Youth

I don't like to think of myself as nostalgic.  I think of the New Year as having only slightly more significance than its being 1 minute after midnight of any given December 31st.  A human created, artificial constructe.  Why not Summer Solstice or Winter Solstice as the New Year?

But here it is.  This construct.  We're all wishing each other a good new year.  Recalling the past year.  And I can't help but think back, not just to the previous year, but way back.  I receive New Year's wishes from not just new, but old, way old.  Friends from my youth...

So this song isn't great poetry, but maybe because it isn't, because of its simplicity...its naivete, it reminds me of my youth. Every time I hear it, a soft enveloping pain gathers in my chest, like a misty cloud of regrets.

ABBA or Colin Firth, take your pick.





I can still recall
Our last summer
I still see it all
Walks along the Seine
Laughing in the rain
Our last summer
Memories that remain

We made our way along the river
And we sat down in the grass by the Eiffel tower
I was so happy we had met
It was the age of no regret
Oh, yes

Those crazy years
That was the time of the flower-power
But underneath
We had a fear of flying
Of growing old
A fear of slowly dying
We took our chance
Like we were dancing our last dance

I can still recall
Our last summer
I still see it all
In the tourist jam
Round the Notre Dame
Our last summer
Walking hand in hand

Paris restaurants
Our last summer
Morning croissants
Living for the day
Worries far away
Our last summer

We could laugh and play

And now you're working in a bank
A family man, a football fan
And your name is Harry
How dull it seems
Are the hero of my dreams ?

Walks along the Seine
Laughing in the rain
Our last summer
Memories that remain

I can still recall
Our last summer
I still see it all
Walks along the Seine
Laughing in the rain
Our last summer
Memories that remain

We made our way along the river
And we sat down in the grass by the Eiffel tower
I was so happy we had met
It was the age of no regret
Oh, yes

Those crazy years
That was the time of the flower-power
But underneath
We had a fear of flying
Of growing old
A fear of slowly dying
We took our chance
Like we were dancing our last dance

I can still recall
Our last summer
I still see it all
In the tourist jam
Round the Notre Dame
Our last summer
Walking hand in hand

Paris restaurants
Our last summer
Morning croissants
Living for the day
Worries far away
Our last summer
We could laugh and play

And now you're working in a bank
A family man, a football fan
And your name is Harry
How dull it seems
Are the hero of my dreams ?

Walks along the Seine
Laughing in the rain
Our last summer
Memories that remain

Happy New Year.  Artificial construct and all.

Fashion Friday - Growing Old - the Ajumma

There's a subtle change in my header.  I've added "over-50" to it.  But it's not a subtle change in my life.  It looms over me every day, aware of my mortality.

It's not anything deep, really.  It started out with the number of white hairs I'm getting. I still have mostly black hair, but the sprouting of white hairs in my hairline is becoming more prominent.  Then, as I sat at my vanity with the magnifying mirror, I noticed now different my skin is.  Suddenly.  Sags.  Bags.  And the full-length mirror?  Flat where it used to be pert.

I heard a comedian late one night on TV riffing on being east Asian.  He said that Asian women look exactly the same for decades - then BANG! they get old.  It's true.  I know a lot of Asian women accept this "mature" status - of becoming the "Ajumma."  That's what a young person calls an older woman.  Ajumma is permed hair and ankle socks.  Ajumma is a floral dress and shuffling steps.  Ajumma is the lady selling noodle dishes at the stand.  It's the "Ma'am" of Korean.  That word makes me shudder.  All my life, I looked young for my age.  Now, I actually look my age.  And I don't like it.  One bit.

Some of you may think it's alright, even laudable to see those Hollywood types get filled, plugged, sliced and spliced to look young.  To me, it's slightly ridiculous to hold onto your youth when that train left the station a loooong time ago.  When I do my Fashion Fridays or What I Wore Wednesdays, I'm always wondering how not to look ridiculous, if I'm trying too hard.

Now, as the weather turns warm and we have these unusual high-70s weather, I wonder -- can I wear shorts?  Cuz the latest thing?

My KNEES are wrinkled.

Maybe what I should do is stop looking at my knees and get ON my knees.






*grandma in Korean

Bane

/
Teenagers.

Everyone has opinions about them. Aristotle. Your Aunt Bess.

I read somewhere, confirmed by a very smart friend of mine, that a personbrain doesn't finish growing until the LATE TWENTIES. Did you read that?? 27 or so if you're female and 29 or so if you're male. (That's why you can't be President until you're 35!)

So I guess when you're 7 and you don't get the world, it's cute. We call it Innocence. Your mom says No but you are filled with trust and accept. Eventually. But the trust leaks out over the years and a bitter root leeches in the heart. It shrivels and closes the heart which cannot see the greater good. As a teen, you cannot understand, will not understand. The Injustice. HOW could she say No to me? HOW could she DO that to ME?

Ha. Doesn't it sound JUST. LIKE. US? I mean Us grown-ups. We grown-ups?? Wee grown-ups. Don't we rail at God? When bad things happen to good people. When good things happen to bad people. Do we really know Good and Bad? Do we see the perspective of the Universe? Can we see an Eternal perspective?  Do we rail at God for saying the conceptual "no?"

Might God have made adolescents so we can see how we don't see? and that we have to trust our Father?

Drifting

I am underwater. Hard to move. Hard to hear. Thoughts percolate, then rise up and *pop* like soap bubbles. It's glossy and pinkish and bluish then disappears without leaving a trace. I'm left standing in a conversation with a blank look on my face. Like I don't get it, or I am incapable of getting it.

What was an almost neurotic sense of orderliness and perfectionism, girded by insecurities and overlaid with raging hormones has, over the years, melded into depression. Almost as if my emotions have given up. Tired from holding itself upright for so long. I've fallen back after getting to such a good place. Why? I don't know.

You know, it's not what you think.

It's not what I think. I'm perfectly functional and you'd never know I was depressed. I don't lay in bed with the curtains drawn, crying needlessly. No. I just can't finish a sentence. I keep losing that thought, that connection.

drift drift *POP*
drift drift *POP*

I can't get very interested in anything.

I should be blogging - Eden, garden walls, Israel, His sheep, neither Jew nor Gentile, neither male nor female, wives submit, ability and roles, insults, adoption, the barren, saints, princesses. SO many thoughts.

I can't get myself there. My mind drifts away...

49er

I usually don't do this kind of rambly this-is-my-life kind of post, but today, I just feel rambly and this-is-my-lifey. A little dithery and flighty, too. If you know me in real life, I am so not flighty. Cotton-brained, but not flighty. As a friend of mine said, "Don't underestimate the power of the cotton brain." I need a t-shirt with that on. If I believed in slogan t-shirts.

Today is my birthday. As my present, I am having a party on Saturday. I can't think of anything better than being with a bunch of girlfriends and yacking away the evening. Well, being with HH would be better, but you know what I mean. BTW, if you're reading this blog and you live near me, come on over! Chinese food at 6:30! I totally mean it. Boo can't seem to understand that the party IS my present. He keeps asking, "But what's your present?" This morning, he came to me all crazy-haired and no-pantsed and said "I know what can be a part of your present!! Lots of HUGS!" Those are the moments, aren't they?

So I'm keeping a stiff upper-lip an' all, but if you look in my eyes and ask me how I'm doing, I'll get all blubbery and start to weep. I mean, I love my life. I love that I'm wiser, I love my husband, I love our house, I love our little warty town. We're healthy. My hiney's sore from going roller-skating with Boo the other night and HH and I have various health annoyances, but nothing life-threatening. Praise. The. Lord. But maybe, maybe. Maybe I covet this life. Maybe I don't want it to end. You know, Death is the enemy. My pastor said that to me the other week and as long as I've been a Christian, I've never thought of it that way. We say "death and taxes," but death is not natural, from a Christian point of view, that is. I can't speak for the other religions. But God created us (Adam and Eve) to dwell with him forever in paradise (the Garden.) It was only by eating the fruit that made us die. Not drop dead right there at the trunk of the tree, but death would come to us. And don't ask me why God let evil in. Remember, this is going to be flighty and rambly.

The other reason, if I will admit it, is that I have regrets. I live my life living for today and looking for tomorrow - glass half full - but really? Honestly? I have regrets. I wish I had studied harder. I was one of those annoying people that studied just hard enough to get A's and B's. And get awards. And go to an Ivy League university. And get a Masters degree. I'm not bragging, because what did I have to do with inheriting a big brain from my PhD father?!? I think it's the fact that I was given this mind and that I sqandered it that makes me all the sadder. Many regrets aren't even my fault, but I am still sad about them. Molested, put down, misunderstood. Its only in my 40's that I've gotten it together. How much more glorious my life could have been.

So, I confess: 1) I covet this life, and though I don't like to think about it, 2) I wish I had lived a freer, more joyous life. I know, I know "This is the first day of the rest of your life."

Oh and one other thing. I now have wrinkles. My cancer scare and HH's health problems aged me 10 years. That totally sucks. Whew - this post is really depressing. I'm still told I look like I'm in my 30's, so maybe that's credential enough to post my How To Stay Young list:

1. Genetics: get birth parents that age well. My dad is in the middle and he's 80. The guy on the right is like 20 years younger.


2. Birth Order: be born last. Your family will always treat you as the baby, and you will always act like one.




3. Marriage: marry an "oldest." He will always act the oldest and adore you and take responsibility for all sorts of stuff so you can lay around and watch TV. Or blog.

4. Appearance: try to stay hip. But not too hip. You don't want someone getting close to you and realize "OMG, she's old!" Like Clinton and Stacey say: no miniskirts after 35. And as a male friend said: No bare midriffs after 18. OK, 20.

5. Expressions: be very animated with your facial muscles so you look like a little kid while you talk.

I'll take the tongue outta my cheek now. Have a good day.

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No Meme Ma'am

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

This was one of the questions of a New Year meme I've been meming to do. (ha ha get it?) But I had a problem. I had nothing that I got really, really excited about. I'm just coming out of the "raisng a small child" stupor and it's time to consider seriously what I am about now.

I am not going back to find the "splendor in the grass," trying to recapture something gone by. For many of us women, it's the days of being thinner. Believe me, I'd like to be down a dress size...or two. But I am different now. In many ways. And I'm not going to spend all my time worrying about a svelt waist. I have this wonderful opportunity to look up from the haze of being consumed by Adorable Male Child.

Who am I? What do I like? What do I want to do? and most importantly, what will I wear??





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