You know regardless of what you say you may have in mind (or remnants therefrom), it seems that with each passing day your plans, dreams, activities (or avoidance thereof), relationships (or non) are in a process of RE-orchestration.
When I was a child, nightmares (on occasion) followed "scary stuff" - rumors of aliens taking over our world, threats of wars and the dropping of bombs, the prom invite NOT materializing.You remember. That stuff. Now, decades later, we can chill out. Relax a bit. Because it all happened for real and we made it through. And because we made it through, we can have stuff 'in mind'.
Those plans, dreams, activities - it's all there. And it's ours. It's our turn. Gotcha! You forgot. RE-orchestration is the CEO. It's subtle - this process - and very well marketed. But the bottom line remains - you are not running the show. And there's no point whining about it. Like rats in a Skinner Box, Simple Simon said and we did. Nobody wants to be a misfit, odd-man out, not cool and up-to-date.
With social media at the helm, we get on board - Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, YouTube. We connect, befriend, like - and quickly, because there will be more stuff to learn tomorrow - and lots of it. All those dreams of sailing into the sunset came true. Unfortunately, instead of boarding "Happily Ever After", I got on to the "Ship of Fools".
Why just today, I learned that I am already history. One of my granddaughters asked if I would help her with her Kindergarten project. She called and requested that I answer several questions.
"Certainly," I said.
"When you were a little girl, did you use a tin tub or did you have a bathtub?"
"A tin what?"
"Tub. For your bath."
"Of course we had a bathtub," I said laughing.
"Did you have to pump your drinking water?"
"No, Emma. We had faucets in the house. Just like you. But I did pump water to drink once. We were visiting family who lived on a farm during vacation."
"Poppy used to visit family in Mars, Pennsylvania all the time and they had to pump their water."
Our daughter had the speaker phone on.
"I'm sure the children will find that very interesting."
"And when he played baseball with his cousin, Phil, they made the little pillow bases out of cow droppings."
"They may not find that quite as interesting," Jennie added.
It was difficult to follow the interview because both my cell phone and my Surface tablet were on my desk. Did I turn them off? Of course. But "(Tee, hee) we're here." Softly bonging whenever an email came or a voicemail registered in the phone.
"I'm sorry, Emma. What was that about houses?"
"Did you and Poppy live in your own house?"
"Well Poppy's family had their own house. I lived in an apartment house. It's a big house where several families live."
"Oh. Like Jay and Ashley's?" Jennie's brother in law and his wife live in an apartment so Emma had a frame of reference. But she found it very hard to believe that we had only one telephone in the house and that sometimes other families used this same number. I told her that we would be happy to answer any questions that her classmates may have after she gave her report.
Yesterday we were helping our oldest grandson with his project. He was to be dressed as an Irish immigrant in the early 20th century just arriving in America. He asked us whether we had an old trunk and perhaps an Irish, raggedy wool cap. My husband told him every family that was Irish had raggedy caps and he was sure we had one. I rushed to the garage to spray his father's army trunk with some muddy brown paint. Just as I was dragging it outside to dry I was busted. "You better be able to splain, Lucy," he said.
What's to explain? We spend our days learning new technology from the young children. But when we are asked to be or to make an antique, we shine. That's how we roll - holding each other in a death grip for fear of fracturing something on the way down. Later, Lorane
