WiseWoman, from Alleged to Official

When I looked up "Crone" in Wikipedia, the very first thing it says is, "The crone is a stock character in folklore and fairy tale, an old woman...marginalized by her exclusion from the reproductive cycle."

I've heard her described as a wise woman, sometimes cantankerous, sometimes magical.

I once watched an episode of the Oprah show on which Tyne Daly described celebrating her fiftieth birthday as entering the age of the Crone, (I'm not sure exactly what she said, but I hope you get the gist), by cutting her hair and refusing to further dye it, and other celebratory events. I was moved by that, because we are close in age, and I was approaching my own fiftieth at that time.

I stopped coloring my own hair during my thirties, when I started finding a few stray silver ones, that would not "take" the dye. I'm now almost completely silver, and I can't imagine putting yucky chemicals on my hair... Or face, for that matter.

What stared out as vanity (when I was in my forties someone told me I looked better, and younger, without make up...so that was all I needed!), has become a habit of trying to keep my body clean...within limits. I use store bought toothpaste, mainly because I still have an unopened tube in my drawer. I remember my parents using a mixture of table salt and baking soda on their teeth. My plan is to start that habit once the tube is gone. (FYI, both of my parents died at 88 and 91 respectively, with most of their own teeth in their mouths!)

I have a stick of Tom's deodorant in that same drawer, but my fabulous DIY-er of a daughter-in-law made me a stick and I alternate using them with equal results.

I have not used store-bought shampoo or laundry detergent in over two years.

On the other hand, I use creamer in my burr-ground, French Pressed or Cold Brewed coffee. Milk just doesn't do it for me. Sorry.

I have an app on my Chinese manufactured, designed in the USA smart phone that tells me if I need to boycott a GMO using food brand, but on some favorite things, I don't want to know, and after some research I determined that an egg is an egg is an egg, whether from a free range chicken, or one in a cage. I guess I'm not a Vegan-minded meat eater. And really, aren't all hens vegetarian, anyway?

I no longer care so much if I'm a little fat. I no longer worry so much about what I see in the mirror, wrinkle-wise. My husband, who never fails to remind me that he is one-year-six-days younger than I am, tells me I am beautiful every single day, and after almost sixteen years of marriage, that seems to be enough for me!

As I wrote on my last blog, I'm pretty content all around, with aging in general. I guess I am, as my mother used to say, aging gracefully. Being what Bette Davis allegedly described in her famous quote, "If you want a thing well done, get a couple of old broads to do it." It's mostly okay with me.

What all the above chatter has been about is mainly an affirmation, of sorts, for my own darn self. Yesterday the manly spouse noticed something on my chin. The light caught it just right, and he noticed it. I plucked it out, surely it will return. It was more than silver, it was pure white. It did not make me happy, and I am not dealing with it well. It was about an eighth of an inch long.....oh gosh, I can barely bring myself to type the word, much less say it out loud. Okay, here goes. (I just actually took a deep breath as I typed this!)

A whisker.

I have officially entered my own Age of the Crone. It is only mildly comforting to know that I am indeed a WiseWoman.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Omaha, NE

Suanne and Lord Byron

My friend, with whom I shared so many girlhood conversations, has died, at the too young age of 59.

We met when we were twelve. Her family had just moved to my neighborhood, and she lived between my house and the all-girls school where she and I were among the "new girls" that year. We became the walking to school friends that I wrote about in my last post. I would stop by her house sometimes after school for awhile before heading home.
Here we are in our school uniforms:




I met her mother and the toddler brother of whom she was so proud. I remember a day when she showed me a tuft of fur she had saved from her dog "Rex", who had died not too long before. Even at that tender age, an age when we are often too wrapped up in out own little worlds to notice to much about others', I could tell how much love she carried in her heart.

We discovered we both had a love for art and music. It was in the world of music and singing that we really came together. I envied her her high clear soprano, I was a lowly alto, but even so, we often competed for the same solos in the various choruses in which we sang. She usually got the Soprano solo, and I would sing the lower harmony.

Our class graduated in 1970. I don't know how it came to be, but around our junior year, we began calling ourselves the "Babes of 1970", and that name has stuck for the last forty-two years.




After graduation, we went our separate ways. We had children, married, divorced, remarried. But we always were "the Babes." I have seen Suanne every ten years at class reunions, but, with the help of the new technologies that keep us all connected, email, and social networking, have been able to enjoy her friendship, and that of most of us "Babes" on a daily basis.

Yesterday I scrolled back through three years of "conversations" with Suanne on Facebook. I saw her comments to others, including other "Babes". All were filled with love. Love for her friends, her husband, her children, of whom she was so proud, and her lovely grandchildren.

It was through this medium that I learned she had written and illustrated a children's book*, and I am proud to be the owner of an autographed copy.

I also learned things about her life I had not known when we were growing up, after I encouraged her to write a "25 things about me" note, which she graciously shared with her friends and family. One of her children asked her to illustrate it on paper, because, "face book will not last forever". I hope she did that.

I have written again and again of the endurance and importance of childhood friendships. When we are children we do not know what we will become, nor how much we love each other. But the experiences we share as children are what bind us. When I met Suanne for the first time after thirty years in 2000, I knew her mostly by the sound of her laughter. Like water flowing over pebbles in a stream. The sweet soprano of her voice so much the same as it had been when we sang together at seventeen.

She seemed to find her joy as an adult. It was in her art, music, and especially her family. As I reread all those posts on Facebook, that joy was always at the surface. She had married her true love, and was living a life surrounded by beauty. Even as she wrote of the trials of her final illness, she was optimistic.

Last Friday after treatment, she wrote one day, one of the techs asked, "do you meditate during treatment?"
Surprised by her query due to my daily struggle for calm, I replied, "no. I sing".

Lord Byron could have been describing Suanne when he wrote this poem, so I'll let him describe my friend.

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress
Or softly lightens o'er her face,
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek and o'er that brow
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,—
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.




* http://www.kopaldart.com/SKK_Illustrations.html
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Omaha