Opinion

When things change

Friday, August 30, 2013

Most of us have many days that don't turnout like we had planned. For example, I started to write this column about four hours ago on an entirely different subject, but things began happening and now I have changed to write about CHANGE. That shouldn't be a surprise to other Middle Age Plus readers, because our lives are constantly changing because of physical, economic, family and emotional situations. But then, what time of our lives was that not the case?

Unless we live in a vacuum with no other people around there is no way to order our days exactly to our likes. Suddenly, or gradually, there will be someone or something demanding our attention, or needing our help. Today we need to help with our great-great-granddaughter. That is no big deal, but caring for a 10-month-old baby is not the usual plan for those in their 80s. I know how, for sure. I'm just not sure that she knows that I know how.

I have just spent the past week at a Road Scholar program leading fun and games for other middle age plus people. My middle age plus sister, Ellen, went with me, probably for the last time we will do this together since I only plan to do two more. I can only have one guest come with me each time and Lester will come with me once more and I have a list of candidates for the very last one which won't be until November.

Ellen was my guest this time because this weekend she is moving after 50 years in the same house in Lebanon to a very nice retirement community in Springfield. She is excited about the move but concerned about how to arrange all her possessions of 50 years.

I came home after dropping her off at her home for the last time with a car full of things that needed to stay in the family. Her own children had already taken what they wanted or needed but there were still several things that have great family value. Thankfully our daughter Susan loves old family things. She even loves old family parents she says.

She will take the old wall mounted wooden telephone with a crank on the side that was on the wall at the Wayside ever since the first telephone line was strung across our field. I even tried the two shorts and a long to test it. And they still sounded the same. I was thankful that there wasn't another short after the long because that always disappointed me when I thought we were getting a call and it turned out to be for John and Fay Halcomb.

Other things like some of the pictures that Ellen's son, David, painted will be given to other family members, and then Ellen hopes the rest will fit into her one-bedroom apartment. Her biggest problem was her unsold books, and her own personal library. Her daughter Ruth will store the boxes of unsold published books, but Ellen wants her personal books close so she can enjoy reading them again. But she gave me the best thing of all. She gave me the family, well-worn copy of "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm." I had read it each summer without fail, but didn't know what had happened to it after my parents died and others lived in the house. It will have a place of honor among my personal books -- if I can find room for one more.

This has been a preview of what we, or our children, will have to be doing sometime in the next 20 years. I have enough copies of one of my books to reinsulate the house. The publisher went out of business and had me come get the remainder of the volumes. She had been very optimistic when she had them printed so I have many left.

Well, as the song goes, "The Times They Are a-Changing" and speaking of that, here comes Lester with Avery. I'm sure she will soon need changing also.