Over age fifty – Page 16 – Sandra's Hart My Over 60 Lifestyle Journey

True Grit

If one lives long enough, change happens. That’s just the way life is. And each time I blog I wonder if I have anything else to say. But I write about my life, so if I really want to be honest, I also have to include the grit. It goes like this.

I find myself waking up in the morning a little bit depressed these days. How about you? Unless you live in a vacuum you must feel something. I have always considered myself a positive person always looking at the glass half full instead of half empty. Could be I’m getting older and recognizing that. Sure. Could be I am a realist. Maybe. Could be that I am inherently a sponge and can’t help myself to change. True. The honest to goodness fact is that I can’t take what is going on in the world anymore.

CNN, just give me some good news already! No more pictures of drunken Ukrainians and dead bodies, people running for their lives and starving children, missing airplanes. For heavens sake, my daughter is a flight attendant! Such an overload of bad news these days beyond my ‘glass half full’ ability.

I get it. The world is an unhappy place. The news is frightening. Everything seems to be falling apart out there. Missiles are flying and people are dying in flames in the Mideast, despots are coming out of the ground like weeds, gaining strength over their peoples and creating fear and conflict, choking the death out of goodness.

Just how much can an old woman take. I don’t ever remember the world being in such wide turmoil, do you? I don’t ever remember the United States being so weak in the minds of even our allies. God help us!

Right now, here at home, we have major economic problems that are affecting the younger generation, especially. Problems at our border. We don’t seem to have a strong American guidance, “rally around the flag” identity anymore. When did this happen? Where is Clint Eastwood when we need him! Or Roosevelt and his big stick!

Honestly, I don’t ever remember the world being in such wide turmoil. I don’t ever remember the United States being so weak in the minds of even our allies.

Am I tempted to turn into an ostrich? I wonder. The first thing I do in the morning to break the silence in my head is to turn on my favorite jazz station, then shuffle along to my Keurig that is waiting for me to pour that first cup of hot wake-up coffee to drink on the deck with a big fat ‘death to my arteries’ Napoleon to ease my anxiety. Privileged. Maybe. Worked for it. Dear God, yes. Take it for granted. Not! I vote, volunteer, work for charities, help others. But obviously it is not enough to clear my head.

It’s just that I want what we all want; my children and their children to have the same benefits my generation had – freedom of open doors as result of hard work. Pathways to a good life. Peace and prosperity.

I want my daughters and granddaughters to have the freedoms and opportunities equal to men. Respect as human beings. Choices of dress, beliefs, careers of their own respected and allowed.

Please. Wake up America before we are forced to sleep with the enemy!

Barbizon Babes

Congratulations to Nina Guzman on her well-written and researched article “Where The Girls Are” in this month’s issue of BUST Magazine. Nina found me through my blog piece I wrote on my Barbizon Years several months ago. She asked me if she could interview me about my life at the Barbizon for her article. (https://twitter.com/sandrashart/status/448230928112828417)
Well, I thought I knew all about living at the women’s hotel, but Nina’s article showed me there was so much more to the history of this landmark than I realized. Thanks again Nina for asking me to share my memories of life “Where The Girls Are”.

No Chance Meeting

I never knew Japan could be so hilly along the coast. My legs were killing me. We had been walking around for hours looking for the beautiful Sorakuen Gardens, our final stop before heading back to the port in Kobe. We were lost. Frustrated. Tired. Then my husband and I started blaming one another which ‘left’ and ‘right’ we should or should not have taken. Finally, giving up the blame game, and desperate for directions, we knew our only hope was to find someone who hopefully might speak a little English. Enough to get directions anyway.

As we were about to try to find our way back to the ship, we suddenly saw in the distance across the narrow street a man scurrying along at a fast pace dressed in familiar garments that suggested he might just be a rabbi. Arthur and I looked at one another with the same desperate thought. We turned and literally ran after him, cameras flopping against our chests, “Dear God, please let him speak English!”

Well, that was the beginning of the most interesting adventure in Kobe. Much better than a stroll through another garden we had seen many of on our many world tours.

Rabbi Shmuel Vishedsky, turned out to speak English, was in his late twenties and from Israel, and upon hearing our plight invited us to visit his temple. Anything to get off my feet, I thought.

He walked us up the hill to Ohel Shelomoh, his temple.

Getting lost turned out to be an interesting day filled with history. We learned from Shmuel about his life in Kobe, Kobe itself, his temple and the early migration of the Jewish settlement there and the earthquake in 1995 that almost destroyed it all.

Even though we had been to Kobe before, we had no clue Kobe has a very rich Jewish history. We would have never known about any of this had we not met him. The city was and continues to be one of Japan’s major ports, and a turning point in Kobe’s history took place when its port opened its doors for trade with the West in 1868. We were told Jewish traders most likely ventured into Kobe for trade purposes during this time, settling in Kobe. The Rabbi showed us with pride the beautiful carved chairs donated by the Jewish traders more than a century ago. Most are now empty during services.

The first Jews arrived in Kobe around the turn of the 20th century. Up until World War II, Jews flocked to the port city from Poland, Russia, Germany, and the Middle East due to its wealth and trading opportunities and the temples flourished.

As was often the case in Jewish history, Jews were predominantly involved in mercantile businesses because of limitations imposed upon them by their home countries, and working in trade allowed them to prosper without settling down.

By 1941, there were two separate synagogues in Kobe, one for the Ashkenazim and another for the Sephardim. During World War II, the Sephardic synagogue burnt down as the result of an American air raid, and the Ashkenazim shared their space with the Sephardic community. It is this synagogue that serves to small community of 17 to 20 Jews who are comprised of those working in Japan teaching English and a small group of permanent residents.

The Rabbi showed us where there were still minor cracks in the walls, and evidence where the earthquake of 1995 did other major structural damage to the building. But, with reverence, he also showed where the tablets showing the commandments above the Ark were not touched by the quake as though saved by the Hand of God.

I thought, in a way, knowing his thirst for biblical knowledge makes him happy, but because of his dedicated religious beliefs what an isolated life he and his wife and young child had here in Kobe. We stayed around for a while because Shmuel was so anxious for us to meet his wife and child who had been out for the day.

Unfortunately, time would not allow that, so we had to say goodbye to our interesting host without meeting his family. He seemed disappointed that we couldn’t stay, but so pleased at our chance encounter in the streets of his adopted city.

We were like a voice from home I think, and it turned out he was just as delighted to see us English speaking Americans as we him. And I do believe in this life there are no chance encounters. Each has its meaning and purpose.

REAR VIEW MIRROR

Organizing things the past few months at the house, finding memorabilia, going through old photographs that bring up past images and a past life, it seems I’m looking in the rearview mirror more and more these days.

For those of us who are living our lives well over 50, the reality, painful to even think about, is that the bulk of our life is probably behind us. Gone is our youth, the flawless, glowing skin, tight body mass, and unbridled energy juggling our family and our young kids lives.

How easy to slip back into those warm fuzzy memories of what used to be and for a moment escape what really is…at this time-NOW….forgetting how exciting or important this leg of our journey can be.

My flight attendant daughter is now 50 and she complains that with her creative aspirations, she is not where she hoped to be at 50, as though it is all over for her.

And once more, I have to go over the chronology of my life and career. Moving forward was all that I pursued with never even a thought of age as a handicap. Maybe that is why it never mattered. She is no exception. No different than I. It still is possible for new and exciting chapters to be written for and by her. That goes for you, too.

As I recently posted on Facebook, in my 20’s and 30’s I worked in television while raising a family, my 40’s I entered the corporate world to support my family, in my 50’s I started all over as an actress in film, television and theater and in my 60’s became a published author, a mental health advocate and blogger.

Don’t get me wrong. I am no Pollyanna. Life has not all be roses for me. Like most of you, I have had my struggles, disappointments and heartaches. But something inside of me gave me the strength to always get up and have faith that another door would open, another chapter would be written. Without fail, it always happened that when I was the most down, I was lifted the highest into a better place in my life. Always.

As long as there is a new day I plan to make the most of every hour gifted to me. We build our own fences. We control our limitations. Set yourself free and see just how high you can fly!

FAST FORWARD

“One is the loneliest number that you will ever do.” John Farnham

Several years ago I wrote a piece on “one is the loneliest number,” adding various reasons why that didn’t necessarily have to be true:

“So many songs including the one with the famous line in the above title ‘one’ means heart ache, single, lonely, by myself and all of the other negative images they want us to conjure up about poor little ‘one’.

Isn’t ‘one’ the primary, the very first number in our numeric system? Without ‘one’ there would be no starting and with all of the other infinite numbers trailing behind it certainly is not lonely.

For me being by myself gives me the opportunity to do as I please. So when you are alone and feeling sorry for yourself embrace your ‘oneness’.

Always remember tomorrow is another day and a chance to be number ‘one’ again, head of the pack and at the top of the heap. If you learn to love yourself, you will be your own best company.”*

Fast forward to the present. Right now, I am waiting in the orthopedics office, alone, filled with a room full of injured people to varying degrees of injury and loneliness. Old, young, broken arms and legs, wheelchairs. Surveying the large waiting room, I am feeling quite vulnerable, witnessing how a trip, slip or other catastrophe can change one’s life. The human body is an amazing machine. But a human machine that is quite fragile and vulnerable to all sorts of damage.

My husband is in the city, my children are spread throughout the south and Midwest and here I am, ‘one’ and not so cocky about my ‘oneness.’

Right now, I am realizing that all of the prior feelings I had about the number 1, changes as I get older and more aware of how important 2 or more can be.

On my way home today, a quick stop at Dunkin’ Donuts for número uno, and then calls to my husband and children to tell them that they are ‘one’ in my life, head of the pack and top of the heap!

* Excerpts from Read Between My Lines: What Was I Thinking. Sandra Hart Copyright.

GONE FISHIN’ – DO NOT DISTURB

I think my ‘smarts’ flew out the window sometime after I was 50. I keep doing stupid stunts that I used to do without a problem. Like climbing a grassy knoll in the pouring down rain to retrieve my blind dog, then missing the cement tire stop in the parking lot. I flew about 15 feet in the air slid on the asphalt and tore my rotator cuff. Luckily my sweet little dog was fine. Being blind probably saved her life. She couldn’t see what was coming and didn’t stiffen her joints.

Then a few years later, idiot that I appear to have become, I was trying to reach something in the kitchen from the top shelf close to the ceiling. Instead of being a normal person and getting the stepladder, I used a plastic chair that I was planning on taking outside to put on the deck. Well, the chair leg collapsed into a heat grate pinning my leg as it slipped down through the arm bracing it so that I couldn’t bend my leg and I wound up fracturing my tibia.

Amazing that for 50+ years I’ve been going along in my life, not realizing I was kind of stupid, never even much experienced anything more than bouts of poison ivy rash or bee stings.

But, this time, I really think I am done. No more stupid. I may be getting smart too late, but I am going to try. No lifting, moving pots and furniture like a 20 year old. I am going to try to act my age from now on. I say this, I write this, wearing a back brace with two severe lumbar compressions from being ‘stupid is, stupid does’.

I have great bones, younger that I am, I have been told, but maybe my brain hasn’t gotten the message that young bones don’t make you smart or young again.

So this Fourth of July, I will not be the hostess with the ‘mostess’ and everyone will be on their own. Don’t even ask me to move a chair for you!
I have retired from being younger than I am!

CRATE PAPER HEAVEN

It's prom time again and oh how times have changed! Between the prom gowns and the events, today's proms are a world away from those in the late 1950s.

Our gowns were something out of Gone With The Wind, with crinolines and tight waists. The fuller the skirt, the prettier we felt.

Most of us were able to find a beautiful gown and crinolines that the local merchants had stocked especially for our proms, or sometimes, if we really got lucky, we could talk our parents into driving to Pittsburgh to go shopping at Kaufman's or Horne's Department Stores.

Our proms were held – OMG – in our gymnasium. No big bucks to rent a fancy catering hall-we did it ourselves. Themes like Krystal Kingdom and Isle of Dreams and we would jitterbug and romantically slow dance to local bands like Bobby Vinton.

My junior prom had a Paradise Island theme, a crate paper dream with palm trees and all of the things that a teenager would think of finding on a tropical Island minus Sandra Dee, Annette and Frankie.

The probability that most of us in the late 1950s living in a small blue collar steel town had never really been to a tropical island, except perhaps in the movies or our dreams, was almost certain. And that the local merchants would be solicited each year to let us borrow their window dressings was also almost certain. Without support of our business community our high school paradise could never have happened. Basically, our whole town was involved in our big night.

Our dates didn't rent chauffeured limos, but borrowed the family car and gave it a lot of teenage testosterone elbow grease to be sure that it was polished to a high shine.

And fathers gave strict warnings when handing over the car keys to their sons, and daughter's fathers gave strict warnings to be sure that his prize was brought home safely and at a decent hour unless they were allowed to go to the "After Glow", a place where we could go after the prom where our parents felt we would be safe.

We didn't stress about renting fancy limousines, asking our parents to come up with hundreds of dollars so that our prom venue would outdo all others and so that we could have the best designer short sexy dress. We were so happy to have what we had.

All we dreamed about was a date for the prom, a beautiful dress and a gym decked out to the max by our classmates. We were not a materialistic generation. We had aspirations, but knew we had to earn our future. That was the 50's generation, my time, and in my opinion, looking back, and although we probably didn't think twice about it then, those really were the best of times.

STEEL TOWN ON BROADWAY

( In the process of trying to downsize, it seems as though I am reliving my past all over again. Moments in time, events that I had honestly forgotten about. Will this mean anything to anyone but me?)

November 17,1994

It was a chilly day. The fall wind was whipping down the famous street as we all gathered in the square of Times Square, in the center on Broadway in New York City. We were all ages, all had our stories to tell, but all 206 of us had something in common. We were actors. We appeared on Broadway. We were from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, all of us.

Christopher Rawson the drama critic at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette at the time, either hatched this brainchild on his own, or was given the assignment by the editor of the Gazette. In any event it was quite a task getting all 206 of us actors at the same place at the same time. And for each of us, it would be a once in a lifetime event. I even wore a red beret trying to stand out in a crowd of 206 actors. That was a laugh because the paper printed it in black and white.

I was 107 in the photo standing next to Lynda Jamison, who started her cabaret career in her forties with the encouragement from the likes of Margaret Whiting and Julie Wilson.

I left the Pittsburgh area in 1972, so it was a long time since I had gone through the tunnel and into the City of Three Rivers and the Golden Triangle. Most of my fellow actors that day had rooted in Manhattan where they could ply their craft but their hearts were still back in their hometown-Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.

So a smidgen of The Steel City was standing for a still shot in the heart of Broadway, far away from where they began their journey in a business that is always not so kind to transplants with a dream. Our Pittsburgh town made it happen

(The Pittsburgh Post Gazette reran this story in 2004 )

LAST DAY OF SUMMER

(In the last few days during a late spring cleaning and efforts to eliminate “stuff” I have collected in my adulthood, I came across some of my stories I wrote as a young teenager that my mother lovingly kept because she always believed in me and what I could be. I hadn’t read them since I wrote them when I was 13.)

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Last Day of Summer

Arising at dawn I ran outside, the cool mist of early morning causing me a slight chill, I briskly paced myself on the ruff dewy clumps of grass that had found life here and there in the sand leading to the water’s edge. It was my last day on the island and I didn’t want to miss watching the golden halo arise from the sea. I could see the seagulls, a chorus of sharp squeals, snowy bodies and vibrant flapping of wings swooping and diving over my head.

The quickening pace of the deep blue waves splashing, splashing against the dark wet sand seemed to invite me to join them in their early morning frolic.

I quickened my pace toward the beckoning waves feeling the moist sand coming between my bare toes giving me a feeling of being one with it. Giving in to it.

The strong waves broke against my body as I hurled myself into the sea. I swam to almost where the waves beyond were wearing their white caps. Ha! Just to entertain me on this, my final swim I thought. Just for me.

In the late afternoon with only an apple in my pocket I traveled barefoot one more time along the seaweed clad shore watching a sailboat now and then skim along on the horizon.

Placing myself, after retracing my footprints back up the beach, on an weathered old great piece of driftwood, I sat to dine on the contents of my pocket while quietly watching the waves come and go, come and go, kissing the shore and then disappearing over and over again.

Eventually the waves took on a scarlet hue as the flame in the sky flickered, flickered and as slowly as it arose from the sea at dawn, it slowly ebbed. I watched. I watched and remembered my wonderful summer by the sea until God blew out the candle that lights the day and all was dark and still.

FROM SUN TO SUN

Life is all a matter of relativity. As a young widow with three children I thought I had at times a very hard life. But recently certain events within my family brought me to think about the two generations that came before me and my grandmother and grandfather who lived on a farm in Ohio. If I really want to be honest, comparatively, my life, even in the worst of times, was a piece of cake. And I am ashamed to think I might have had a hard row-ever.

Enduring several miscarriages, my grandparents wound up with 10 living children to take care of. So, basically, in those days, my grandmother had the care of 10 children while Grandpa did ‘manly- head-of-household’ duties.

She and my grandfather lived on a farm and not only did she make all of their clothes, she cooked for all the family and farmhands, and on top of that made fresh bread daily. I still remember the flour sticking to her broad-knuckled hands as she wiped them on her apron, cleaning them between each kneading.

She did the seemingly endless farm and family wash by scrubbing on a washboard anchored on a big galvanized wash tub and then hung the laundry out on the line propped up by a pole in the middle to keep the weight of the wet wash from dragging the clothes to the ground. In the winter the clothes would freeze dry and the freezing temperatures made the sheets whiter than white, infusing the towels and clothing with the clean smell of God’s open country air. In the summer sheets would often be laid out on the green grass allowing nature’s bleach, the chlorophyll and sun, to take out any stains. Grandma knew how to make the tools of nature work for her.

Once the laundry was dry, folded in baskets and brought into the kitchen, Grandma would iron all of the family clothes and sheets with a heavy solid iron heated on the kitchen coal stove top that today I would be pressed to even lift once without complaining.

She planted the vegetable garden every year. I remember helping her hoe the straight rows between the beans, lettuce, and strawberries. I can still see her bending over with her stovepipe bonnet huffing and puffing going about her work. I loved helping her pick strawberries ( one for me, one for the basket) and wondered while I filled my basket how she could gather pea and bean pods by folding up the corners of her long apron to make a sack for the pods.

But, I think, looking back, the best part of the day was when Grandma would let me tag along to the chicken coop in the morning to gather eggs. She taught me how to gently remove the eggs from the nests. I still remember how warm they felt as I caressed them in my hands before placing them in her basket. Sometimes I couldn’t resist putting the warm eggs against my cheeks so that I could feel their warmth on those chilly farm mornings.

“Here chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick.”

I can hear her soft voice calling her chickens as she lovingly allowed her grandchild to awkwardly throw handfuls of feed on the ground and sharing my excitement at watching the chickens run and peck, peck, peck, gobbling up their day’s nutrition.

The last memories I have of her and me together, my sweet grandma, is my sitting by her bedside after school and reading her the jokes from my Weekly Reader. Her gray curly hair pulled back in a pompadour style bun, her head resting on her pillow, she would quietly laugh as though she really liked the comfort I was trying to give her. Even in what would be her last days, Grandma was still working for her family. Giving me her last ounces of love.

My grandmother and those wives and mothers of her generation are the epitome of the adage of what they say, ” From sun to sun, a woman’s work is never done.”

Love you Grandma. I haven’t worked nearly as hard as you, or been loved as deeply as you, but, all things considered, life has been good to me and your other grandchildren. I think you would be happy to know that.

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