Category: Over age fifty

Not Today. I Have A Headache!

  
Yesterday, I was sitting most of the day with a pounding headache right above my eye, feeling like it was going to explode out of its socket. I very rarely get a headache, but I went swimming earlier in the morning and got chlorine water up my nose trying out my Esther Williams skills and somehow my sinuses were quite offended by the intrusion into their space and decided to punish me.  
 

While my eye socket was pounding out of my head and I was feeling very old and in need of some TLC, the phone rang. NO CALLER ID. I usually don’t pick up those calls, but my eye pain short circuited my brain and I picked up. 

Now if you are a mother. If you have always been a take charge, fix everyone’s problems, tower of strength mother. If you are a mother of anything- kids, dogs, cats, Guinea pigs, your husband, you’re going to understand this story. 

“Mother,” my daughter said in almost a whisper because it was during the day and she works for the DOJ and she never ever calls me from work. Never. Ever.  

“Mother, I’m sorry you haven’t heard from me, but it’s my phone. I don’t have one.”

 “What?! (The exclamation point here is important) The brand-new super expensive iPhone 6 Plus with the maximum amount of memory you just bought last week that your mother lusts after and can’t afford?”

“Yes. Well… it got run over.”
  

Silence. “What do you mean ‘it got run over’?”  

(Somehow with bad news my kids still revert to their six-year-old days when telling the truth right out of the slot is still very difficult.)

“Well……I forgot it was on the top of the car and I drove away and ran over it.”

“OK.” I said, trying to ignore my screaming sinus cavity. “At least it wasn’t my dog this time ( that’s another sad story we both lived through) ……being new, your insurance will cover it.”

“Hummm…. I didn’t take the coverage….but….” she whispered so her guilt of not insuring her pricy phone….and probably her colleagues ears were muted. ” I worked out a deal with Apple and it’s only going to cost me $150 to replace it.”  

I didn’t even dare ask her the details about “the deal”. I can only imagine. 

After a few short inquiries about how I was, I pulled a motherly fib ( my children call that ‘martyr speak’) and said I felt great and let her get back to her legal work. All visions of some much needed TLC evaporated into reality. Sigh. All of those childhood kissed scrapes and hugs when it was the best medicine for what ailed her disappeared through the airwaves that separated us. 

My phone rings a lot. I’m always happy when it’s one of my children with updated news about their lives. Positive news. My nose is pressed against their windows hoping to witness the good stuff.  

  
Whatever idiot spread the notion that once your children are grown and out of the house your job is done and you can go merrily along your way in your own life. NOT. You will always be the sounding board. The anchor. The cheerleader. And maybe the first to hear their troubles and last to hear of their successes. And you just have to live forever. Really! End of story!

Copyright©Sandra Hart 2016. All rights reserved

FAMILY REUNION MEMORIES

  

I don’t know about you, but my childhood memories are very much a part of who I am especially now that I’m older and I’ve had a lot of time to think about my childhood and how it actually molded me into the person blogging here today.

I have often alluded to my thoughts on  one of the saddest things about families today is that we are spread so far apart many times because of the way the world is now. The old fashioned nuclear family, unless you’re one of the lucky ones, is not intact and not what it used to be. 

A television colleague of mine I worked with back in the 70s recently posted on Facebook a video that brought back so many delightful memories for me of my early summers back in Ohio. Because of my grandparents having 10 children, our parent’s extended family was extremely large so every year we would have a Lewis family reunion at a park in Canton, Ohio called Myers Lake.
  
 My brother and I always looked forward to this one summer’s outing to Myers Lake, not only because we could see all of our aunts and uncles and cousins, but the thoughts of all the great amusement rides that they had in the park. 
  

Sherman and most of my cousins enjoyed the roller coaster, the Ferris wheel and other spinning rides. Just watching everyone go up and down and whirl around made me dizzy. From my beginning motion sickness has been my curse, so I found happiness with a younger cousin in trying to win things. My favorites were all the toss games where you could win prizes. (I still have a prized pussy willow carnival glass vase that I won one year at a Myers Lake concession stand that I recently saw on eBay worth quite a lot). 
  
Aren’t we who we are because of who we were as children and how we interpreted life events? Perhaps those early experiences with compensating for my DNA flaws by ‘winning’ became the foundation for overcoming later life challenges and the embryo of my life’s successes.  

As my grandson said to me the other day during a conversation about November’s election, “Nana, you grew up in the best of times. I think your’s was the greatest generation.” So true. Sadly for the Millenniums, so true. 

Copyright©Sandra Hart. 2016. All Rights Reserved.

THANK YOU FACEBOOK

  

( Recent events have reminded me how important family is. I am also reminded of how special extended family can be, cousins especially. One of my second cousins, Nyna Giles, is writing a memoir about her mother*, my first cousin Carolyn, and another second cousin, Kacy Ferrar, recently posted the picture above on Facebook. Both of these have taken me back to my own memories of my cousins and Grandma’s house. I dedicate this to all of them.)

            

  

My mother grew up with nine brothers and sisters. As a result of that reality my brother and I inherited 18 first cousins on the maternal side.

The best part of that is we were born with friends. Every holiday or special occasion we would pile into grandma’s dining room with us cousins sometimes overflowing into the kitchen. None of us jitterbugs ever minded being set up at the long table covered with oil cloth because it meant we were out from under our parents noses. 

Pigtails could be pulled, unwanted food easily gotten rid of by a quick shove onto someone else’s plate and kicks under the table couldn’t be reprimanded.  

All of us flying in and out around that farm house like wild honey bees during those gatherings, the joy we all felt as children, as cousins, of just being, escaped us. We thought it would last forever. Of course, it didn’t. 

As I have written about so often, soon after the war prosperity was beginning to bloom and most of my aunts and uncles moved to various parts of the state and country where they could find work. Thus the fracturing of the close knit family began and my loving ties to my cousins unraveled.

My mother, though,  remained very close to her four sisters and brother who lived nearby. They were the threads that kept us cousins connected as we grew up and went our own way as adults, leaving behind fading memories of Grandma’s kitchen and a life that would never again be. We were never to be together again in that utopian state. Nor were we to know then that the only gatherings later on where some of us could reacquaint ourselves would be when we were grieving the loss of one of our own.
  

Christmas cards would be exchanged by a few of us throughout the years, but basically I would say most of us lost touch for many years. Everyone seemed busy with their own lives, their own children in their own dining rooms and kitchens during the years. Looking back, I realize it was such a loss of time for all of us. 

   
 
Perhaps the longest relationship as a young adult for me would’ve been with my older cousin Carolyn in New York. Carolyn was like me more than any of my other cousins.  Most of them were just happy to get married, have children and work at what they liked. I was different.   I had been born with big dreams. I couldn’t help it. It just was. Dreams of something beyond my existence in the small industrial town where I lived.

 My cousin Carolyn, when I was still young, was able to fly away and realize her dreams. She was our family’s shining star. She was the one who had made it. It was Carolyn. She was the hand that was there to pull me out and inspire me to not be afraid of wanting more. Unfortunately, as the cruelty of life sometimes reveals itself, throughout the years, circumstantially, no one was there with an understanding hand for her. 

I guess the point of all this retrospective and what inspired this blog is that through Facebook I have been able to connect with so many members of my extended family that throughout the years I have lost. My cousins, second cousins, maternal cousin’s, fraternal cousins are back. We’re not sitting in the kitchen at Grandma’s table in Ohio, but we are connected and we are back as an extended family. For that I am most grateful. Thank you Facebook. 

Copyright© Sandra Hart 2016. All Rights Reserved

* The Bridesmaid’s Daughter, Nyna Giles (coming 2017/18)

NEW YEAR REFLECTIONS

  
 As we head toward New Year with the Christmas holiday getting further behind us I was reflecting that Christmas memories live forever. I can remember almost every childhood Christmas like it was yesterday. The bright tree covered with angel hair that just appeared magically on Christmas morning. The heavenly aroma of turkey cooking in every house we passed as we walked home from early Christmas services at church. The itchy new scarf wrapped around my neck Mother insisted I wear to keep from catching pneumonia. The presents under the tree, opened early and waiting. But most of all it was family. With ten aunts and uncles and their spouses my brother and I inherited lots of cousins and good times during the holidays.

After spending a lifetime celebrating Christmas where the four seasons would bring cold weather and if lucky, snow to accompany the celebration of the birth in the manger, I have to admit, as hard as I try, it’s hard for me to get into the Christmas spirit here in Florida.

During the 20 years we have been snowbirds, spending the winter in Florida, I’ve always taken solace in seeing the beautiful Christmas trees in the shopping areas and in the lobbies of the apartment buildings as we pass by. I have always tried not to let the tropical weather dampen my Christmas spirit. This Christmas was especially hard for me. Not only because this is the first year I have not spent Christmas with at least one of my children. Something has changed. Something that has a deeper meaning.

Yes, there are a few Christmas trees in the business establishments and public areas, but that’s just about all. Gone are the beautiful trees in the apartment building lobbies. I’ve seen a few trees shining down from the big glass windows in the high-rise apartments, but there is a darkness at the street level this Christmas that I have never experienced before. Political correctness? I can’t think of any other reason why lobbies with buildings that contain multiple ethnicities and religions have opted not to put up Christmas trees for the first time in 20 years.  

For years many of my friends who are not Christians have put up a tree, exchanged gifts and celebrated Christmas or Hanukkah with the meaning that it’s a new beginning – a celebration of giving and sharing and being of one community. 

What I see happening here is more disturbing than not celebrating with lighted trees at this time of year. What I see is a world in which we are slowly losing a way of life that we have sacrificed and fought so hard to keep. The generations before me were dedicated to ensure that the next generation will have the same freedoms their generation inherited. 
Unfortunately, I think that we are slowly losing our way as to how wonderful it is to be an American with all the freedoms and privileges that our ancestors have sacrificed so greatly to secure. 

The millenniums of America and those of us baby boomers who appreciate our freedoms had better turn off our iPhones, start taking to one other and work toward protecting the life we have been given. Wake up America before it is too late. Political correctness and apathy are taking over. I already see the slide toward a country I hardly recognize. I never thought I would live to see an America in decline.   
Talk about slippery slopes!

I DON’T WANT TO DANCE THE RHUMBA

I woke up with a start. It was three o’clock in the morning and my heart was doing an unwanted rhumba in my chest. There was no pain, but the dance in my chest was frightening. I had never experienced anything like this before. 

Since my late teen years I had suffered from palpitations and it wasn’t until I was in my 50’s that I was told I had been born with extra pathways in my heart that sometimes caused my heart to palpitate. ( Not genetic, but an anomaly.) A new technique called Radio Frequency Ablation stopped my palpitations and I finally was relieved of the disruptive disorder.

This was something entirely different. Of course, it was Sunday so I knew it would be beyond a miracle if my doctor was available. Arthur and I headed for the Emergency Room at Mt. Sinai here In Miami Beach, just ten minutes away.  

My rhumba-loving heart not wanting to stop its erratic dancing, fifty-six hours later I was sedated and a proficient electro cardiologist zapped my heart back into sinus rhythm. No one knows why people experience a one – time Atrial Fibrillation. Even athletes experience AF, so it not always has to do with physical fitness. All I know it is no fun and very scary. And it also helps one put life into perspective. We are here for just a blink of an eye in relativity, so let us meander not.

Those days in the hospital gave me time to stop and look objectively at my life and how I was living it. I knew had to reinvent who I am. Tweak my innate self a bit. So from the day I walked out of Mt. Sinai I am trying to throw WORRY out the window along with my Type A personality and brought in my deep faith, Deepac Chopra, Andrew Johnson’s meditations and have embraced the love of my wonderful family.  

I continue to exercise, follow my peleo-pescatarian diet, and meditate daily. Lifelong Type A’s are hard to train, but I am trying to let go and let my Higher Power work things out for me. I’m giving up my driver’s seat, finally, after all these years. I don’t want to be one who has gotten too smart too late.

Facebook- Are You Wasting My Life?

Next time you’re in a bad mood, resist the urge to try and cheer yourself up by checking Facebook. It likely won’t work, according to a recent study, reports Rebecca Hiscott, Editorial Fellow, HuffPost Business. 

The reason? Even more than other areas of the Internet, Facebook makes you feel like you’re wasting your life.

I spend a lot of time on Facebook due to the fact that I am host to three different Facebook pages; my professional page, my personal page, and one of my son’s Facebook professional fan pages.

I’ve been sitting here today waiting for a new furnace to be installed in the back of the house so I have a lot of time on my hands with nothing much productive going on except for the simmering vegetable soup on the stove. Which brings me to Facebook and all the time that I spend with my FB friends.

I started thinking about exactly what posts are in my newsfeed. What is the profile of my friends and their interests. Just exactly what shows up as I scroll my newsfeed every day? Are the posts in my newsfeed a mirror of me?

Well, a lot, a whole lot of my friends love animals. Dogs, cats, kittens and unusual friendships between domestic and wild life. Videos that have circulated forever of cute, crazy and rescued animals. Then there was that crazy dentist who killed Cecil, Zimbabwe’s beloved lion. A favorite. My friends, including me, couldn’t get enough of that dentist of death! A pox on him!
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My Facebook friends and I share envious pictures of food – where we ate it and what we were doing and who we were with while we were having a good time eating food and taking pictures of it, including not-always-so-flattering selfie’s with our friends while eating at that marvelous place. I kind of feel left out of the good times when I see these friends of mine celebrating while I am sitting at home wracking my brain for a blog idea, or alone with a pile of laundry looking at me. They may be right on that point if you never ever have anything going on in your own life.
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There are the political posts and gun issue posts. This is where my friends divide. I find a spectrum of diversity on both of those issues, each friend so sure their conclusions are right. I have always believed that friends and politics don’t mix, so it is only on a rare occasion that I stick my nose into any divisive issue, rather than to have it bitten off. I don’t think FB is a forum of persuasion. Just my opinion.

And music. I love music and many of my friends also find music to be an integral part of their lives and we share all kinds of music information on Facebook. I love these posts. 

Finally, there are the myriad of shared posts with affirmations about how much we love being mothers, daughters, sisters and friends. 
Someone said to me the other day that when she logs onto Facebook and sees all of these people socializing and having a good time it makes her feel lonely. So maybe the studies are right, but I doubt in the very near future that people are going to walk away from Facebook. 
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In the meantime, in my own personal non-scientific study I do find that my friends mirror who I am and what I’m interested in reading about; with the exception of politics and keeping my nose out of it.

Copyright Sandra Hart 2015©. All rights reserved.
 

 
 

Postcard From The Edge Of A Hurricane

  

Carrie, Eloise, Belle, David and Gloria. Charlie, Chris and Allison, Gabrielle and Hugo. Claus, Marco and Bob, Andrew. Danielle, Beryl, Gordon, Aaron, Felix, Bertha, Ethel, Edward, Fran, Danny. Bonnie, Dennis, Floyd, and then there’s was Sandy.  

No. These are not baby names I have considered in my lifetime. They are the tropical cyclones my family and I have weathered living on the New Jersey Shore since the early 70’s. Gloria was the naughty girl who blew off my roof over the living room. We New Jersey Shore folks, between the months of June and October are under watch for these storms. 

Alone, in the 1990’s, thirteen tropical cyclones affected New Jersey. The 1991 the Halloween Perfect Storm eroded beaches severely along the coast.

 Perfect Storm, caused strong waves of up to 30 feet (9 m) in height. High tides along the shore caused significant bay flooding. Strong waves and persistent intense winds caused extreme beach erosion, amounting to 13.5 million cubic feet (383,000 m) of sand lost in one location. In all, damage amounted to $90 million (1991 USD, $142 million 2008 USD).

Another Halloween storm, that left us without power for about two weeks., Hurricane Sandy (no relation) was the most destructive hurricane ever recorded in New Jersey. The second-costliest hurricane in U.S. history caused widespread, devastating damage and left millions of New Jersey residents, for some two million residents lasting as long as three weeks. 

We were cut off by a huge oak that had fallen across our access road and we survived by cooking in our fireplace stove, gathering wood from the property.  

 When we finally were able to leave our property, the surrounding damage was as though we lived in a war zone. Everything was leveled. Boats plowed into houses that were still standing. Very little of everything was left. 
Sandy became the worst hurricane to affect the state on record, killing 37 and causing nearly $30 billion in damages. The storm surge flooding causes massive destruction. 

 

I know that while you are reading this you’re scratching your head and wondering why anyone would ever live on the New Jersey Shore. Well, I can tell you the answer is we have water in our veins that overpowers the need to live inland.

For me, being able to wake up in the morning and have my coffee with an ocean view is worth the fear of nature’s wrath. The sea inside of me will not let go and all the days I spend breathing in the fresh salt air is well worth a few days of sea worthy courage I have to endure for this magnificent way of life. 

So here I sit very grateful Joaquin has decided not to visit our shores this year. Sure the rain is depressing and the constant days of hearing the wind roar through our mighty oaks gets old. Even the thought of raking up the mess Joaquin has left behind isn’t really bothering me. Because I know tomorrow, or one day soon, the ocean view will come back to great me. All of this making the sea inside of me feeling very blessed, indeed. 

 Copyright Sandra Hart© 2015. All Rights Reserved

Throwback Thursday

  
Every successful musician has a history and usually that history is made up of important people who have helped inspire, shape and teach techniques that natural talents will eventually shape and mold into their own unique musical voice. 

When Emerson was about 10 years old he had such a teacher. I don’t know exactly the history of how they discovered him, but my parents found a young man in Steubenville, Ohio who was giving guitar instructions. That is when Pandel Collaros came into our lives.

I personally have never met Pandel and I don’t know what kind of student Emerson was, or just how long he took lessons, but this young man, Pandel, gave him a start by teaching him the basics of playing a guitar. 

It was wasn’t until I started the Emerson Hart and Tonic News Facebook page that I began thinking about all of the people who were responsible for helping Emerson along the way. That included Pandel. Curious as to what happened to this young man, I searched the Internet and finally found him thirty-five years after those first guitar lessons. And I was not surprised that Pandel has done very well for himself, too. He has not abandoned his love for teaching, nor his music.

Pandel is now a musician and Assistant Professor of music at Bethany College in West Virginia. He teaches music theory, aural skills, audio recording, and popular style guitar music, both acoustic and electric. He is also the founder and director of the Bethany College Rock Ensemble and performs frequently in a variety of area venues.
 

Pandel is a member of the Emerson Hart and Tonic News page. I hope to eventually meet the man who gave my son his first guitar lessons. On this Throwback Thursday I want to thank him for sharing his love of music and great teaching skills, not only to young musicians as Emerson, but to the many students at Bethany College who he has inspired by his love of music and to let him know it’s good to play it forward. As a musician one doesn’t have to be a platinum awarded artist for your life to have meaning. His life has mattered.   His life has mattered. 

Copyright Sandra Hart©. All Rights Reserved

Home Is Where The Heart Is

  

I was born with an extra chamber in my heart. OK. That’s not exactly the truth. I just have love for three places where I can hang my hat and call home. Period. 

Some of us are happy wanders with a pack on our backs and home is our wanderlust. Some of us are gypsies at heart who pick up and can only live for a short time in one particular place. Then there are those like me and maybe you. We are nesters. I am a nester.

 When I am living on the water it’s the sea inside of me that makes my heart beat. When I am living in the tropical sun it’s the white sandy beaches and swaying palms that warms my heart. Then there is Chelsea. Chelsea makes my creative heart crave to do just that. Every time I’m in Chelsea I long to be back in the theater and back into acting. 

Many mornings in Chelsea I awakened at 4 o’clock to be on the set by six. Night after night, I have taken cab rides home at 1 o’clock in the morning from the theater district, both exhilarated and tired to the bone. The indoor sets for Law and Order were just three blocks away at the Chelsea Piers and many streets shoots were right here in our Chelsea neighborhood where producer, Dick Wolfe lived. It was a good time in my life. It’s not a big revelation nor secret to anyone that it always is better when you’re doing what you love.  

  

I have often had script reads here in our Chelsea apartment with fellow actors. Back in 1999, I wrote my memoir, BEHIND THE MAGIC MIRROR, on a word processor. I did it right here, warmed by the light streaming through our ivy covered windows overlooking the gardens of London Terrace.  All the while unknowingly inspired by the ghosts of numerous Chelsea authors. 
  

The Chelsea Hotel is just a block away going east from here. One must take a deep breath before diving into this list of Chelsea Hotel writers: Mark Twain, Arthur C. Clarke, William S. Burroughs, Leonard Cohen, Jack Kerouac, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Jean-Paul Sartre, Thomas Wolfe, Arthur Miller, Edgar Lee Masters, Brendan Behan and so many others, not to mention all of the musicians who have lived and died there. 

I think most of us are a little schizophrenic in our likes and wants. Sometimes to survive economically we have to have a 9-to-5 existence that is not exactly us and we have dreams of another life we would like to live. Take it from this over-fifty woman,  “Don’t let those dreams die.” There are hours in your life away from the mundane where you can pursue your dreams if you just do it. It is up to you to make it happen.

Martin Luther said, “I have a dream.” He was not alone. Of course as individuals we each have our own dreams. Both you and I may have different dreams. Right now I’ve added a return to acting to my bucket list for next summer, but while we are still here we should each work hard to see our bucket lists fulfilled. Let your dreams awaken. Don’t let them die with life-long regrets. It is never to late.
Copyright Sandra Hart©. All Rights Reserved. 

How To Shop For A Husband

  

 My husband is like no other being I have ever met. He has either the strongest bones in the world, the worst balance, the fastest healing, or the best luck of anyone I have ever met in my life.

 During our thirty year marriage he has tripped and done face plants more than I can count without loosing a tooth or breaking a bone, often fallen off his bike without breaking anything, slipped and landed on me without getting hurt (but dislocated my shoulder) and once narrowly missed drowning in the undertow in Brazil during Carnival.  

He is always scraped, scuffed, and the cause of more dropped iPhones, silverware, broken glasses, dishes, exploding Gorilla glue and other ancillary items that I have to keep replacing. We are definitely keeping the economy alive.

When I was first introduced to Arthur’s boyhood friends they called him ‘Whitey the Smasher.’ The ‘Whitey’ part I could understand because he had beautiful blond hair, but the ‘Smasher’ part I really couldn’t figure out. The mystery revealed itself soon enough on an expensive Oscar de la Renta gown. 

After a few ruined outfits I learned that at weddings and bar mitzvah celebrations I didn’t want to be sitting next to him at the table. It never failed. Whatever he was drinking I would be wearing on my clothes before the evening was over; wine, water, champaign, or coffee. Arthur, that handsome devil of mine, is a spiller, smasher and tripper. 

  

Case in point, several years ago we were at the Friars Club at an event and I had invited Janice Leiberman of the NBC Today Show to join us. I had done several segments for her on Florence Henderson’s morning program and we had become friends. My son and his wife just happened to be in town, also, and I thought she would enjoy meeting everyone. 

Janice arrived in a beautiful cream cashmere outfit that was as stunning as she was beautiful. Within an hour my husband had spilled red wine all over her expensive cashmere outfit. She spent the entire evening looking like a Pollock painting. I’m sure if it had been legal she would’ve killed my husband. 

  

Arthur voluntarily has had brain studies done on him and nothing out of the order shows up. He just physically moves faster than his brain can register. His gray matter is trying to send him a message, but he is too busy to listen. He is a wired Type A personality who at 88 shows no slowing down. So mellow me is used to the ‘oops!’ bangs and crashes and the sound of another dish hitting the floor. It’s just the price I pay for finding a handsome and smart soulmate with a major case of the “Watch out!”-clumsy-dropsies. Hey! None of us are perfect.

  Copyright Sandra Hart. All Rights Reserved