60th Birthday
By Annette Alt
Being a caregiver allows me opportunities to sit and relax while hanging out with my care recipients at their homes. This is one such case in the Paradise Valley of Livingston Montana.
Three days before my 60th birthday. How should I feel? What am I to think? I rested on the brown-stained deck staring up at the silvery-green cotton wood leaves flickering in the forty-mile-an-hour wind. It seemed their rustling branches swaying to and fro were trying to tell me something.
Hypnotically, I heard wind-struck chimes ping rhythmically against the 90-degree sky. Five hawks soared and dove over and through tree-tops. If not for the fierce wind, I would have also heard a faint, babbling brook racing down the late summer-scaped mountainside.
What wonder! Whittling away moments of time; stripping away layers of memory. First this happened, then that happened, next I was remembering what I had forgotten or remembering the same thing in a different pattern. Our thoughts backwards rearrange events in various patterns.
I reflected on a time when I was married and living in the melting hot Arizona desert. I thought about how I yearned to move back to Montana two summers ago in August. How could I have ever left? How glad I was to be gone from there!
Another thought rushed in about my grandson, who I will visit in Billings tomorrow.
And then I remembered how I lusted over Montana and how eager I was to move here from Wisconsin in August of 2001; less than two weeks before witnessing the horrific explosion of two towers in New York City. How could this be?
I thought about my son, Andy, the writer in Minnesota who helped me get back in touch with my creative side. He pours out words and ideas on his web site called Mental Dimensions.
Rose-pink lily petals artistically arranged in an amber vase distract my thoughts. Layer upon layer, petal upon petal falls to the table next to my page.
I feel more secure and content now. Now there’s an interesting word. Now was a key word when I was selling cars for eight years. “What do I have to do now to sell you a car today?” I would ask my customers.
How do you talk to someone who can’t talk back? Answer: like you talk to anyone else. When I was finished writing this in my composition book I asked my care recipient if he would like to hear what I wrote. He said, “Yes,” so I did.
See Also:
- Stuck in the Past
- A Quest Not Yet Realized – By Sylvya Stone
- Poem by Sylvya Stone at the end of Christopher Columbus, Discoverer of the Ohio State Capitol
Happy Birthday Annette!!!
I enjoyed reading your thoughtful post! You and Andy have much in common, including a shared ability to write very well (which goes without saying).
I wish you the very best birthday this year, as it sounds like this is a special and reflective time for you. You are thought of often and I miss your laugh…:)
Happy Birthday Mom. Thank you for sharing. It was very nice to read. Sometimes the best gifts are the gifts we give ourselves. When we don’t let blessings in we keep gifts out.
Happy Birthday, Mother. You’ve written something I can’t make any jokes after reading. I’m pleased I could stimulate and spark your old interest in writing.
What else can I say that I didn’t say on your 57th birthday when I wrote “Stuck in the Past?”