Blythe + Rhea + Mary Kay + June + Sam = BLISS!

Confession - I haven't seen I'll See You In My Dreams.  Just stumbled across it during a online ramble.  That's okay, because this posting isn't about the content of the movie (which is posting rave reviews & a kazillion stars).  It's a mega "Hallelujah!" that actresses of Blythe Danner's ilk (aka Rhea Perlman, Mary Kay Place & June Squibb) are in romance films.  

Not surprised about Sam Elliot - aging guys have always been given a pass.  Glad to see him paired up with a contemporary, rather than a sweet young thing or even a middle aged honey.

 

Yes, they are casting older women in romantic roles because of the market.  But let's give three loud cheers that older women are being cast in stories ABOUT older women's issues!!!

Remembering the movies that Bette Davis & Joan Crawford & Olivia de Haviland made after they aged into their forties & fifties.  It was not pretty.  Bette was only 56 - 17 years younger than Blythe - when she teamed with Crawford for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.   

 

O be joyful that we've come a long way, baby!  

Coal Miner's Daughter no diamond in the rough

Loretta Lynn's a diamond, through & through!  At 83, just released her latest album, Full Circle.  Includes duet - Lay Me Down - with 82-years old Willie Nelson. 

Loretta Lynn - embodying "engage energize empower"!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xnGmy-m9rw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xIuxNR9WCg

http://www.spin.com/2016/03/loretta-lynn-everything-it-takes-tonight-show-watch/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-hinckley/pbs-doc-on-loretta-lynn-r_b_9377070.html

http://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/loretta-lynn-owns-a-whole-town-in-tennessee-w165884

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-friday-s-tv-highlights-american-masters-loretta-lynn-and-more-20160303-story.html

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/life_and_entertainment/2016/03/03/loretta-lynn-profile.html

Besties, not beasties

The older I get, the more I hear other people's stories about parents & siblings & community cultures, the deeper grows my appreciation of what a lucky lass I was to be born in the family I had, the faith, the community, the country, the time.

Oh, there are plenty of things about each of those that I could dredge up to show just the opposite, to cry Woe is me! & beat my breast with fury over the injustice of it all (whatever "it" is perceived to be at any given time). But the reality is that everyone involved in my life from Day One  (Thanks, Doc Andy, for a smooth delivery!) deserves a big juicy THANK YOU!  Because every single aspect of every single moment has ended up making me more interested, more curious, more OPEN to every rich ripe experience lesson awareness.

 
This HUGE light dawned listening to friends talking about their families.  Yes, my family seemed to trigger a goodly number of rants & rages, but through it all what was always clear to me was the humanity of each person.  They were never one-dimensional to me, even as a child.  The credit for that, I believe, deserves to be placed at my parents' door.  Can't tell you what they said or did or taught, but am absolutely sure they did.  Others drove me batty, but I always saw them as humans doing what they could with what they had.  Well, at some deep-down, unacknowledged but definitely there level. 

Once we see the humanity in others, it seems natural to respond with caring instead of rebuke, compassion instead of condemnation.  

My parents were, it has to be admitted, truly awful at parenting.  And they did the best they could with what they had.  

My siblings were dreadful at providing the sort of connection & relationship their baby sis always craved.  And am sure they did the best they could with the resources at hand.  
 
My little hometown could talk tall without apparently delivering on its promise.  And am sure everyone did the best with the resources at hand.
 
Ditto one & all, individually & within organizations, even the faith I grew up in, which can be the biggest disappointment for anyone.   

And my hope of all hopes is that each thinks the same of me, however crazy I might have made or make them.  

Let's see each other as besties, not beasties!

 

Believing in giddy

 

Count me in a big believer in feeling giddy, in experiencing a happy lightness of being in the joyous moment.  That being said & shared, it is essential to note that HOW we experience giddiness varies wildly from person to person.  


It's no news that I am effusive in my feelings of giddy joy at being who I am, right here, right now.  Others can feel the same, but sense it as a warm humming through their body & soul, a calm happiness, a shy smile, all among the countless ways we shed "giddy tears of disbelief" at getting to be who we are, where we are, doing what we are, at all ages of our life, at 91 every bit as much as we did at 21.  



Actually, the chances that we'll have the discernment that frees us to see JOY in simply our wondrous self is highly improbable in our only seemingly giddy youth.  


True giddiness is rooted in acceptance, awareness & appreciation.  Aka perception.  Callow youth & skeptical middle age are less likely to see the wow of what is, expecting it to be over the next horizon or lost behind a previous one, rather discover it curled up on their lap.

Credits:
planetsark.com

Kindred spirits ~ ~ Rabbi Friedman's m-i-l & my Mom!

Am enjoying working my way through Rabbi Dayle Friedman's Jewish Wisdom for Growing Older, Finding Your Grit & Grace Beyond Midlife.  Time & again, am reminded of my mother, Katharine (Kay to all) Reynolds Lockhart.  Especially pages 9 & 10!

Rabbi Friedman's description of her late mother-in-law sounds so like Mom.  Tried to paraphrase the section, but failed miserably.  Instead, will share exactly what she writes:

My late mother-in-law, Miriam, had a very fruitful old age.  She did not climb high mountains or work at a career.  She did not travel the world.  She did not write books or invent cures.  

Rather, this amazing woman, who had survived the Warsaw Ghetto & multiple concentration camps before she came to the United States to build a new life & family, was virtually homebound for several years before she died at close to ninety.  What she did in the words of the rabbi who gave her eulogy was "work the phone."  

Miriam maintained a regular telephone conversation with a couple of dozen relatives and friends all over the country.  When you spoke to Miriam, she genuinely wanted to hear about your life.  She always had not only a kind word but a piercing insight...  After speaking with Miriam, you saw more clearly or held more lightly whatever was burdening you.  

The fruit that Miriam bore & boundlessly shared to her dying day was her wisdom.

  Rabbi Dayle Friedman

I love this woman!

Rabbi Judah Loew, a 16th century sage, suggests that aging offers a unique opportunity:
As we age, we become wiser... as our physical facilities are weakened, our spiritual faculties gain strength, for we acquire the capacity of discernment - spiritual independence, or exalted intellect, which flows from the Holy One.  In this way, (the elder) can grasp things that are utterly distinctive.

According to Rabbi Loew, certain capacities are heightened as we grow older.  Our bodies may change & face limits, but our soul becomes unbounded.  

How is it that we become wiser?  Our ability to discern expands.  We become able to see clearly, to make distinctions about what is really important, what matters most.  We are no longer totally dominated by the perspective of other people & the culture at large.  We can hold onto the perspective we have gained from our life experiences.  We can forge our own unique insights.  

Gaining wisdom is, according to Theodore Roszak, "what the elder mind seems especially empowered to do."

Zounds!  That describes Mom to a T!  Where Miriam survived the ghetto & concentration camps, Mom survived the early death of her father, emotional & even spiritual abuse from her mother, the death of a young child, the too-soon death of her beloved husband.  Both women were strengthened by fires of tragedy I cannot begin to imagine, let alone fathom.  

Where Miriam worked the phones, Mom worked the postal service, typically sending off a card or note or letter every day to her network of friends & relatives around the world.  Hardly a day went by that she didn't receive one in the mail.  

Like Miriam, Mom genuinely wanted to hear what was going on in everyone's life.  She was a peerless listener & tender correspondent.  Whether writing to a nephew in California, her BFF in Corpus Christi, or a minister about a sermon, she wrote with caring & compassion, good humor & keen interest.  Through her cards, notes & letters, Mom carried on conversations that threaded the years.  

 

Smiled, reading that Miriam "always had not only a kind word but a piercing insight" to share. Ditto Mom!  Like Miriam, she could sum up in a few words what most of us couldn't even see.  Going on 15 years since she slipped from us, person after person still tell me how they could always count on her to help lighten their load by listening with a caring heart.  Grinning, remembering her  doctor at St. Mary's teasingly beseeching me to please leave Mom & take another patient home for hospice care - "If I am feeling low, all I have to do is go into her room & I always come out feeling better."  

Mom & Miriam ~ clearly kindred spirits & blessings to all.

 

Credits: 
amazon.com
bizjournals.com
inspacesbetween.com
cosmiccowgirlsmagazine.wordpress.com