) “why are you cranky today Mrs.Sohmer, you usually are so sweet:?” Mom replied “I am a great grandmother, I can be cranky when I want to be.” To Mom, being a great grandmother was a title worthy of anything. That was cute and nice. When we grandmothers meet people from our old days, we stop and start and the first question after how are you, is how many grandkids do you have? This is interesting, but I do not initiate that question because sometimes you meet people who have none and if you say that, it makes you feel a bit ungracious to ask such a question. I went to a wedding once and someone there told me she had nine grandchildren, I did not ask, and then she said “I guess you do not have any.” I said I have two now and there will be more soon, since my son just married, a few months ago. So that was kind of a rude assumption and there was no need to say that whether I had any or not. Actually, she did not really have nine of her own. Her daughter had married a man with three kids, so technically or legally, they were her step-grandchildren and that is fine. She need not denigrate me if she thought I had none. Oh well, we cannot stop our politicians from saying untrue or obnoxious things, so how are we to stop strangers from doing the same thing. Mom use to say “if you cannot say anything nice, say nothing at all.” My hairdresser said to me today when I complimented her on how nice she did my hair “you looked terrible when you came in.” I replied “I just washed my hair, my you say complimentary things.” She looked at me quizzically. When I was a kid, no television yet, we all use to listen to a radio show called Let’s Pretend every Saturday morning, even boys did too. It was the Golden Age of Radio and it was sponsored by Cream of Wheat, a cereal you boiled up mixed with water. Lots of kids liked it, I did not, but I loved the show, so sometimes to keep the show on the air (we thought) we would eat a small bowl of it. On the show were adaptations of fairy tales acted out with actors reciting the parts, as was done on radio then. There was a slogan that said “life is what you make it, let’s pretend.” It was a sweet program and ran on the radio for many years and we kids would all discuss the program from the previous Saturday, when we went back to school the following Monday. The slogan Let’s Pretend became a household word when we talked about things. Sometimes, we girls would say to one another “let’s pretend we are going on a vacation, let’s pretend we are teenagers, let’s pretend we are Cinderella and going to the ball in a pretty dress.” It is still wonderful, even as active, adult seniors to ‘pretend’ that we are going somewhere fancy and we imagine what we will buy to wear to that event. Last year I was invited to a nice wedding in Virginia and I had known we would be invited for about six months. During that time, I pretended that I was already twenty pounds lighter and how I would look in the pretty new dress I would buy for the wedding. You can pretend about lots of things and many times, they do come true. There is no harm to still pretend or imagine something that you really want. Pretend in the Thesaurus means imagine, suppose. I saw a sixty-five year old woman doing on TV, a set of exercises with a group class in a recreation center. She said that she is the oldest one in the class and is proud to be it. She said that she pretends it is thirty years ago and that she is the age of the other students. One of the young women told her when she heard this woman saying that line, that she, the thirty something person always looked at Mary being there with them, and imagined Mary was their age; because Mary was able and willing to accomplish, what thirty somethings were doing at her age of sixty-five. On days you feel sad, feel glad, for good days you already had, and do not feel mad. Let’s pretend that every day is a glad day and be grateful for the next day coming your way. elita sohmer clayman Fairfax station patch