How Lucky I Am To Be A Baby Boomer - Holidays

It has always amazed me that when you plan well for the Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year's time frame that more stuff always happens to throw a money wrench into the plans.  I have intended every week to get back to my "growing up" blogs.  I have mentally composed the start of high school several times only to have some interruption.

In order for me to sit down and write I guess all the stars have to be in alignment or it just doesn't happen.  This year between Thanksgiving and New Year's all of the stars jumbled up.  If anything could go wrong, it did.

Shortly after Thanksgiving there was an episode of family drama.  Wonder how many other families find that the holidays bring out the worst in people.  To be honest I have no idea what brought it on and probably never will. It was extremely upsetting but looking on the bright side I saved buying a bunch of presents, had an extra Christmas card and a lot less stress over travelling during the holidays.

A few months ago when I went to replace the eye glasses I lost last January I discovered that my vision was actually getting bad due to cataracts.  Whoa - I had to start looking around for young people who had them.  That can make you feel old very fast.  It is interesting how they sort of gradually creep up on you. Several months ago I thought I needed to have my upper and lower eyelids done again.  It seemed like I could not get my eyes open far enough to see. Then I noticed that I did not like driving or going places at night. Headlights and street lights looked like stars instead of circles. There was no problem in reading but things at a distance were blurry or not there at all.

So, off to the eye doctor and then off to see a surgeon.  When I could not read any eye chart they decided surgery was better sooner rather than later. We got everything scheduled for January and I was rather looking froward to being able to see again.  The stars were still out of alignment and I went the next day for a follow-up appointment with an ear, nose and throat doctor.

Back in the fall at a regular check up with my primary care doctor I mentioned that I seemed to have difficulty in swallowing.  His immediate reaction was I needed to go to a specialist as I probably had throat cancer from smoking.  Reminded me of what had happened two years ago when I had a horrible headache over one eye.  That time it was immediate CAT scans since I no doubt had a brain tumor or an aneurysm from smoking.  Turned out that I had Horner's syndrome from climbing a mountain in Colorado.  It cleared up before I got all the tests done.

When I tell these stories about mu doctor people tend to think he is terrible but, in fact, he is one of the best.  The first time I saw him was in the emergency room on Christmas Day of 2001.  He was a new doctor, just starting out.  After a pain shot I was ready to go home.  He announced to me that I had pancreatitis and that my pancreas could eat itself up any minute and then I would die. Marshell liked the way he talked to me and he has been our doctor ever since. He has kept Marshell and I healthy and I must say an appointment with him is really fun.

The day after finding out I had cataracts I was off to see the ear, nose and throat doctor. Great news was that I had an enlarged adenoid that needed to come out.  Did you know normally your tonsils and adenoids shrink and disappear in your late teen years?  My tonsils were nice and small but the adenoid had decided to grow which why I had trouble swallowing.  Swell. He did tell me that he normally takes adenoids out of 12 year old girls.  That made me feel a lot younger.

Christmas was actually very nice with a trip to western Oklahoma to see our son Wally and his family.  Christmas is really all about the kids and their two made it a special day.

New Year's brought about my yearly OCD or obsessive cleaning disorder. Every drawer and closet has to be gone through and every piece of furniture moved and all the windows washed.  Cleaning is good for the soul and takes your mind off of the fact you have to go through two surgeries.  Now I don't have to "deep" clean until the spring - or maybe next New Year's.

To top off the holidays Marshell discovered on New Year's Day that the Tesla had a flat tire.  One of the greatest things about owning a Tesla is that with an 8-year warranty the only things you will have to purchase are maybe brakes and tires. Oh, boy! I was really excited about purchasing a tire, a specially made tire, right after Christmas.  Marshell described my reaction to the flat tire as "she thinks I drove around looking for a nail in exactly the right position to puncture the sidewall". Hmm - I wonder?

The adenoid surgery was last Friday.  I must have gone through my medical history at least a dozen times before the surgery.  They could not believe at my decrypted age that I don't take any medicine and only have stupid things happen to me.  Having your adenoids out as an adult is supposed to be much harder on you than when you are young.  I believed it when we made the trip from Irving,Tx. to Wynnewood, Ok after the surgery. My throat,, neck, jaw, ears and the top of my head all hurt.  Good thing there are drugs for that. Woke up the next day feeling great and I can breathe better than I have in years.

Cataract surgery got moved to February since they didn't like the idea I was having the adenoid surgery.  Seems like they do not want you to sneeze, cough, throw up, bend over or lift anything for awhile after the new cataracts go in.  Oh well, maybe I can get the garage cleaned up and a few 'Off to high school" blogs written before then.

Glad the holidays are a year away again!

How Lucky I Am To Be A Baby Boomer - Christmas

Being a baby boomer gives me the opportunity to remember how magical Christmas can be. It has not always been the constant reminder of how many days are left to shop, stores staying open for hundreds of hours up until Christmas Eve or panic over whether that gift you ordered on the Internet will arrive in time.  Even with my slightly wacky family as a child, Christmas was not a mad rush but a time of simple gifts, cards sent in the mail and beautiful decorations.

When my brothers and I were small there were catalogs from local stores with all the latest toys.  We would pour over them for hours deciding which one was the one we each wanted Santa to bring.  That special item was circled and a letter sent off in hopes it would be under the tree on Christmas morning.  There were live trees for sale all over town and going to pick out the perfect tree was a big event. My Dad would spend hours getting every light and ornament in just the right place, Mother spent hours in the kitchen creating all those wonderful smells of Christmas goodies, and the three of us laid on the floor by the tree amazed at how beautiful it was.

On Christmas Eve the only presents under the tree were the ones that we purchased for each other.  Then it was off to the Midnight Candlelight service at the Episcopal church.  The church was completely draped in pine swags and lit entirely by candle light. I can still remember the smell of the pine and all the burning candles, all the families dressed up in their finest and the beauty of the service itself.

Of course, Santa came sometime that night after we were sound asleep, ate his cookies and left all the things we had carefully chosen from the catalogs. At the time I guess the arrival of Santa and the gifts was the most important thing to the three of us.  As I look back now the important part of Christmas was the decorations, the cards that came in the mail, Mother's baked goodies and going to the midnight service.  There was excitement about the big day but never a stressful mad dash to get everything done even when I got older and understood all the preparation my parents did to make Christmas perfect.

As an adult, a wife, a mother I tried to recreate the Christmas each year that I remembered.  Some years I was successful, some years not.  It was easy to fall into the artificial tree routine.  Wow, you just take it out of the box and stand it up.  I remember how much my boys hated the artificial tree decorated with the red velvet bows and apples. That ended when we moved to New Jersey and were shunned because we put up the artificial tree and lights on the house right after Thanksgiving. I learned real fast that you had to have a real tree and put it up on Christmas Eve. That way you can leave it up well into January and it makes the Holiday season last longer.

Have to tell the best of my Christmas stories.  When I was a single Mom with my son Wally in high school it was a little tough to make ends meet.  We were driving a wonderful 1965 Dodge in 1992 with it;s original faded red paint.  Of course we had to have a tree but all of them were out of our budget.  So we got a flashlight and a saw and headed out to "stalk" a tree.  Lots of quiet country roads with trees growing along the sides so surely we could find the perfect tree.

That particular night it looked like Dallas during rush hour or maybe all those cars were actually tree police looking for stalkers like us.  Well after dark, when we were about to give up, we happened upon a tree farm.  The man looked at us rather strangely but took us out into the lot to find a tree.  By flashlight we cut down a beautiful tree and put it in the backseat of the lovely Dodge.  The man must have felt sorry for us since he only charged us $25.00.  Presents were slim that year but the tree was spectacular. Many years later Wally and I went to son Wes's for Christmas.  He had decorations but no tree. All the stores had stopped selling their live trees since it was Christmas Eve.  Lucky for us we passed a dumpster behind a store where they had discarded the trees that did not sell. It was a wonderful Christmas Eve decorating our "trash picked" tree.

Part of the fun of Christmas for me has always been to make Christmas presents. That tradition came from a lack of money for buying presents for extended family members and friends.  In truth I probably spent more money making clothing, wooden toys, teddy bears and plates of goodies than I would have if I had gone shopping.  It is about the fun and the careful thought of making something special for the people you love.

If you think back about past Christmas times it is the funny or not so funny family interactions like the time someone told you Christmas dinner was two hours earlier than it was or the years spent in the emergency room or the year the dog ate the pumpkin pie or the cat knocked over the tree everyday. Few presents people rushed around and shopped for will be remembered.  The fun and family traditions are the ones that count.

It is three days before Christmas,  There is a beautiful live tree all decorated upstairs and an upside down tree twinkling downstairs.  The cards will get mailed on our way to do the only shopping we are going to do and the handmade presents are ready to go.  The building is a glow with all the outdoor lights.  This will be a wonderful, simple and joyous Christmas.

                                Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year

Thanksgiving Would Show Up Again

How Lucky I Am To Be A Baby Boomer - Pause to Reflect

With the events of the last week, I think it is time to take a moment to reflect  on how attitudes and rhetoric have changed in my lifetime.  The basic fundamentals that I was taught of respect, compassion and kindness to my fellow man seem to have gotten lost.

My parents were not particuarly religious but as far back as I can remember we got dressed up every Sunday morning for church.  I don't think they attended a church before and once I turned sixteen they stopped taking us.  As dysfunctional as my family was my parents did a great job of teaching us to respect the beliefs of others.

My Mom was a great reader and paraded us to the library every week.  When she went to work books were her method of keeping us out of trouble while she was gone.  The Library in Muskogee was a magical place with its endless series of beautiful wood bookcases, a little merry-go-round and a mezzaine floor of glass blocks.  There was an unforgettable smell of polished wood and slightly musty paper when you walked in the door. There was a whole world to explore in those books we carried home each week.

I think I was about ten or eleven when I discovered a shelf of about twenty or thirty books, each on a different religion of the world.  Funny how I can still visiualize that shelf in my mind as if I was looking at it today. That shelf was my summer reading program and I read them all.
Many of them were on the different branches of Christianity but there were also books on Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism.  That was the time I realized that even though they had different names the basic thesis was that they were basically the same.

Man has an inherent need to believe in a higher power.  Each religion has similar rules to live by teaching forgiveness, compassion, kindness and respect for not only our fellow man but for all the animals and the planet we live on.  Sure, we have had a lot of religious wars through out our history probably caused by small groups with fanatical reasons. Every religion of the world has gone through it's time of fanatical beliefs and perhaps every religion you don't believe in looks fanatical from your point of view.

When my parents left it up to me to attend church I began going to different churches with my friends.  There were ones I didn't like too well but growing up in the Episcopal church I was used to a little pomp  and circumstance.  At college my best friend wanted to go to synague on Friday nights and wanted someone to go with her.  She and I took Hebrew classes from the rabbi to understand the service.  Luckily I took Latin in high school which helped with the beautiful midnight Christmas masses at the Catholic church.  Friends of every religion have been apart of my life and I respect all their beliefs even though they may differ from mine.

I only had one relative in Muskogee, an amazing uncle by marriage.  He was well into his late fifties or sixties at my first remembrance of him.  He was a newspaper reporter with fascinating stories about my Dad in Kansas City during the 1920's - not ones Dad wanted told.  Uncle Tom could read seven languages, composed music, painted and read everything printed on paper. He lived in a little house by the railroad tracks I referred to as Uncle Tom's cabin and walked to work as he never owned a car. He never cared about worldly possessions and was an atheist.  Kindness, compassion and a love of learning were his attributes.

Our country was founded on the basis of religious freedom. That is the right to believe in a God or not believe in a God. Our founders were not all Christians, contrary to popular belief and gave us the right to choose our religion.  Our Statute of Liberty says "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free".  This is what America should be, what we need to be.

In this time of un-Christian rhetoric and hate it is time to pause and think why should we be afraid of letting people in great need come to our country.  The two phrases my parents used a lot keep coming to mind.  "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."   and 
"There but for the grace of God, go I"

How Lucky I Am To Be A Baby Boomer - Summer of 1961

Of all the summers I have lived through, the Summer of 1961 stands out as one of the most fun, rather carefree and enlightening. It was that summer of being fourteen and turning fifteen and graduating from the ninth grade.  The time when you are too young to date and too old to play with dolls.  Rather reminds me of a song about how lovely it is to be a women but still in braces and can't walk gracefully in high heels.

How Lucky I Am To Be A Baby Boomer - 9th Grade

With the slightly cooler weather this week I pulled out my green and white Muskogee Rougher sweatshirt.  In the little town I live in it gets lots of comments usually referring to my being an Okie from Muskogee. I was stopped in the little local grocery store by a man who asked if I was from Muskogee. He said he grew up there also but had graduated several years after I did.  We chatted about how much fun we had and I did remember his Dad as one of the more famous names from the weekly stock car races.  It is always a warm, fuzzy moment when you realize what a small world this really is.

I recently heard John Irving, the author, discussing his theory of developing characters for a book.  He said that by the time a person is thirteen or fourteen they have developed their character or personality characteristics.  Wow!  That is scary when I think back about my class in the 9th grade at Alice Robertson Junior High. 

My memory is pretty good but looking through piles of scrapbooks and old yearbooks from Alice Robertson Junior High provided most of these little stories about my interesting class.  There had been inklings of what was to come in the 8th grade.  Seems like my class was so disruptive during assemblies that the entire class was banned from further assemblies.  Sulphur bombs had strangely appeared in front of the principles office on several occasions.

I always thought as a cheerleader that we did a pretty good job of cheering the teams on.  The AR Warriors always seemed to have a great team.  The two years before us they only lost one game and that was to our cross-town rival, West Junior High.  The team of 1960-61 had a perfect record, they lost every game.

Surely the basketball season had to be better.  They did win some games but did not take loss lightly.  After losing to the team in Sapulpa it seems like a little damage occurred to Sapulpa's gym.  The basketball team then won the record for the longest stay in Mr. Abbott's Blue Room.  For a week they reported there every morning for the day and for a long time could not be seen walking their girlfriends around in the hall.

How Lucky I Am To Be A Baby Boomer - Junior High

In the spring of 1958 I, along with 109 other little bright eyed sixth grade Whittier children, looked forward to summer days knowing that in the fall we were to join kids from five other elementary schools at Alice Robertson Junior High.  To say our world would expand was an understatement.  The amount of maturity that occurs between the 7th and the 9th grade is easy to see looking at the old yearbooks.

Alice Robertson Junior High School

A little interesting history on Alice Robertson Junior High (now called the 7th and 8th grade center).  Alice Robertson, from Muskogee, was an educator who was only the second woman elected to Congress in 1921. She was also the first woman to be appointed as a Class A Postmaster. The school itself opened in 1940 and is adjacent to the largest football field built in Oklahoma by the WPA in 1936.  Known as Indian Bowl, the stadium is still used today as the high school stadium for the Muskogee High School Roughers.  Being a historic preservation person I am proud to see both the school and the stadium still in use.

Camp Fred Darby 1959

After a summer of all the usual swimming, girl scout camp, fighting with brothers and a family attempt at a vacation (the vacation is a novel in itself) the scary day arrived when I had to enter the doors of that huge building.  There were a total of 422 students in the 7th grade alone.  Instead of sitting at the same desk in the same room all day long as in elementary school we had to change classrooms and teachers.  It was our first introduction to band, orchestra, chorus, home economics, gym and lockers. It was also a twenty block walk home instead of the ten to and from grade school.  Scary as it was, it did not take long to make more friends and get used to the daily routine.

After all these years it is hard to remember a lot of the events that made the characteristics of the baby boomer generation develop compared to the classes before us especially in the 7th and 8th grade. The sheer size of class itself created more chaos.  There did not seem to be a day that went by that someone wasn't sent to The Blue Room.  The Blue Room was next door to the principle's office where Mr. Abbott got out his paddle.  It does seem like a trip there was a badge of honor for most of the boys.

My mother was pretty good at keeping me busy with piano and dancing lessons and girl scouts.  If there was a talent show at school I was always the first one to sign up much to the chagrin of my brother Paul. Unlucky for me, Paul was in the ninth grade when I did some dance in a talent show and gave some silly speech to the entire school running for a student council office.  His friends, who I looked at in the same way I would have looked at Troy Donohue or James Darren, would pass me in the hall and yell "Hey, Paul.  Isn't that your sister?"  Paul would answer
"No, I don't have a sister". He was good at crushing all my fantasies.

Talent Show 1959

Yes, it was the time when I fell in love at least once a day. Movies didn't help.  I had outgrown Superman and Wagon Train on TV and dashed off to see Gidget or A Summer Place with all the other teenage girls. I rushed home from school everyday to watch American Bandstand and knew the name of everyone on the show.  I learned to dance using the door jam for a partner and poured over every issue of Teen Magazine.  If I did not have the latest copy of Seventeen magazine how was I ever going to know what to wear or how to act!

Gidget I was not

Oh how I remember the sock hops in the gym.  The boys sat on one side of the gym and the girls on the other. Excuse me!  When the music started on American Bandstand everyone grabbed a partner and rushed to the floor. Now the ninth graders danced but they certainly were not going to ask a little kid out onto the dance floor. 

There is a funny story I well remember about a sock hop and macho brother Paul.  He actually had a date to one of them with a very pretty girl.  Not being able to drive, Mom had to take him and pick up his date. This was when my Mom had the bright red Jeepster.  Cute as it was it was not the cool car Paul dreamed about.  To make matters worse Mom figured that since I was going to the dance too that we would just all go together.  Paul moaned and groaned all the way to the girl's house about me, about the Jeepster and about life in general.  When we picked the girl up she rode in the backseat with me.  Needless to say, Paul's first real grown up date was not at all what he imagined.  I enjoyed it. Revenge is nice.

Macho Brother Paul

At the junior high level it seemed like slowly the realization set in that there were "popular" girls. I can't say that every girl wanted to fit in that category but there was definitely something to being well liked. Naturally cheerleaders sort of stood out.  Don't think that has changed much through the years but when I was in school there were only cheerleaders for the varsity team.  Out of the whole school only nine girls could achieve that distinction.

Mrs. Chance, the physical education teacher was also the cheerleader coach. You know, I don't remember ever seeing Mrs. Chance in anything but a white shirt and white shorts in the three years at Alice Robertson. She was a short stocky Indian woman, very stern and her skinny legs stuck out of those big legged shorts almost cartoon like.  Anyway, every spring there were tryouts for the cheerleaders for the following year. For weeks all the girls got together in groups of nine and practiced like crazy before the elections. 

The day of the tryouts had to be the longest day ever.  The hopefuls did their routines in front of the pep club who voted for the girls they thought were the best. I lost. The end of the world had really come.  I can remember walking home with a boy who had stayed to watch the tryouts and crying all the way. He tried hard to console me but it didn't work.  When I got home and told my Mom I lost and she was overjoyed. That didn't help.  Guess she wanted a concert pianist or a ballerina instead of a cheerleader.

Ah....the 7th grade picture

Somehow I manged to pull myself together and go back to school.  Just by chance a few weeks later one of the girls who got elected as a cheerleader found out she was moving over the summer. Mrs. Chance put the three names of the next runner-ups in a hat and drew one to replace the moving girl's spot.  She drew my name.  Mom was not happy. 

It was over that summer between the 8th and 9th grade that a lot of the characteristics of the baby boomer generation began to show up in all of us.  The "me" generation was beginning to emerge and patterns of behavior changed.  Life was getting more fun and more interesting.