"She Was Quirky, But She Loved Us"

 My brother offered a toast at my aunt’s celebration of life this week that struck me as perfect; “She was quirky, but she loved us”.  With that, eight or ten of us each raised a small glass of Irish whiskey and extended a salud.

Rosemary Holland, my aunt, left us a few weeks ago and the last few months have been a whirlwind.  Rosemary (or Roe to those who knew her) was having massive back problems that left her bed ridden and elected to have surgery.  The doctor explained the risks and the probable negative outcomes and without taking a breath she decided to have it. It was the effects of the surgery that would eventually take her life. 

Her decision to move forward with the surgery without giving stock to the negatives was about as emblematic of her life as you can get.  Roe lived her life unapologetically and without remorse.

Strangely, it was part of her charm.  Part of it, but not all of it.  She was also generous, funny, had a contagious laugh and as mentioned earlier, she was quirky.

It’s her quirkiness that really stands out.  She lived with a certain amount of techno fear that a lot of people her age has but he means of combating it were what makes it strange. 

For example, she had a collection of Kindle devices.  As she lost mobility and couldn’t get to her computer as easily, she turned to a Kindle to satisfy her online needs.  The problem being, she didn’t know how to close the windows she would open.  Her Kindle would bog down with the open with the thousands of open windows and she would get frustrated.  We showed her and showed her how to close them, but it became easier just to use one of those windows to open Amazon and order another Kindle.  Her Kindles were, for lack of a better description, disposable. 

I suppose that was part of her.  What’s the easiest answer as opposed to the best one?

I remember having a dinner purchased on QVC and mailed to her house.  I picked out (and picked up) my Christmas presents for years.  I watched for years as she purchased the first car she looked at or even the first condo she walked through. 

Maybe it was the easiest way, sure, but she also wasn’t really caught up in “stuff”.  Perfect was almost never the enemy of the good for her.  She liked what she liked and that was enough. 

She liked the color aqua, perhaps too much.  She had a purple air fryer, basically new, but then discovered an aqua one.  Obviously, you replace your brand-new air fryer with the aqua one, when you like what you like. 

She liked what she liked and she loved who she loved.  I was fortunate to be one of those people. 

I am fairly critical of myself and some of my decisions, but she was deliberately oblivious to them.  She wanted nothing more than those she loved to be happy.  Perhaps she had funny ways of showing it, probably because of the pedestal she put us on, but she just wanted joy for us.

As she got older a lot of the responsibility of caring for her fell to my mother, my wife, and myself.  It was something this unapologetic lady felt apologetic about.  It never bothered me.  I always felt like it was a way to give back to someone who gave so much. 

The lesson here girls?  Beyond the missing someone truly important to us?  Maybe don’t get caught up in the stuff.  To be honest, it’s a lesson to learn but she wasn’t always the best example. 

Roe once went to a psychic and she told Roe that in past lives she tried to “buy” love instead of giving from herself.  She definitely needs to work on that her next time around as well.  She loved each of you so much that sending you gifts in the mail made her happy.  Making sure the Christmas tree was bulging underneath made her happy.  But it made her happy because you were so happy.

Your joy was her goal.

It’s a good way to live. 

The lesson here, is just that.  Don’t get caught up in the stuff.  Do you think at the end, there was anything beyond yourselves that we could bring to the hospital that would have lifted her spirits?  There was no toy, no snack, no “thing” that made her happier than seeing you.

That’s the thing about life, you get the chance to see what is really important when its too late to appreciate it as long as you’d like. 

72 Hours of Freedom, The Adventures of Runaway Jerry

 I haven’t written for a while, at least not on this platform, but I intend to begin to right that ship over the coming weeks.  Summer makes writing tough as the houses usually calm interior becomes a hub for snack requests and shuttle runs. 

Today’s story begins with my eldest’s ride to school.  My wife and Avery drove off and I sat at my desk to start working and my phone rang.  It was my wife.  Of all the things she could be calling for, I couldn’t have guessed that it was a request for a box, to house a turtle, that was walking across the road. 

I pulled up and My wife and daughter were standing over a soccer cleat sized turtle.  He had made it across the street and was now trying to sneak under a fence.  We were able to corral the little guy into a box and the ladies continued on their journey.  I put the turtle and its box in my front seat and headed home. 

Fun fact, turtles can escape Amazon boxes and apparently, enjoy riding shotgun without their view impeded by cardboard.  A quick decision was made to race home and wrassle him there instead of pulling over and shoving him in a box that won’t keep him anyway.

My first, and as luck would have it, only stroke of luck was that the terrapin was taller than the space under my passenger seat.  He wedged himself in for easy capture.  Very convenient.

Fortunately for me, but not for its previous residents, we have an empty fish tank.  Come to find out, turtles don’t like being in fish tanks as they can’t see the glass.  A fact proven by the endless banging of the little dude’s shell hitting the sides of the tank.  While I got really tired of the banging, I had to admire his tireless moxi.

My wife began investigating what kind of turtle it was (a box turtle) and whether or not it was wild or a pet (unknown). 

When my girls arrived home from school, they were excited by the prospect of keeping our new shelled guest.  They figured that if no one stepped forward to claim the turtle, then clearly, he needed to live with us.  I can follow their logic, while I am not an undeniable pet lover, I am however, a tremendous softie. 

While the girls were entertaining the turtle and entertaining their odds of keeping it, my wife was searching Facebook and Craigslist and Nextdoor to see if anyone was missing, wanting, or knew what to do with a box turtle once it was in a fish tank on your kitchen table. 

There was no response.

The Humane Society said that we should keep the turtle for 72 hours to make sure our search efforts had time to percolate.  In reality, I felt the good people at the Humane Society wanted to allow ample bonding time between the tortoise and my little ones. 

Their plan was already working.

After several hours of kid’s laughter and some shell to glass banging our doorbell rang.  On my porch was a man, his wife and a six-year-old boy.

The man asked, somewhat meekly, “Did you guys find a turtle?”

When we produced said turtle the little boy squealed “JERRY!”

Their family was happier than mine was.  We found out that Jerry had been on the lamb for three days and made it almost a block, making them the most recoverable pets possible.

The lesson here, little ladies?  There’s a couple, actually.  They both involve sacrifice.  First, when Mommy and Avery took the time to stop and then call in the reinforcements may just have saved Jerry from becoming a road pancake.  The second sacrifice is the one where we found the owner despite the desire to keep Jerry to yourselves.  The sadness you all felt was bested only by the joy of the family who were reunited with Jerry.  Even Jerry seemed happy to see his family, if you can believe it. 

All in all, the sacrifice of time that Avery and Mommy made and the sacrifice of letting Jerry go home combined to create a heartfelt moment for that family.  They had conceded that Jerry was gone forever.  Their reunion was unexpected and that made it all the sweeter.  They couldn’t have been more grateful.  Honestly, I couldn’t have been either.   You made a little boy’s year.

 

Turning 50 isn't all Sunshine...or is it?

Begrudgingly, I turned 50 this week.  It’s been a while since I’ve written for my blog, in large part because of my upcoming birthday.  My wife put together a very special birthday for me, frankly, a little out of my tax bracket but suffice it to say, I entered the back half of my particular century in paradise. 

I didn’t mind turning thirty.  I loved turning forty and found myself shocked that I was so apprehensive about hitting the big 5-0.  Maybe it’s that mid-life crisis you hear about.  Maybe it's that my sense of accomplishment is going the opposite direction of my waistline.  Any way you slice it, I wasn’t ready and father time didn’t care.

I traveled to Mexico on an extremely early morning flight and started my fiftieth a little under rested and a lot down.  I didn’t stay that way for too long.

A funny thing happens every time I go to paradise.  It isn’t the sun or the cheap beverages.  While I love being with my wife and family, it isn’t them either.  It’s the people you bump into.  They seem to smile easier than I do.  When problems arise, they handle it with a better sense of calm than I do.  When day turns into night and night turns into early morning, they seem to just laugh off whatever comes their way. 

I was having dinner with my dive master a few years ago and in a less than candid moment, he told me about dock fees, and license fees and the cost of gasoline for his boat.  It was an unguarded moment where he described that, despite owning his own company, that times could get tighter than he liked.

I asked, probably clumsily, if he was okay.

“Mister Chris,” he told me, “Look around.  I dive for a living.  Look where I live. The ocean is my office!”  We were eating tacos at the time.  In a restaurant with plastic tables and loud music.  He leaned in and was more impassioned than usual. “It's easy to live without money in your pocket when you’re happy”.

I went on a snorkeling tour yesterday and was lingering on turning 50 and my station in life.  The young men who took us out had the same easy smile that I’ve seen so often in paradise.  I worked in the hospitality industry for years and I’m pretty good at spotting who is working happily and who is wearing the work smile mask.  These weren’t fake.  They were happy to be doing what they were doing.  The boat ride and the snorkeling.  These were guys that probably live with less than my dive master did.

They understand something that I forget too often.

 “It's easy to live without money in your pocket when you’re happy”.

Here’s the thing, girls.  Victor, my dive master, wasn’t on a soap box when he talked about happiness.  He was in a taco bar with a beer in his hand and cabbage in his beard.  It wasn’t a scripted moment and, honestly, I would have liked to massage his words into a more beautiful statement.  But it says what it says. 

“It's easy to live without money in your pocket when you’re happy”.

The way I took it then and the way I think about it now is that we all need to stop chasing a bit.  Money and happiness do not exist in a one-to-one ratio. Does your car get you from “A” to “B”? Then it's fine.  No need to envy the car in the next driveway.  The way I thought about it on my fiftieth is that I need to live a little slower and a little more simply. I spent my fiftieth surrounded by people I love, my feet in the sand and a boat drink in hand.  It was a really good day. I need to remember to stop for a minute and appreciate that.

I’d like to go on about corporate greed and the “keeping up with the Jonses” mentality that we all seem to have these days, but from where I’m sitting, there is literally a hammock in the ocean and it has my name on it.