What you don't know won't hurt you.

Or so my mother, the wisest woman who ever lived, taught me when I was growing up.  It was not something she told me once to help me over a rough spot.  It was a fact that she lived and breathed.  And she was right.  What I did not know did not hurt me, but there was that part she forgot to add about "The chickens always come home to roost."  These two adages are intrinsically tied together in this game of life.  I think this one came about when I thought my first husband was fooling around on me.  And she was right.  If he was and I really did not know it for a fact, it did not hurt me.  Sadly, though, God has his way of dealing reality to a situation.  This reality came in the form of a venereal disease when I was 6 months pregnant.  Yep, the chickens came home to roost that day. 

That should have been the end of that marriage, but I hung on for 5 more years and 3 more kids.  During their growing up years, I labored under the adage, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."  Yep.  I kept the handles on the stove turned in after  Debbie reached up from her walker and grabbed the cord on the electric skillet.  That could have been a fatality very quickly.

 "Better to be safe than sorry."

"Do not judge a man until you have walked  a mile in his shoes."

"No sense beating a dead horse."

"Revenge is a dish best served cold."

And then I figured out that  "What is good for the goose is good for the gander."  only I was the 'goose' and he was the 'gander'.  Divorce became a frequently used word in my vocabulary, along with the  "A rolling stone gathers no moss." and "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach."

As for  going back and rehashing old wrongs, that fell under the saying of, "Let sleeping dogs lie, " and "Never poke a hornets nest."

I think a lot of the best ones actually come from the Bible, but mother was prone to spit out a few of them also.

"As you sow, so shall you reap."

"Sow the wind; reap the whirlwind."

My oldest daughter taught me (many years later) that  "What don't kill you will make you strong."  And she was right, or so it seems as I near the end of my journey. 

I find myself reaching for my Bible more regularly these days.  I do not know whether it is because we are limited in our interactions because of Covid 19, or just because I am getting old.  I do not feel old, but I can count the numbers and I find myself reaching more often for the handrail on the steps.  I guess it is just the old circle of life and it all boils down to "click here".

You can please some of the people....

Mother was adamant about this one!  I used to try to make every body like me, but it never happened.  As soon as I got a friend, I pissed some one else off.  So Mother was clear about it.  " You can please all of the people, some of the time.  You can please some of the people all of the time.  But you can not please all of the people, all of the time. "  She was right, you know.  She was always right!  Not right some of the time, but all of the time and the wisdom that came from that woman's lips never ceased to amaze me.  She just had a way of looking at life that made so damn much sense.

When I married my first husband she said "You made your bed, now you can sleep in it."  Later it was "If you lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas."  "Live and learn."  "A new broom sweeps clean."  And of course the clincher, "Never bite off more than you can chew."

"Can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear."  "Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind."  That woman just never ran out of things to make me think and regret that decision.  "Too little too late."  "Can't put that toothpaste back in the tube."

So now when I think of mother I think of a poem that ricochets around in my brain.  It goes like this:

The wise old owl sat on the oak.
The more he heard, the less he spoke.
The less he spoke, the more he heard.
We should be like that wise old bird!

Or something like that.

Yesterday, when I was young...

Do you remember that song that goes "Yesterday, when I was young, and the taste of life was sweet, like rain upon my tongue."?  I can hear it playing in my head, but the words do not jell any more.  This is like so many other things in my life that have gone awry. 

I remember when beer bottles had screw on caps and sometimes they were a little hard to grasp and that is why God gave us teeth; to open bottle caps!  Alas, those days are over and gone.  Well, actually, so are the teeth.  I think I used to have 32, but that number is slowly dwindling.  Granted, four of them were wisdom teeth which never fit anyway, but nonetheless, they were there.  Unfortunately the caps that were so easily removed with my super powerful jaws have now been replaced by caps devised by a mad scientist.  The first thing I need to do is read the "how to remove cap" instructions printed on the miniscule cap.  Well, the very first thing I have to do is find the magnifying glass so I can SEE the instructions.  Ok, here we go!

To remove cap grasp bottle firmly.  Push down on cap while twisting counterclockwise.  You may need to exert extra pressure.  Now, we are dealing with a prescription bottle with a cap that is maybe an inch across.  My fingers quit bending that far many years back, but I am game to try.  So I grasp the bottle firmly in my left hand.  I press my right hand onto the cap.  Everything is plastic and of course my hands are sweaty in anticipation of this chore.  Ok, push down and twist counterclockwise.  I am assuming the cap goes counterclockwise; not the bottle.  And in a perfect world, something would turn and something would open.  Hell, maybe I was supposed to turn myself counterclockwise.  So, I try again.  Once more with feeling!  So this time I grasp the bottle in my right hand with the cap in my left.  Counterclockwise should still be the same direction.  I recall life lessons that say "Lefty loosey, righty tighty."  Sounds great in theory.

By this time I have worked up a sweat and wonder if I really need these blood pressure pills open at all.  Surely some one will stop by later today and they will open them for me.  This leads me to remember all the things I need open, like the jar of pickles, the bottle of lavendar cleaner, and that bottle of aphid killer that I threw across the fence in total frustration.  What has my life become?  I can not even try to catch the rain on my tongue anymore, because I might catch pneumonia instead. 

And all this brings me to the crux of the matter.  I am getting old.  Not only are my fingers stiff and my teeth gone, even words take on new meaning.  Like colon is no longer a punctuation mark, it is now something inside me to be babied and cleansed on a regular basis.   Will no longer means determination, it is something I have to make and file with the court or when I go toes up the state of Colorado will be my beneficiary!  Friends and family are no longer just people to be cherished, they are to be feared and revered and do not tick them off or they will not come to my funeral.  (I do not want to be the only one there!)  Walker is no longer someone I meet on the path, it is what holds me up.  Depends is not an act you perform when counting on someone to do something, it is now a noun to replace "string bikini or thong."

And I could go on all day, but I can't because I want to make a cake and I have got to get that new bottle of vanilla open.  Think I will take it down to the Senior Center and make that our challenge for the day!  Please do not laugh at this because one of these days you are going to be wanting to taste the rain only to find that it is now acid rain and you want no part of that!

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Nostalgia at this time of the morning? Sure, why not?

For some reason I decided to go back and read some old blogs.  I know what it was!  I wanted to download the pdf. of all of them as I want to have a record when I turn toes up and the kids are remembering me fondly.  I started out just pretty boring and mundane, but as time went on I managed to actually hit my stride there for a while.  So rather than tax my tiny brain this morning, I give you one of my first that I wrote about my mother. 

 

Friday, September 25, 2009

My Mother

My mother shaped my life by example and a lot of her down home wisdom. I am going to tell you some of these at this point and what my thoughts at the time were.

1. "Get that pencil out of your mouth. You don't know where it has been." (Where did that thing go when I wasn't looking?")

2. " Do you want a lickin'?" (Oh, yeah! That is exactly what I want, a lickin'!)

3. " If Beth stuck her head in the fire, I suppose you would too!" (How is wearing my socks rolled down comparable to sticking my head in a fire?)

4. "Eat that mush! There are people starving to death in China." (Well, I sure wish they had this mush!"

5. "Get that coat on before you go outside and freeze to death!" (Wonder how long it takes to flash freeze.)

6. " Do not stick your tongue on that metal pole, cause it will freeze there." (Of course I am going to do that if I can just make it to the pole before I freeze to death.)

7. "Break this candy bar in half and give your sister the biggest half so you do not appear greedy." (Yeah, give the big half to her because she is greedy.)

8. "The early bird gets the worm." (And why do I want a worm?)

9. " Stop running around like a chicken with its head cut off!" (There is a visual I do not need.)

10. "Keep your legs crossed or some little boy will look up your dress." (And what will he see?)

11. "I am going to knock your block off!" (What is a block? Is that possible? Where will my block land and can I put it back on?)

12. "Keep eating and you are going to pop open!" (So that is what that belly button is for! To hold me shut.)



And there is not a day that goes by that one of her idioms doesn't pop into my mind and jerk me back to the straight and narrow. Today this would be called child abuse, but back in those days it was just called "doing the best we can."

I would not trade my roots for any other roots in the world. I came from good, hardworking, honest German and I am sure this has helped shape me into the person I am today.

Button up your coat!

I heard some one say "Button up your coat!" That started me thinking about the way we talk and I realize a lot of it hearkens back to the olden times. Like "Button up your coat." If you think about it, that is the correct way to button because you can start at the bottom with the buttons matching and it will button straight. If you start at the top, you really can not see to match them and when you get to the bottom, sometimes one side hangs down below the other.

"Put that book down!" would seem to mean that it should go on the floor as that is the location of "down." We need to be more specific with the kiddies. "Place the book on the table." Now you may wonder, what got me off on this tangent. It was the trash.

I told Bret, "That trash needs to go out." Seems like a harmless statement on the surface, but I could see his wheels turn. So I amended the statement, "That trash needs to go out and you need to be the one to take it out (then I added) to the barrel that is located by the carport and you need to open the lid and place it inside and replace the lid then you need to walk away leaving it behind." I think he did it on his way to work.

He used to be so cute! What happened? Where did I go wrong? I never whacked him in the head I don't care what you think! The last I remember he was a tiny boy coming to the door with both his hands clutching something and saying "Let me in! I have too many hands!" Now he just gives the door a kick and comes on in. Well, at least he has learned to fend for himself!

Well, that is it for the day. Got to go do the Java Automatic Update so it will quit flashing at me. Enjoy your day, and think carefully about all you sentences. You could start a world war!!