Sharing My Birthday Pony

By Ann Berger

As a child on a Minnesota farm in the 1920s, with eight sisters and one brother, I was happy to get to pick the flavor of homemade ice cream for my birthday - never mind getting a pony. Instead, at age 65, my very own 17-year-old “birthday pony” showed up as a 15-hand high, registered purebred Arabian mare wrapped in a sleek coat of flea-bitten grey.

This all started on Mother’s Day when daughter Jane visited me on Point Dume in Malibu, California. We sipped tea on the patio feasting our souls on a flock of pelican that had come for lunch, dive bombing schools of fish. Focusing on the graceful pelicans and the ripples caused by the fish, we fell into reminiscing when, suddenly, Jane asked me to tell again the stories of Lady, our mare, of my girlhood. With an air of mischief, but keeping her eyes on the pelicans, she said, “How about if we’d take horseback riding lessons?”

Riding lessons? Well, why not?

The next Saturday, she drove out from her home in Santa Monica to join me for the first of our weekly sessions with 88-year-old Mabel Cook, Malibu’s premier riding teacher, who furnished the perfect school horses for these two novice riders.

During my usual morning walks with Malibu neighbors, John and Marie, I rhapsodized about our riding lessons. Marie waited for me to take a breath and jumped in to take my breath away with, “How would you like to have Kaffeyn?“

”Who’s Kaffeyn?”

“She’s the mother of our foal and gelding.” Marie hurried on, “ We’re prepared to give her to you along with her registration papers.”

“Why in the world would you give her away?” I blundered.

“Kaffeyn doesn’t get enough exercise.” Seeing me in shock Marie continued. “All you have to do is ride her, pay for her feed and farrier bill. She can stay at our corral with her son and daughter. ”

John jumped in with, “You’d be doing us a favor. This 17-year-old mare needs more exercise. She no longer competes in endurance races.”

Her name, Kaffeyn, was a combination of the names of her Dam and Grand National Champion Sire of the Polish line. She had been trained under both English and Western saddle. Jane and Ichose English style lessons.

Oh, happy day at the thrill of dropping the reins and feel Kaffeyn's smooth maneuvers at the touch of my legs. She responded to voice commands when I lunged her during warm-up and cooling down sessions. With bridle and saddle removed, she relished the well-earned rolls on the ground, followed by vigorous shaking dust into the treetops.

She was too good to keep to myself so I suggested sharing her with Nora, the manager of SERT (Special Equestrian Riding Therapy), where I had been volunteering with handicapped children and grownups. She hesitated to use a high-spirited Arabian with her group of students. I offered to stay out of sight while Nora came over to meet and tack up Kaffeyn for a get-acquainted ride. An hour alone with Kaffeyn, Nora asked for a chance to put her on trial at SERT.

After three days of Kaffeyn running in the pasture with the other volunteering horses, Nora asked me to bring her to the mounting stand. Time for Kaffeyn’s first class.

Nora directed me to take the lead rope and stay at Kaffeyn’s head while she and two assistants got in position to lift a 19-year-old college student who had been in an automobile accident leaving him paralyzed. Kaffeyn turned her head to watch the mounting. She cast an eye at me.

The rider could not hold up his head and his arms and legs were spastic. Dread spread over me. What if his involuntary leg movements spooked Kaffeyn?

I searched Kaffeyn’s face. I wept. Her eyes had softened into marshmallows. She followed my lead at a regal, deliberate pace delighting her precious rider and letting me share my come-lately birthday pony. Within days, the students affectionately renamed her “Decaf.”

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

Looking Backwards

By Johna Ferguson

How many of you remember way back when, in the 40s when boyfriends gave their girlfriends one of their pins to wear. Maybe it was in high school and they gave her their HiY pin or perhaps they even belonged to a high school fraternity, popular then in my city, and gave her that pin to wear on her sweater or blouse so everyone could see it.

If not in high school, then certainly in college when the boys pinned you with their fraternity pin. Oh, what joy and bliss to know you belonged to someone and only that someone who wanted you.

During my college days, I had several times been pinned but always gave them back to the owner when we broke up. I still have my own sorority pin on my gold charm bracelet. I suppose I should give it back before I die but then, I bought it so I consider it mine.

If all went well, then the pinned couple would go on to get engaged and then finally married. Among my college sorority friends, sad to say, about a third of them are divorced, some early on, others later after years of marriage.

But the disadvantage of being pinned meant you couldn’t date others. College was a time to stretch yourself; meet all kinds of new people and learn to interact with them in various situations. Being pinned tied you to just one group of people, and they were pretty much the same type.

They were usually from middle or professional class families, mostly college educated themselves. But fraternities and sororities are just a very small part of a university campus; there were lots of students living in dorms or with their own families who do not belong to that clique and had no desire to either.

They sat next to you in class, worked on committees you worked on, or just rubbed elbows in the cafeterias or libraries. Their lives were so varied it was a shame not to get acquainted with them. I wish I had spread my wings more in those days for I am sure I missed out on a lot, but I was rather shy when it came to meeting strangers.

I do remember my one lab partner in zoology. He was from parents born in Russia and he was really interested in science. We had to dissect a frog and define all the muscles and bones. It was enough to make me sick, but he kindly helped me through the course, but that was all. We never talked about anything else, yet I am sure he was full of stories he could tell me about his Russian parents and some of their customs. It was a missed chance, one I still regret.

Actually as I look back on those college days, I regret I didn’t go out of my way and become acquainted with people from different cultures. I went on to major in sociology and all that background information would have served me well after graduation in my various jobs.

I hope you all took better advantage of your time in college and absorbed more than just having a good time, getting good grades, finding a husband and finally earning your degree.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

Wings

My life has been filled with incredible, memorable moments and events. All the usual family highlights were there – marriages, births, grandchildren’s and great-grandchildren’s arrivals, a 70th birthday party reunion that was at least as satisfying as it would be to attend my own memorial service.

Additionally, my career has brought stellar experiences, many involving celebrities and who can be casual about that? So forgive the name-dropping, but for a little farm girl from rural Illinois to end up opening a concert for the iconic Pete Seeger, years later having him stand and listen to me sing a long set of songs and, many years later, spontaneously kiss me on the cheek, is heady stuff.

To have Theodore Bikel hug and kiss me, pat my behind, then meet me for a day of hanging out at a folk festival where he introduced me to Fred Hellerman of the Weavers, is equally so.

Accompanying Frances Sternhagen (Cliffie’s mom on Cheers) on the autoharp as she sang Cockles and Mussels was fun. Having Julius LaRosa stand mesmerized by my psaltery through at least six songs was exciting.

May Sarton’s invitation to visit her at her Maine home, and subsequently sending me a personally-inscribed copy of her latest book, calling me her role model, was a thrill. An ongoing friendship with my writing teacher and mentor, William Least Heat-Moon, that prompted wonderful spoken and written compliments on my music and writing, was heart-warming. (His proclamation that my quilt program was “wonderfully tribal” was high praise from a person of Native American heritage.)

The hundreds of settings in which I performed created lasting memories: the acoustics inside the bell-shaped old historic Huguenot church in New Paltz were breathtaking – it was truly like singing inside a bell. I sang on the inside steps of FDR’s home when a sudden downpour ended our outdoor concert; for weddings on the back porch of Mills Mansion and at Opus 40; at FDR’s gravesite; on the Clermont Lawn at sunset; inside Olana, at Washington’s Headquarters, Senate House and Locust Grove and almost every other Mid-Hudson Valley historic restoration.

In the parlor at Mohonk Mountain House; onboard cruise ships; in Sack’s Lodge with Ann Jackson singing along robustly (while Eli Wallach played cards in the next room); in front of an original Eric Sloane painting in his museum; and, best of all – led Amazing Grace with a hundred people packed into the tiny, old stone chapel at Star Island in the Isles of Shoals – an unparalleled moment.

All of these riches, and many more, are treasured memories. Yet, when I think of what day of my life I’d give almost anything to relive (I don’t think I need an entire day – an hour or two would do), it would be a day to fly like the wind on my old Schwinn bike with the hot prairie breezes blowing; to smell the steamy tar of the straight, flat roadway; to hear the rustle of the tall cornstalks lining both sides of the roads, with no traffic but me.

In dreams I fly – up to the ceiling, down long flights of stairs – or soar high in an electric blue sky over an ocean below. I never dream of riding my bike. Only in my body’s memory is the feeling so vivid.

Like most teens, I was often appropriately miserable. Although my parents were kind and loving, they did tightly control my social life. My typical teen-age angst, blended with a little loneliness and isolation, kept me from seeing how blessed and privileged I really was. So the bike riding was an antidote to feeling restricted and confined – a metaphor for the wings I hoped would carry me out into the wide and promising world of independence and freedom.

I got the wings. I got the freedom. I got to fly, in so many ways. I’d still like the bike ride – one more time.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

My Writing Career

By Johna Ferguson

I never took a university course about writing other than term papers and they weren’t exciting, just necessary. I never seemed to have the desire or the discipline to write. My first introduction to it was when I joined Group Health.

New members were asked to volunteer for various jobs and I applied to work on the staff of the journal that went out to all members monthly. I had just returned from my first bicycle trip in China in 1983, and thought members might be interested in that type of article so I submitted it and it was accepted. I really was quite shocked to say the least.

For the next year I wrote monthly articles on various subjects for inclusion. I didn’t call it writing, just telling people what I felt or knew about different things. Then I moved to China so that ended that venue.

But the writing bug had settled in my veins. In 1986, I took my first laptop computer to China and decided to write. First I would write in a journal daily and second I would write lots of letters. A side benefit of that would be I would get at least a few letters back. One day not long ago, I read through all those years of journal entries plus piles of letters I had written, returned to me by my friends over the years.

Then when I was home one summer visiting family and friends, I visited my old neighbor friend, Sally, living in a retirement home. She was sad and bored with her life as she no longer could drive. I enjoyed telling her about some of the funny or sad times I’d had while in China and she suggested when I returned I write about those times like a letter, but more deeply, like a newspaper article so she could live her sedentary life vicariously through mine which seemed exciting.

In China I started writing her weekly and she wrote back to me a monthly letter filled with amazement at what I seemed to be going through. She just passed on last year, but on my last visit she handed me all those all letters and printed out emails I sent.

But I’m jumping ahead of my time. Another summer when I was home, I signed up for an eight week course teaching how to write your autobiography held for seniors at a nearby center. The first four week,s we were taught clues on how to write our autobiography and the second four weeks were writing for fun. We were to write anything we wanted out of class and bring it to class to read to the other seven students to hear their comments.

That class really got me interested in writing since I heard such favorable comments about the three children’s stories I had written, and I went back to China filled with vim and vigor. I dashed off, which is my usual style, nine more children’s stories. But what for, I said as I sat back after finishing them.

I had many ideas from UNICEF giving me a grant to publish them in English and Chinese so young Chinese could get a quick boost in learning English, to getting a grant from the Gates Foundation to publish them in both languages for both countries with a tape of them in English and Chinese. But I don’t think writers, if I could really stretch the truth and call myself one of that clan, can sell themselves very well, thus there are many agents are around.

Also at that time, right after the class was over, I started on my autobiography. After I had written about 70 pages of single spaced words, I called the former writing teacher to see if she’d read it and make a few comments about the direction I was taking. She replied she’d love to read it but admitted she didn’t have time to critique it or edit it, but would add a few comments. But like the children’s stories, it has just remained in my computer, about three-quarters finished.

Why the bug hits one I have no idea, but when I spied an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer saying they were looking for essays on various subjects, I submitted one and it was selected for publication in December 2005. I thought maybe there’s hope.

Then in April I submitted a second one and it was also selected for publication. I truthfully was in seventh heaven. Even my granddaughter was overjoyed to see her grandma’s picture and article in the paper.

But then drought again set in until I received a poem sent to me by a friend in Anacortes. She’d joined a writing group and was having so much fun at trying different styles and types of writing. She spurred me on again and I started writing essays whenever I felt a subject surface. This wasn’t often, but I did write quite a few, but as usual they were sitting in the computer, on hibernation I guess.

Then there was this entire flap on the internet about blogs and how one should read them or write one. I looked up those for elders and found The Elder Storytelling Place. I have submitted stories that have been accepted and printed. Now how many are submitted weekly, how many are rejected and who does this selecting is out there in netherland, but other reader's comments about my essays are just as good to me as having them published in a magazine.

I just keep plugging away at it. Perhaps one day I’ll actually see my name as the author under one of my writings in some famous magazine. But until then, all I can say is try it, you might like it. You can write about so many things that have happened in your life. After all they only happened to you, not to any of us other interested readers. We’re waiting to read yours, so good luck.

EDITOR'S NOTE: In answer to Johna's speculation about how this blog is edited, I – Ronni Bennett – do the selecting and publishing. In the years since the blog was inaugurated in April 2007, only a handful of stories have been rejected – mostly for racism and misogyny.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

Landscapes

By Lyn Burnstine of The Lynamber Times

Stanley Kuniz wrote “I have walked through many lives, some of them my own.”
I, too, have walked through many lives – and many landscapes.
My childhood’s dual landscapes were the open fields – some flat, some gently undulating,
and the deciduous forests of Southern Illinois.
Later, I got to know the open, flattened cornfields of central Illinois
where once stood vast reaches of waving prairie grasses.

I have adjusted to other landscapes:
live oaks draped with Spanish moss;
smelly crushed-oyster-shell side streets;
busy roadways; wild, rock-bound ocean shore;
suburban neighborhoods echoing with sounds of vigorous life; apartments full of noisy early-risers;
woods studded with the evergreens rare to my native landscape;
the blasphemous racket of motors and machines;
even a town that smelled of soybeans
and of the corn syrup that has made us fat.

Little did I know, in my childhood,
that the quiet, peaceful existence that translated then as boredom and loneliness,
was settling into the very synapses of my brain for all time,
a sense of place defining me as surely as did a genetic heritage, religious upbringing, and family customs.

Little did I know that I would forever mourn the whippoorwill,
the bobwhite,
the hazelnuts in their prickly burrs alongside isolated country roads,
the tall, rustling corn,
the open sky, the far horizons in every direction, the blessed silence.

I have a deep love for my adopted landscape -
the beautiful Hudson Valley.
But at seventy-six, I finally have to admit
(as in the words of a clever song by Joel Mabus)
that “ the verdict is in and the jury agrees”
and I am “Hopelessly Midwestern.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

The Last Prose of Summer

By Lyn Burnstine of The Lynamber Times

I waited on my bike at the intersection where we had agreed to meet and ride on together. Two twelve-year-olds just beginning what would be a lifelong friendship, we chose a place mid-way between her country home and my small-town one.

On that hottest of summer days, even though I arrived parched and hot, I assumed I would cool off under the big shade tree where I waited for Barb. This was in the days long before the ubiquitous water-bottle and I’m sure I was seriously dehydrated.

Suddenly I began to feel awful: weak, dizzy, clammy with cold sweats, chills and nausea. By the time Barb’s parents had rescued me and put me to bed in their house, it was apparent that I had a rip-roaring case of heat exhaustion from which I recovered slowly over a span of two years.

It even kept me from joining all the other area kids in what was a major source of our summer income: detasseling hybrid seed corn. The first time I tried working on a field crew out in the hot sun, all those heat exhaustion symptoms returned, and I had to postpone my detasseling debut till the following summer.

I made it through that next season just fine, although it didn’t provide me with the fame it did Cindy Crawford (the most famous and highest-paid 1990's model who had been discovered while detasseling corn in an Illinois cornfield, and whose name is synonymous with the word “detasseling” in Google searches!).

I was born and raised in Southern Illinois where summer daytime temperatures were consistently in the eighties and nineties with hot nights and breaks in the heat only when it rained. How my sister and I loved those cooling showers. We would slosh around barefoot in the rain-soaked grass, jumping to make it splash us all over.

People sometimes laugh when I say southern Illinois, thinking I am joking until I point out that the lower part of the state is on a level with Kentucky and Tennessee and is, indeed, a very southern culture – accents and idioms included.

We later moved to central Illinois, to a two-storied farmhouse surrounded by majestic shade trees. The summer temperature readings were more moderate there than in southern Illinois. The downstairs of the farmhouse stayed cooler, with linoleum floors that felt cool to lie on during the hottest days. I did some of my reading there, and some outside under the big maple trees, trying to catch a stray breeze.

The upstairs had two bedrooms and a storeroom. In the winter, the big front bedroom, with windows on all three sides, was closed off so that our “warm morning” coal stove, huffing away in the downstairs dining and family room, could heat the warmer bedroom at the top of the stairs enough to sleep in.

The same windows that let in the winter’s cold served a good purpose in the summer, providing cross-ventilation. Even so, many’s the night I pulled the bed close to the window so I could put my pillow on the window sill to get more air. (I’ll never forget my first summer after moving to New York and the joy of discovering a climate where the nights often cooled off twenty degrees or more. I had never experienced that in Illinois or Mississippi and I was in rapture.)

As a young girl and as a young woman, I had an inability to sweat normally. It caused me discomfort, and led to the heat exhaustion that began this tale. In recent years, my sister has felt impelled to apologize to me for not understanding the impact of that condition, along with my myopia, on my participation in sports.(Or I should say “non-participation.”)

It’s true that when you can’t see beyond the end of your arm it’s hard to see the ball and, when you can’t cool off by sweating, you tend to choose quiet, sedentary activities like reading and making music. Those interests have served me well through the years. And besides, how many seventy-six-year-olds can still play baseball? But I can still read and write books, and make music.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

How Big is Your World?

By Lois Cochran of Guitar Grandma

 

Sarah ate a quarter. Not a quarter of an apple, or a quarter of a grape
Sarah ate a quarter of a dollar.

Sarah was always eating something or other (mostly other)
she wasn’t supposed to eat.

Sarah believed that your world is as big as you make it
And Sarah’s world was getting bigger all the time

Sarah’s world was filled with so many curious things
And she wanted to taste them all

Sarah had a big belly ache one day, a really big, bad belly ache
So bad, her mother took her directly to the hospital

Sarah would probably have loved this new adventure
But her belly hurt so much she could only cry

Sarah’s mom was angry and said some bad words to the hospital man
She wondered why, but her belly hurt too much to pry.

Sarah’s mom said, "Don’t worry, Sweet Sarah, we’ll find another hospital."
Again, she wondered why, but she could only cry.

Sarah’s mom knew that if they only had insurance...
Someone would be helping Sarah now to feel better

And she began to cry.
Some people live in smaller worlds that don’t include everyone

Such a damn shame!

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

A Speeding Ticket

By Johna Ferguson

I don’t know how many of you can remember your first speeding ticket, but it is one of those indelible memories from my past. Part of the reason may be that it was the only one I ever got, but another part may be due to the circumstances surrounding it.

I was a teenager when I got it, not even driving for a year; actually the most vulnerable time of any youths’ driving career. I was driving my mother’s year-old DeSoto, a sedan with four doors and those wonderful headlights that disappeared under covers when turned off.

Five of my high school friends and I were headed to my beach house for the weekend, a drive of about 40 miles, mostly on four-lane pavement. It was the end of summer, yet one of those suddenly hot, sunny days and we were all dreaming of swimming and laying on the beach gossiping about our futures.

I was normally a very steady girl and my mother trusted my judgment in most matters, so she had no qualms about lending me her car or the beach house. We packed enough food for a week and piled into the car Saturday morning. As soon as we all got in, of course the radio had to be turned on to the latest popular music, loud enough so everyone could hear it.

We were singing at the tops of our voices when one of the girls in the back seat commented that there was a car following us, but quite a ways back. Actually, there was hardly anyone on the road that day, so she noticed that it was keeping up with us, but at a steady distance behind us.

After watching it for a minute or so, we decided it was the state patrol. I checked the speedometer and saw we were going 60 in a 50 mph area. What to do? We decided I should speed up and maybe I could lose it.  We were rather immature in our knowledge about police, not realizing they could call ahead to another car and have us stopped.

Finally I noticed we were actually going 80, but we’d left that other car far behind so we couldn’t see it anymore. Then out of a side lane popped another police car with siren roaring; we had to stop.

The officer wrote me a ticket for doing 80 in a 50 mph zone. If he’d been young and cute we probably would have tried to sweet talk him into a warning ticket, but he was a gruff older man. He told me I’d have a court date in the nearby town of 13,000 on Tuesday.

Of course I’d be in school then so I asked if I could go into the town and just pay the ticket. He said things weren’t done that way, but I could try. We headed off to the police station/jail to plead our case. We six traipsed in wearing very short shorts, sandals and bright tee-shirts.

The Captain was out, being the weekend, so we dealt with a nice young, good-looking sergeant. I explained our plight, but all for naught; he wouldn’t change it to a warning. I then decided it was time to “pull rank”.

I asked if I could phone my uncle for he had been mayor of that small city for two terms and also was a lawyer and judge. The sergeant asked what his name was and he realized that the family name was the same as mine. He sat for a few minutes thinking it over, and said well yes, he supposed he could change it to a warning since it was my first, but I would still have to pay $30 since I was going 30 miles an hour over the set speed limit.

My friends had decided we would split the bill so everyone forked over $5 and we smiled happily as we quietly walked, sedately out of that building. We vowed to never tell our mother’s about our experience, but we all knew that we would be more careful drivers from that day on.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

To My Mom

By Olga Hebert of Confessions of a Grandma

It started with Ed McMahon and Publishers' Clearing House. I'm not blaming Ed McMahon, may he rest in peace. I'm just looking back and thinking that was an early clue, although I may not have fully realized it at the time.

I had arrived at my mother's mid-Saturday morning as was my custom in those days. We would have coffee and maybe a donut, then go out to do grocery shopping. After returning to her apartment, I would do the laundry and help with any other Saturday chores.

This particular morning, though, something was a bit different. My mother was sitting in her chair. She had a smile that extended from the tip of her head right on down to her toes. Glee seemed to radiate off her in a shimmering yellow glow. "Well, it certainly looks like a good day!" I had to remark. "What's going on?"

"I won!" Words and giggles bursting from her. "Wait til you see! I won! I'm rich! Look at this!"

She thrust the envelope from Publishers' Clearing House, the one with Ed McMahon's picture on the front, the one with MILLION DOLLARS in very big letters and an invitation to enter in very small letters, the same one I had gotten myself in yesterday's mail.

"No, Mom," I tried to explain, but it was quickly clear that she was not inclined to believe me. I'm sure she was telling herself I was just being a killjoy consumed with jealousy, so I let it drop.

She smiled right through the grocery store trip and completion of laundry and every once in a while I noticed she could not contain a little shiver of happiness. "Congratulations," was all I could say when I left.

The next day, when our whole family gathered at her place for Sunday dinner, there was no mention of her millionaire status. I was tempted into believing she had just been teasing me the day before.

That day she was joking about her homemade rolls that had turned out to be more like crackers. She said at some point in the assembly process the recipe book had flipped a few pages and when she noticed, she got confused, and just carried on with the second recipe. She thumped her head lightly. "My head is so thick, sometimes," was her comment.

It wasn't over, of course, and it wasn't innocent teasing. For every time I found her ecstatically believing she'd won a major jackpot, I was just as likely to find her in an agitated funk. "Oh, look at these bills," she'd moan." I don't have the money to pay these."

She would have unearthed a stash of old bills from the early 70's. She would not be soothed with my pointing out the dates and assurance that they had been paid long ago. In desperation, I started sneaking stacks of old, useless paperwork into my bag when she wasn't looking and tossing them at home.

Eventually, she stopped reading her mail or understanding any written material. Cue cards we'd set up to get her through simple daily routines no longer worked. She could entertain herself by watching the preview channel on TV.

Over time, my visits became more frequent. Mom wasn't able to handle shopping in a grocery store, dealing with money or even finding her way home from the church across the street. My brother took the burners out of the stove and eventually unplugged it altogether after a serious fire incident.

He fixed her breakfast on weekdays and Meals-On-Wheels brought her a lunch. We hired some one to sit with her during the day. I would bring her prepared meals in the evenings and through the weekends. Her head thumping became more distressed and distressing.

My mother, whose ultimate expression of love for her family was through her wonderful cooking, could no longer even manage to make her own toast and coffee in the morning. She tried, though.

One morning, I found her in the kitchen. There was a pair of shoes placed side by side on the counter and she was stuffing two slices of bread into the openings. Another time, while I was doing laundry, she took the vacuum cleaner out the front door. She was irritated that my brother hadn't mowed the lawn in far too long so was going to take care of it herself.  We put a large black mat outside the front door so she would not wander outside after a neighbor called to let me know she had wandered into his house, convinced that that was her home.

One Saturday, I was able to gather very little laundry after searching in the freezer, the oven, under the bed and in all the dresser drawers. That's when it became clear to me that she was putting on a new outfit each day but without removing her attire from the previous day.

Getting her out of her day dress into pajamas became another nightly task for me. Perhaps the hardest task of all, though, was bath time. She liked having her hair washed at the kitchen sink. I could soak her hands and feet and give her a manicure and pedicure any old time. But strip her down to get in the tub or shower? Now there was a battle complete with screaming and cries of "HELP! HELP! She's trying to murder me."

On good days, she recognized me at least as a benevolent person who brought her food. On bad days, she accused me of being there to steal her money. I'd try to clean and organize. It appeared she spent her days shuffling stuff around and shredding her meals into crumbs that could lead her from one room to the next.

Opening cupboards and closets would likely get her upset, though, and I would be stung by her accusations of my intent to rob her. On the other hand, my sister, who was farther away and busy with young children so never had the opportunity to experience bath time, was greeted like an honored guest when she would visit.

All this happened gradually, bit by bit over the course of ten years. Inevitably, there came the time when I was both physically and emotionally exhausted, not to mention consumed with the guilt of not being able to do enough. I did not feel badly that my mother went into the Birchwood Nursing Home, November, 2000. It was the time to admit I could not continue to care for her and maintain my own sanity.

When I visited, as I did often on my way home from work or on the weekends, I was always glad to realize that she was safe, clean and well fed. She seemed content, something that was not a hallmark of most of her adult life. She enjoyed the music programs and exercise that were provided.

She started greeting me like an honored guest even though she really didn't fully know who I was most of the time. She really seemed to enjoy when I could take her out for a walk down to the park. I never asked about how bath time went, not wanting to know, but I did find out that she was sometimes in trouble for trying to steal ice cream. (My mother, stealing!!)

I said what I knew would be my final farewell to my mother on the morning of August 1, 2005, just shy of her 92nd birthday. Alzheimer's Disease can be devastating, but in the end I believe my mother was at peace. Music and dancing and ice cream - that is what carried her out and beyond. That seems not such a bad way to go. I hope I said it at the time, "I love you , Mom."

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

How I Almost Became a Texan

By Mort Reichek of Octogenarian

George W. Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut to a patrician family of staid New Englanders. When he was a child, the family moved to Midland, Texas. Their new home town was then a small, bustling oil town that was culturally and socially far removed from their prim, sedate community in Connecticut.

I have often wondered how different Bush would have been had his parents not moved to Texas with their children. Would the ex-president's personality have reflected the traditional style of his New England forebears? Or would he still have still turned out to be like the stereotypical, macho, cowboy-like Texan that he is?

The question is relevant to me because I almost became a Texan myself when my father seriously considered moving from our home in the Bronx to Texas during the mid-1930s when I was still a child.

My Dad was often unemployed during that period after having worked for many years as a traveling men's clothing salesman. His territory ran from Georgia westward through Texas. He did not drive nor fly, and covered the region by train and bus. He took pride in his intimate knowledge of the territory and particularly of its train and bus schedules.

He often passed through Colorado City, Texas, a small farming town with which he became very familiar. The town had very few retail stores. In 1936, my father decided to open a retail men's clothing store there, despite the grim economic climate plaguing the nation at the time. It was obviously a serious business gamble. Dad figured, however, that the absence of local competition would make the enterprise successful.

He left my mother and me behind in New York when he departed for Colorado City. Apparently, the venture did not require a significant investment because my father's sole New York supplier was my mother's uncle, who was very supportive of my father's plan. Dad intended to operate the store for no more than a year. If successful, my mother and I would then join him in Texas. If not, he would abandon the store and return to New York.

Texas was celebrating its one-hundredth year of independence from Mexico when the store opened. I still recall that my father mailed me an official centennial yearbook, which would probably be a valuable collectors' item if I had kept it. My father wrote home regularly (we did not own a telephone in the Bronx), shipping me such local souvenirs as toy bales of cotton and bags of pecans.

But my father's enterprise was a flop and Dad was back home, as I remember, in less than a year. I was nearly 12 years old when my father returned from his unsuccessful Texas venture.

I have always wondered what would have happened to me if Dad's store had been a success, and we had settled in Colorado City. I would have been raised in an alien environment radically different from a Bronx tenement neighborhood.

Colorado City is in the heart of west Texas, 296 miles from the closest major airport in Amarillo. Its 2008 population was 3,888, down 9.2 percent from the 2000 figure. I doubt whether it was much bigger when my father opened his store.

If we had moved, would I have grown up to be a stereotypical Texan with George Bush's macho, cowboy-like personality? Would I have become a small-town redneck who preferred a pick-up truck to a sports car and whose friends included at least two guys named "Bubba"? Would I have sought recreation by clearing brush in the torrid heat of a West Texas summer?

Nearly three decades later, my superficial connection with Colorado City proved to be a valuable professional asset. I was working in Washington as the Pentagon correspondent for Business Week magazine. The chairman of the House Military Appropriations subcommittee was then Representative George Mahon, a longtime Texas congressman.

He was an important news source for journalists covering military affairs. I interviewed him a couple of times and never found him very helpful. And then I learned that Colorado City was in his district. I wasted no time on my next interview date with him, informing him about my father's unsuccessful store in that town.

Perhaps it was because he was sympathetic with my Dad's Depression-era business failure. But George Mahon suddenly became one of the most cooperative news sources that I ever developed during my career as a reporter.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]