IT’S DOPPELGÄNGER SEASON!

It started a few weeks ago, when a neighbor who bowls in the same league I do, came up to me and asked me to sniff her neck.

Looking at me with that special glint in her eye, she says to me, “Go ahead, smell my neck.”

“Okay”, I said with surprise in my voice, “if you insist.”

“I smell like you,” she said with glee in her voice.

“No,” I slowly replied, “I don’t think so.”

Suddenly, with a look of shock, she steps back, starts laughing and says, “Oh my, you are not who I thought you were.”

“Okay”, I said and with that we both stepped away laughing and continued on with our bowling game.

A couple of weeks later another gal from our league came up to me and with a sweet look of satisfaction, placed a bag of yarn, with a sample of her handiwork included, in front of me with a look about her that told me I should know what this was all about.  I didn’t.  My puzzled face told her that I had no clue what she was doing this for.  

“You wanted to learn how to do this, didn’t you?” she asked.

“No,” I said.  “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Then, she stepped back, looked me hard in the face and giggling with embarrassment, said, “Oh no, I thought you were someone else.”

We laughed together and went on about our business.

A couple of days later I went to the hospital for a blood test, and while sitting in the waiting room, an older women came up to me, grabbed me by my shoulders and with panic in her voice asked me what I was doing there.

“Getting blood work,” I replied.

“But why?  What is wrong?” she continued.

“Nothing I said,” I said, “Just routine.”

Then once again, this women stepped back and with a look of shock on her face said, “Oh my God, I thought you were my daughter. I swear  you look just like my daughter!”

With that, she asked if she could take a picture with me to show her family.  We had a good laugh about the whole thing and went on about our business.

My week ended with one more example of mistaken identity.  I was in New Hope getting ready to usher for the Bucks County Playhouse, when I decided to have dinner before the show.  Karla’s is one of my favorite eating establishment’s where the service is friendly and the customer’s can be fun in a chat.  My kind of place!   Sitting, enjoying a glass of wine while waiting for my salad to appear, a sweet gentlemen shows up at my table with a welcoming smile and said, “Hello, I didn’t know you come here to eat!  I hope you enjoy the meal?”

“Why yes, I come here often,” I said.  “I love it!”

“I am comping your wine,” he went on.  “Enjoy your dinner.”

“Thank you!”

And off he went.  When the waiter came by, I asked if he was the owner.  “No, he is the bartender”, he said.  

A few minutes later, a handwritten note came delivered by the waiter, letting me know he was “Ricky, the son of……”

I looked up and saw his huge smile, and I waved and he waved back.

Turning to the waiter I said, “I think he thinks I am someone else.”

After the meal, I went up to the bar and thanked him for making my day special, but that I believed he thinks I am someone else.

“Oh no, he said.  I just left you at my house.”

“No, I replied, it was not me.”

“You are not the nurse that was there caring for my ill mother?” he asked with surprise.

“No, I am not.”

With that, I offered to pay for my wine since it was a case of mistaken identity, but he declined, and we parted sharing a good laugh and a story to tell!

All of us have experienced this from both ends from time to time.  Either seeing someone who we thought we knew or being mistaken for someone else.  A phenomenon that we are fascinated by.  It is the number of incidences that are surprising me.  I believe I have entered the season of doppelgänger!  How else can all these incidences be explained in such a short span of time!  I just hope that my doppelgänger is out there having as much fun as I am!

WELCOME TO MY NEIGHBORHOOD

As a child, I was surrounded by language that was demeaning and often ugly toward those who were different than “us”, especially if you were black, Catholic, Jewish, or gay.  By the time I was seven years old, I experienced enough to know to challenge this language, both in thought, word and deed.  

We lived in Waukegan, Illinois, and our home was located in the city where school was diverse.  I was a minority in my class.  Top this off with the fact that our home life was not the ideal and often surrounded with alcoholic chaos.  

For me, kindness and generosity, was often felt first outside my home…not from within.  So as a kid, when I would hear my parents and the adults with them, discuss people of color using derogatory terms, in my head I would be thinking, “but so-and-so is not like that, she/he is nice.”  The truth is, my experiences most always were the polar opposite of the language I was surrounded in.

So at an early age, I learned to not trust the adults in my life.  The seed was planted to not only challenge but to base my opinions on my own experiences.

This has brought great joy in my life.  By being open and accepting of differences, (even political ones), I have been blessed to make friends with very interesting and kind people.  

At my age, I have watched society grow more open and tolerant of one another.  I can remember the day when marrying outside one’s religious believes would bring condemnation from family, and often the member who dared to love outside the circle would face living outside the circle forever.  This behavior would bring about great sadness and turmoil to those involved.  

Although it is better today, than how we lived in my early life, it is obvious that we still have a long way to go by the headlines and activities I see today in states where laws are being passed that say, my religious beliefs give me a right to not treat you the same as I expect to be treated.  I don’t get it.  We live in a country that cherishes the right to practice our own faith without harassment or interference.  That government is separate from our faith and is to be allowed to govern the whole, not just the parts.  

Historically, all faiths have a history of challenge to it’s existence.  But we live in America.  We live in a country where we ALL have rights to be who we are, follow our own faith without harassment, and exist in peace.  

My own conversion to becoming a Catholic came about, not by someone trying to convert me, but by experiencing first hand from the Leuthe family of Milwaukee, the joy and binding love of a family unit, that just happened to be Catholic.  I was drawn to them all by their welcoming and outreach.  I have carried them in my heart since those days of long ago.  I have often thought, if they had been another religion I most likely would of converted to that, it was the joy of their existence that I longed for.  Making the decision to follow the Catholic faith, brought me first hand to the prejudice of such an act.  I didn’t convert because I was marrying a Catholic.  My conversion was personal.  Something my family didn’t understand.

I hold with honor, the distinction of being kicked out of my Grandmother Curnes’s funeral gathering, because I had the audacity to challenge the family support of George Wallace and his run for President under the umbrella of segregation. 

Our own existence cannot come without the acceptance of those around us, no matter who they are or what they believe.  For if I want the freedom to believe as I wish—and I do—then I must grant it to all those around me.  I have friends who are Buddhist, Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Agnostic, black, hispanic, foreign born, American, politically Republican, Democrat, Independent, gay and straight …all people who hold a special place in my heart.  I don’t love them because we all think alike, I love them because we accept each other for who we are.  Out of these relationships come wonderful conversations that broaden my own understanding of what it means to be human.  

I was given a writing assignment once, that asked me to describe how a tossed salad was like life.  It was easy.  One vegetable in the bowl alone would be boring and dull to eat, but mixed together with an assortment of fresh and tasty vegetables, bound together by a dressing makes for a satisfying edible experience.  

I believe in us.  I believe in the U.S.  I believe that goodness will prevail.  I welcome you to my neighborhood where diversity brings a richness in life that can only be measured by how I make you feel.  

STORYCORP.ME

I am the gatherer of stories—the memoirist, the family historian.  My favorite past time is asking people about their life and listening to their story.  We all have one you know.  We may not be rich and famous, but we still have the life we lived, filled with our own personal challenges, successes, and our own observations on how to do it better. 

There is something beautiful about the ordinary.  The simplicity of living.  The ability to find happiness where we stand.  Peel back all the material things in life and what do you find?  Us…all of us…the same in so many ways.  Which is why I find the project by the American Folklife Center interesting.  StoryCorp.me is a beta application released to enable anyone to interview others on their life story, asking questions like “What are your dreams for me?” (assuming here it is a child asking a parent or grandparent).  “What person influenced you the most in your life?”  “What is your earliest memory?”  

StoryCorp through the American Folklife Center is archiving these interviews at the Library of Congress to enable sharing of the human experience for generations to come.

There is a browse section on the application where you can listen to the latest uploaded interviews and I found the conversations fascinating between child and parent or grandparent.  Just the fact that so many young people are taking up this activity, tells me that our youth, who we too often perceive as not caring or are uninterested, are truly interested in the stories we have to tell.  So often through the interview you hear the young person say, “I didn’t know that.  Wow that is cool, or Wow that is interesting.”  And most often it is followed by, “I am so glad you shared that with me.”

One daughter and father were taping their interview at 4 in the morning!  But listening to them banter back and forth told me that this moment would be a precious memory in the life of the young women interviewing her father.  

Another interview was a young man interviewing his 94 year old neighbor.  You could hear through the conversations how the young man and his family had bonded with this 94 year old man and how important they had become to each other’s well being.  Simple lives, led in simple ways but providing profound outcomes for each.

Yes, I love to hear the stories of how others have lived, loved, and faced their challenges.  It lets me know that what I am thinking, feeling, and doing, may be ordinary, but it is my ordinary…and that is good.

So tell me, what is your earliest memory?

Post Script:  StoryCorp.me is a free application that you can load on your phone, IPad, or computer.  Do yourself a favor, download it and hand it off to your kids and see what conversations you can start.  I promise, you will be glad you did!

POPULAR SENIOR PAST TIMES? FUNERALS OF COURSE

Spring is sprung

The grass is rizzzz

I’m heading out 

To where all the bodies is….

My way of saying it is funeral time again in the ok corral.  Yes, the 2nd most popular past time of seniors—the first being going to the doctor’s office—is attending funerals.  And I must say the last couple I have been to have turned out to be enjoyable in a macabre sort of way.  

Two funerals ago, it happened in a snow storm.  It wasn’t so much the funeral that was fun, but the people I went with.  Retired hospice nurses all, (well I can’t forget Jim, our lone man of the group) and neither snow, nor sleet, nor hail, or storm could keep these gals from their final destination.  Once the somber event of the viewing and mass was behind us, it was off to a bakery, then Tony Lukes for lunch.  Hardly any cars on the road due to the storm conditions but there we were!  Yes, we were heading home, and we did not make any changes in that direction, as they were just stops on the way.  But imagine the surprise of the owners of the bakery and the workers in the restaurant when they saw four old farts strolling in to their place of business….and just as old people do, said to the bakery owner, “Since we are your only customers are you going to give us a discount?”

And she did, so we cleared out a few items before she shut up shop and gave us free coffee to boot!  Due to her kindness and jovial nature, you know we will be back there again!

Once again I was traveling with the same group plus Jim…only this time it was one of us that lost someone.  In this case it was an ex.  Let me saying losing an ex is not the same as losing a husband.  I don’t know from personal experience, but watching those around me…well let me just say the murmurings  were funny to listen to.  What made this funeral noteworthy, was knowing the background to the family, the stories of how the man lived and especially what he left behind when he died—tie that into the fact that the priest was a boyhood friend of the ex-wife’s family—well, let us just say to hear the priest dance with his words about how this good man is going to heaven, but ever so gently remind us all that we all have sins on us that need to be forgiven.  

I found myself thinking, “be gentle Marlene, for one day you too will die, and when people are sitting mourning or rejoicing your loss, you better hope someone is praying for your sinful soul so that the door to our heavenly father will be opened for you.”

BRIGHT YELLOW LIGHT OF DAFFODILS

The bright yellow light of daffodils

Remind me that March is the beginning.

New life forces it’s way up through the darkness of winter

It also is the ending.

Leaving behind the dark bitter winds, the pain that the storms of living can bring.  

What ends always brings a new beginning

A new beginning will always have an end.

And so it goes, the circle of life.

I am glad to get through this month.  

Remembering the good and the bad,

The happy and the sad.

And that life goes on…and on…and on……….

This I am reminded by the bright yellow light of the daffodils.

TRAVELING ALONE IS A CHALLENGE….FOR THE FAMILY

How does a single person travel alone?  That is the question.  The answer?  Let me count the ways.

Before I die, I want to see more of the United States.  I got a taste of what this country possess when I traveled out to the Grand Canyon with my daughter, and Seattle when I headed up to Alaska and the trip across the Canadian Rockies.  To say it wet my appetite to see more is an understatement.  

But how to travel in today’s world safely, as a single, 68 year old women, is the question.  I have searched the internet for ideas.  I would love to have a travel partner(s) but sending the call out to the world has not enticed anyone to step out and say, “I’ll go with you”, so I must take the bull by the horn and make a plan. 

After searching all the possibilities, I have decided to see what I want to see by train.  I had a taste of a long distance train ride once when I had to take a trip to Raleigh in an emergency.  I was thrilled with how enjoyable the ride was.  I could get up and walk around, go to the diner car, strike up a card game with strangers (I carried a deck of cards), and relax in the lounge seats provided by my first class ticket.

The web sites I have searched about train traveling in the US look very interesting too.  Observation cars are provided in areas where the scenery is special, sleeping cars are available where the travel through the night is the best bet, and hotels and rental cars are available in all the major stops.  Sounds like a plan.

To begin, I could take some close-to-home trips by heading up into the Northeast, an area of the country that is totally new to me.  I long to see the East Coast shoreline above NYC, up into Maine and into Nova Scotia.  I could train it as far as I can go, rent a car, explore the area, stay as long as I like and then return to the train and hop home again.  To answer the concern of the family worries about me wondering around out in the world alone, I could just  text them along the way (when phone service allows), do a daily travel blog, and phone home just like E.T.

Oh let the dreaming begin…

CHILDHOOD FRIENDSHIPS NEVER DIE

Tom, Pat and a friend from work 1966

Most all of us have walked through our life carrying the memory of an old friend within us.  That someone who lived through a portion of our life, leaving an impact and burning that special soft spot in our heart.  I have not had the experience, but I lived it through my late husband, Pat.  He had three friends through his childhood that he carried in his heart with great affection until the moment he died.

John, Tom, and Joe were the first three friends of Pat’s that I met.  I loved to see them together. They had a history, a connection…something, that in my life could only be imagined, never experienced.  I often told Pat how lucky he was, because he could not travel up or down the 309 corridor without bumping into someone who knew him from his childhood.  

John and Pat were close like brothers.  Their love and acceptance of each other was a beautiful thing to watch.  Of course it helped that John married Pat’s sister, but even so, they always carried each other close to the heart and being with John and Lucyann was always such a happy time.  Even distance did not put a wedge in their relationship.  

But Joe and Tom eventually drifted away physically, yet never in Pat’s memory, thoughts or feelings.  Right before he died he made me promise to try and find the two of them and give the message to them that they were never forgotten and how he carried them in his heart always as his best friends and with great affection. It was important to him that they all knew that he loved them.   I promised I would try.

I first found what happened to Joe.  Joe was the Best Man at our wedding.  We quickly bonded as a couple as he too was married.  Through the first four years of our marriage, we spent most all our social time hanging out with Joe and his wife.  Sometime after my first pregnancy, Joe and his wife separated and divorced and our friendship drifted apart.  Life, family and work filled the time available for both Joe and Pat.  Over the years we did get in contact with him once, but Joe was embarrassed about how his wife left him (he was a man of great pride) and we did not stay in contact.  But that did not mean he was forgotten by Pat.  As I went on a hunt for him I decided to search the obituaries and I was saddened to discover he died in 2004.  I called John to share the news of my discovery and you could hear the breath leave him for a moment as he processed the news.

I first met Tom thru Pat at the Navy Hospital at the Great Lakes Navy Base where I worked.  Tom and Pat went into the Navy during the Viet Nam days on the buddy system.  Pat never cared what he did as long as he could do it with Tom.  In boot camp where they filled in their dream sheet of what they wanted to do in the Navy, Pat chose to put down what Tom wanted to do…dental tech.  In the end, Pat was the one who was selected to go to A school for Dental Tech, while Tom ended up in Corp school to become a Medic and eventually off to Viet Nam.  Pat never made it to his school because on the obstacle course he broke his foot which left him unfit for duty and back home to await discharge.  Tom’s schooling was at Great Lakes which allowed for me to get to know Tom through Pat while Pat was in the hospital awaiting orders to return home.  Tom went off to Viet Nam, returned home, attended college and went off to live his life.  Our first born son carries Thomas as part of his name in honor of the love Pat held for Tom.  

I was recently lucky to have come in contact with a cousin of Tom’s who shared contact information for him allowing me to fulfill that last wish for Pat.  When I called John to share the good news of finding Tom, he too was overjoyed, as he had spent part of last year searching for Tom without success.  

We promised to meet up soon and catch up on the life lived between visits…and when we do, I know Pat will be there too with a big smile on his face.