"Come Here. I Want To See You."

Let me begin by saying that some may find this to be a bit dark or sad.  It is not meant to be that way at all.  It is meant to be a reminder – mostly for me – to stop and smell the roses. 
My blogs are always filled with random thoughts that probably make no sense to anyone except me.  If you know my children, they will clearly tell you that it is “all about me”, so they are used to it.

“Come here, I want to see you.”  How many times have I said those words?  How many people have I said them to?  How many times have you said them?   I never realized that they were the words used in the very first phone conversation between Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson. I learned that little piece of trivia lately while reading “The First Phone Call From Heaven” by Mitch Albom. The story describes that event and goes on to say,  “Since then, in the uncountable human phone conversations that have taken place, that concept has never been far from our lips.  Come here.  I want to see you.  Impatient lovers.  Long - distance friends.  Grandparents talking to grandchildren.  The telephone voice is but a seduction, a breadcrumb to an appetite.”
 

While reading the book, I learned (someone will probably inform me that this is false) that the earliest spark from the telephone came when Bell was still in his teens.  “He noticed how, if he sang a certain note near an open piano, the string of that note would vibrate, as if singing back to him.  The idea of connecting voices through a wire was born.  But it was not a new idea.  We call out; we are answered.

We call out to those who are near to us and those who are far away. (At least I hope we do. I have tried to be better at that of late.) We call out to those who have gone before us.  I don’t think we believe that we will do that until someone that we dearly love goes before us. So often in our lives, we push the voices of those who are so close to us away – and then when they are gone, we reach out to try and bring them back to us in every way that we can. I wonder why it is that we do that.  I wonder why it is that we do not appreciate the things that we have in the moment that we have them.

In the same time frame that I was experiencing these random thoughts, a friend emailed me and asked if I thought younger women really got the concept of living in the moment like us older folk. After I got over my chagrin at being cast into the older folk category, I thought about it. I suppose it is how one defines living ‘in the moment’.  For some, it is doing what you want when and how you want  – regardless of the consequences.  For others, it is the fullness of a happy moment.  No, it is more than that.  It is the ability to recognize that moment and being able to celebrate it to the fullest and to remember the people who shared those moments with you.  I am not sure that it has to do with age…but more where we are in our life process, regardless of our age…our emotional age as opposed to our chronological age. 

As I started to write my thoughts, I was focusing on the fact that all of these instances took place during the Thanksgiving Holiday this year.  Perhaps that was a trigger for the thoughts that were running through my head.  Thanksgiving was different this year. Overall, it was quieter – except for trotting with the turkeys.  

We were only four at the table.  Some live too far away to come for such short holiday and others have gone before us. But as I really began to think about it, these thoughts began to come to me long before the holiday. For the last couple of years, I have felt the need to reach out to friends and relatives that I had not seen in many years.  I have no idea why, but I am so glad that I did – and I still have a couple to find.  The skill of locating people has changed. For those that I had not seen in years, I did not find any of them using a phone book. I located them in short order using computer searches that I never believed I would be able to succeed at.   The language of communication has changed. For those we love the most, we were able to say”  “Can we Skype?  We want to see you.”  They called and we answered.

Just before Thanksgiving, I was watching television and heard the story of a beloved restaurateur from New Hampshire. The owner of the Windmill Family Restaurant had passed away in August after a long battle with cancer. “Louis Smirnioudis opened his restaurant in 1992, was a long-time community booster in Concord, often donating money and gift certificates to charity and hosting a free Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless in his restaurant, an event that former Gov. John Lynch often attended. Last year, the Windmill was awarded with a Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce Pinnacle Small Business of the Year Award and during a short speech, Smirnioudis shared his story about coming to America as a teenager from Greece and dreaming of owning his own restaurant, a dream that later came true. He was diagnosed with cancer two years ago but still managed to come into the restaurant – especially at times when he could give back.  In recent years, his son Kosmas Smirnioudis and other family members continued to run the restaurant and carry on his traditions. The love and pride that his son demonstrated as he spoke about his father was beautiful to see.  His family did not have the luxury of calling him, but they clearly knew what he wanted them to do in his absence. They knew what to do in the moment.  He had modeled that for them during the time that they did have together. I have no doubt that he found ways to let them know how proud he was of them.   I wished that I could call him and ask him to share his wisdom.


Within a very short period of time, a friend posted something on face book.  I think it was you, Carolyn.  “I love Thanksgiving. I love that we set aside a day to remind ourselves of everything good in our lives. Such a simple thing...to remember, and be truly grateful. This is a thanksgiving poem- or prayer (although usually they are one in the same for me). What are you grateful for this year? So today, and maybe everyday, let us remember a small wonder and an unexpected kindness. Let us remember someone who stopped what they were doing - busy as they were, and listened. Let us remember what healed us when we had been so harmed, remember the first crocus of spring coming up through the snow and being awakened by a summer moon so round and bright it would not allow us to go back sleep. Let us remember the fresh strawberries and cherished old friends some now gone beyond the seeable horizon. Let us remember first shocking breath of winter air and the first gold leaf floating down and like a miracle landing right in the palm of a grateful hand.” (By Carrie Newcomer)  What a beautiful way of describing living “in the moment”.  All of us need more moments and we need to learn how to celebrate the ones that we have even more joyously.

I also read the story of a runner on Face book. I believe his name was Jim.   He died while out for a run.  His wife requested that all of his friends wear running clothes to the funeral in celebration rather than in sadness. The picture that accompanied the article showed many of his friends following the hearse – running.  I wanted to call him and say”  “Come here.  I want to see you.”  I want you to share those things that you did – those moments of greatness that made people want to celebrate your life. I want to know why people loved and respected you and chose to spend time with you.

That article reminded me of a dear friend – Jerry Morgan.  Jerry was the recipient of a heart transplant and served as a volunteer at Central School. He wanted to give back for the gifts that he had received.  How he loved the little people that he visited with.   Jerry became one of our greatest champions and we numbered among his most devoted admirers.  Jerry appreciated every moment that he had – and he worked hard to make those around him appreciate their moments.  Jerry also went for a run one day and did not come home.  He has never been forgotten though – he clearly set the model for a life well lived.  Another of my Face book friends recently lost her mother. She said in one of her writings the other day that she wished there was a phone that could be used to call heaven. I have thought that about Jerry – and many others.  I would love to call and say, “Come here.  I want to see you.”  It is important to remember though, that those are not the important words. The important words would follow. The important words would be a back and forth conversation regarding love and admiration and joy. Something like:  “I want to tell you how much I valued you as a person and how much you influenced my life.” I think many of us have discovered that we can do that without a communication device – other than the very simple one known as the heart. You don’t need the phone Sam.  You have the connection in your heart.  I loved The First Phone Call From Heaven.  I know that some will hate it.  Some will not want to waste their time reading about the impossible, something that there is no hope of achieving – no one would have faith that it could come to be - something that no one in their right mind would believe in.   At one point in the story, Sully accuses Horace of giving the citizens of their town false hope.  Horace asks:  “What can be false about hope?”

…and as the book ends, the reader is told:  “It has been that way from the beginning of belief, and it continues to this very moment, when, late at night, in a small town, a seven-year-old boy hears a noise, opens his eyes, lifts a blue toy to his ear, and smiles, proving heaven is always and forever around us, and no soul remembered is ever really gone. That small child had hope – which grew into faith and Faith, it is said, is better than belief, because belief is when someone else does the thinking.  As each of us “does the thinking”, I hope that we celebrate all the moments that we have had and will have.  Come here, I want to see you………..

…so, I haven’t done a blog for a bit.  I am not even sure if I can remember how to do it.  It was a busy, fun-filled, and VERY happy summer.  Once the Japanese Contingent sadly left our driveway, I had to find something to do to fill the quiet, so I went back to reading.  Nothing deep –nothing-meaty – mostly easy readers to pass the time.  It is amazing that you can find something to think about – even in an easy reader.

I love reading books by Kathy Reichs.  I enjoy the show, but I LOVE the books.  I think it is because I can visualize the characters the way I want them to be. In her recent book, Bones of the Lost, she adds a different type of an epilogue.  She gives a variety of reasons that caused her to write this particular book...some of them professional and some of them personal.  She described how she changed some characteristics of a particular person that she knew to create a character in the book or adapted the setting of a case that she had worked on and wove them together. She ends with the following quote:  “Professional.  Personal.  Free -ranging data bytes in my brain.  Disconnected facts, memories, and impressions reconfigured.  Viola:  A new Temperance Brennan novel is born.”

That rang bells with me.  I guess when you get to a certain age your days are filled with disconnected facts, memories, and impressions.  Reichs says that she reconfigures them.  I have always said that they blend so that I am not sure if I am remembering them correctly or not.  However, it was that phrase that got be back to the thought of creating yet another blog.  I feel my children cringing.

It seems to be disconnected phrases that have caught my attention of late.  The one that got me thinking was ‘forward and back’.  I must have read it or heard it somewhere because it is not a term that I would use.  I would say back and forth – but however you say it, over the past many months, I have seen that phrase put into action repeatedly. 

Perhaps part of it was related to the countdown to almost all  of our family being here – here in the same place at the same time – if only for a short while.  But, there was a back and forth to the countdown.  It was wonderfully exciting to watch the numbers go down to their arrival – and it seemed to take forever. 

However, once they arrived, I had to remind myself to celebrate every moment that we were together and not to think about the speed in which the days were flying by.  I was not always successful.

I had two experiences with forward and back that took place in Maine over the summer.  This is where my disconnected thoughts became somewhat intertwined.  Somehow, the concept of age began to mingle with the concept of forward and back.  Forward and back and the aging process are clearly connected however you look at them.

In the first, David and I had gone to Wells for a short visit to enjoy the beach and see our old friends, the Kimball family.  I was sitting on the beach, watching people play in the waves.  I was smiling to myself thinking that in a few short weeks, we would be doing that with Louis, Mana, and the cousins.  Suddenly, I saw an elderly gentleman in dress pants and a beautifully pressed shirt wearing highly polished loafers striding down the beach.  He had a shock of pure white hair that was reflecting the sunlight.  He would leap over puddles that had been created by the waves and continue rushing down the beach where he walked up the stairs to the sidewalk.  He strode on and was soon out of my vision.  A few minutes later, I looked up the beach to find him walking down the second set of steps and repeating his rapid walk.  Each time he would come down the stairs, he would check his watch.  While I was watching, he repeated the process 11 times before disappearing from my sight.  I had so many unanswered questions about why he was walking back and forth in that manner.

In the second, we were there with the Japanese Contingent for several days. David and I were watching Mana play in the puddles as well as watching the others brave the waves.  I saw an elderly lady walking the beach wearing a bright purple dress, salmon crocs, and a wide brimmed red straw hat.  (My first thought was that it was one of my Aunts)  To complete the outfit, she had donned a bright yellow life vest.  She would walk down the beach and back – as if looking for someone.  I had so many unanswered questions about where she was going and where she had been.  If I were truly a storyteller, I would create a scene where the elderly gentleman reappeared the two lovers found each other after being separated for years…I digress.

Based on personal experience, I could not help but wonder if their mothers had instilled in them a fear of going too far…I know mine did.  I have many memories of day trips to Hampton Beach during the summer – but never being allowed to go down onto the sand because if I got too close to the water, I might be swept away.  I wonder what she would have thought if she had seen me in the waves in Aruba this year.  I must say that I could still hear that voice telling me to be careful.  I did not wear a life vest, but I never went in without my noodle.  (Moving forward, I have already purchased a doodle for next year – I will never have to purchase a noodle again.)

During the summer and even this fall, I have had the opportunity to watch boats going back and forth in beautiful bodies of water.  I have been told that some of them were trolling.  I find that an interesting way to say  forward and back.  We do troll our way through life - moving forward and back in regards to people, places, and things.  What is SO important to us in one moment becomes practically insignificant depending on where we are on our individual path.

At some point during the summer, I again saw the old quote about those important people in our lives that we do not see for years.  Suddenly you find a time to be together and you pick up right where you left off – it is like you have never been apart.  We go back and forth in our relationships with our families and with our friends.  Eight years ago this past summer, we planned a trip to Maine to see the Kimball’s.  We had dinner at Litchfield’s.  Although we said we would do it again, time passed by, and we did not.  This year when they said they were going to be in Maine, I decided that we were going to go come hell or high water – and go we did.  They cooked for us and entertained us and it did not seem possible that eight years had gone by.  We were all the same.  Although we had moved forward, it was simple to go back in time.  There it was again – forward and back.

It seems as though it has been a year where people have come back into our lives. My cousin Tracey has come back into our lives and is presently planning a second trip to visit her New Hampshire family. There was a day when I was thinking of my cousin Sissy and through the marvels of technology, I found her in less than an hour.  We have met and had dinner – and we MUST do it again!

When we were in Florida, I had the opportunity to spend time with my college roommate.  We shared good times and bad for our entire time at Lyndon State – and have not seen each other since.  Of course we do live quite a distance from one another – me In New

Hampshire and Tanya in Connecticut!  David got to see many of his relatives earlier in the summer, many whom he had not seen in years. When I look at the reasons for many – actually the majority of these ‘refindings’, most of them are related to sad events. Why do we let the time pass by without seeing those who have been important pieces in our lives?

Shortly after I started taking the words for this blog from my cluttered mind and putting them on my notepad, one of my newer friends made a post to Face Book.  Timing truly is everything.  “Some of the most precious things in the world are your true friends. Ones that you haven't seen in almost 30 years but they are still there for you when you need someone to support you and calm your fears. Ones that even though they're across the US letting you know that they're there for you and you for them. Hold your friends close to your heart...they help keep this crazy world sane.”

On each of our trips to Maine, we had to visit the Goldenrod.  We drove by Shelton’s, one of my favorite shops.  I mentioned to David that I did not ever remember going to York without stopping in and buying something that I really did not need.  I later thought about that a great deal.  Perhaps my life has reached a place where I am filling it with people instead of things?  There are things that I still love and want, but I don’t seem to need them as much any more.  I continue to need the people I know and love.

In one of my easy readers, I came across this phrase:   “Velvet Nights and Silver Mornings”.  I know that it came from one of the Eve Duncan books by Iris Johansen.  Two characters were talking and one wished the other velvet nights and silver mornings.  They discussed the fact that originally this was probably a phrase meant for lovers, but went on to say:  “They can come from mothers, fathers, sisters, good friends – yes, definitely good friends.  All of them can your change your world.”

In order to close this series of free ranging data-bytes before Christmas, I will share one more forward and back experiences that connects itself to age and friendship – and it made me cry.  Hell, it made David cry.

While we were in Aruba, we journeyed down to Hut 56 each morning and spent at least six hours there each day.  I had no need to visit the shops.  I had no need to visit the sights that I had seen before.  I simply wanted to sit and “be”.  Hut 56 is the closest hut to the beach and there were several huts just behind it.  A large group of people sat behind us each day.  None of them were young.  In fact, they made us look like teenagers.  It was evident from their discussions that some

of them were ‘family’ but families had connected with other families over 30 years of timesharing at the same place at the same time.  They had created a network of families who looked forward to seeing each other every year.  On any given day, there were between fifteen or twenty of them who clustered themselves around several huts.  We could hear them discussing how they had fared at the Casino the night before or which new restaurant they had sampled.  They told hilarious stories about each other that had taken place while they were together in their home away from home.  They shared stories about their children and grandchildren and remembered times that they were there with them.  Each of those conversations would end with a reminder to come on Friday.

Every day at noon, a bell would ring out across the beach.  That was the signal for half price drinks at the bar.  Every day at noon, the group would rise and slowly make their way to the bar.  When the bell rang on Friday, the group rose again, but they slowly made their way to the beach.  At the same time, elderly people moved toward them from the left and the right and formed a half circle facing the water.  The youngest of them faced the group and put his hand out to a beautiful lady and brought her to stand beside him.  He pinned a corsage to her beach cover up and kissed her cheek.  She handed him what looked to be a beautiful clamshell.  He held it up for all to see and said:  “Tony, we miss you this year.  You have gone to God.  You are with God.  But we know that this is where you want to be with God and with all of us.  See you next year.”  For the first time in all our days there, the bell rang again and the group slowly passed us on their way to the bar, many of them with tears streaming down their cheeks.  They were greeted outside of the bar where a luncheon had been set up and they continued their celebration of the life and death of their friend. 

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words.  This event gave me the true meaning of Velvet Nights and Silver Mornings – and that is what I wish for all of us, wherever our ships may sail. 

The Power of Our Words

For a couple of weeks now I have been thinking about a blog.  It came to me while I was in Florida.  It came to me at different times and in different ways.  It kept coming to me – and I did nothing with it.  Today may be the day.

It had to do with words.  Words are everywhere and they come to us in different ways.  They can be written or spoken.  They can be unsaid.  They can be unheard.  They can be un-responded to.  But, they are there and they surround us.  On this particular vacation – for some reason – words were on my mind.

As I thought about words, I thought about a book that many educators are familiar with.  It is titled The Power of Our Words.   Reading that book causes us to contemplate the words that we use and the impact that they have on others.  I know that I read it and thought about it a great deal.  I would like to say that I always practice what I know to be true from that book, but that would be an untruth.

I digress.  What was the catalyst that got me thinking about words?  There were many.  Several of them came to me prior to vacation, so perhaps the pump was primed. 

I have a habit of reading the obituaries on a daily basis.  I think it is to make sure that I am not listed there.   Many describe people who have done wonderful things.  As I read those words, my thoughts go in two directions.  If I knew the person being memorialized, those words might clearly remind me of the person and the things that I knew about them.  If they are written about someone I did not know, I sometimes find myself wanting to know more about the person behind the words.  What did they do to cause those specific words to be used as descriptors of them as living and breathing human beings?

I then found a new gimmick on the Internet.  There is a site where you can learn about your classmates.  I played around with it for a while – until it got to the point where it was going to cost me money.  Then I stopped.  At one point, I was offered the opportunity to fill out a checklist on former classmates.  It supplied a list of words that I could check off as describing that person.  I chose my old friend, Forrest Kimball – and attempted to work my way through that list.  It was almost as difficult as working through the Graduate Record Exams.  I kept asking myself questions such as:  “What does that word really mean?”  “Which day am I thinking about when I would use that word to describe him”? 

In my mind, I actually went back to a time years ago when I was teaching elementary school.   The TABA method was used in the educational field.  Hilda Taba had created a strategy where students would brainstorm a list of words to describe a topic.  They would then be broken down into categories.  Students had to create the categories from looking at the list.   They then used this process to flesh out their topic and choose a prescribed number of words from the various categories.  (Anybody old enough to remember this besides me?)  They would then need to write a report that included those words correctly.  They would need to share their report and they would be responsible for the spelling and correct usage.   I could create categories about my friend and I could put many of the descriptors into categories – but it did not help me give a full picture of that person.

I could not help but wonder if the people who stopped to sit ever read the words on the back of this bench.

I wondered what the difference that this person had made was.

On our vacation, we stayed at the Jupiter Reef Club.  Some days, we would walk the beach.  Other days, we would walk the highway route to the Juno Pier.  I noticed that there were signs and benches along the way.  Each had been given in memory of someone who had died.  Each contained words.  Some were lengthy; some were short.  David got rather cross with me the day that I brought the camera and stopped to take pictures of some of the memorials.  I guess it slowed our pace.  He did not say anything – yet I knew that he was cross.  It made me realize that our words are powerful – even when they are implied.

This one touched me the most.  You can not see it, but it holds several surf boards and eloquently describes the young man who had been lost too soon.

 

One hotel caught my eye.  It was named CORINTHIANS.  I smiled when I saw that.  We used readings from that at our wedding and at our vow renewal ceremony.  I had to have a picture of it.  I have since discovered that it is not a hotel.  It is a condo where people live!  I wonder if living in a space with that word for a name helps you live the type of life described in Corinthians?  I was surprised when we attended Church that Sunday and the reading included:  “Love is patient.  Love is kind.”  Words – easily spoken…sometimes difficult to live.

Later that week, I was thumbing through a local newspaper.  A woman had written an article about her recent trip to New York.  She described the day where she was having lunch with a younger friend whom she had not seen in years.  They were so busy talking that they were not reading the menu.  The third time the waiter came back, he looked at the younger patron whom he knew and jokingly started to say “are you holding this be…” when he looked at the second person and said “nice lady”.   Something in his tone or his expression made her feel that he was going to say beautiful lady – until he looked at her.  She actually went on to say that she thought he was going to say ‘beautiful, young lady’.  Whether he was or not, I will never know.  But the author – in that moment – perceived that. She stated that in that very moment, it was as if a mirror was placed in front of her and illuminated every wrinkle and line that she had accumulated over the years. 

My vacation – as always, was filled with what some might call “junk reading”.  I guess those could be considered powerful words.  I was reading the book Heartbroken by Lisa Unger.  The book centered on a family in a time of crisis.  The mom was going through a difficult time supporting her children through the aging process and dealing with her own mother who seemed to only have negative thoughts and words in her repertoire.  At one point, the mom rephrased a quote that I know we have all heard.  After an extremely negative interaction with her mother she said:  “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can break my heart.”  Ahhhh, the power of words.

My goal for the week is to choose a positive word each day – and live it.  And I will try to remember the famous words of my mother:  "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."