Why am trying to start a blog?
Is it because a member of my fledgling "writers' group" said on Sunday when only two of us showed up, "Hey, maybe you can blog about RETIREMENT!" This before he bolted for the door and a cigarette.
Am I writing this because everyone seems to have a blog these days? A blog is like an iPOD: the cool thing to have.
Or, even grander, some bloggers are getting BOOK CONTRACTS and that'd be really neat?
Nope. I have few illusions and practically no ambitions whatsoever anymore. No longer do I dream I'll become one of those illustrious bloggers whose blogs turn into books which turn up on the bestseller list at the Times.
I do not believe my blog will help me find a new love, reconnect with an old love. Facebook didn't do that, so would this?
I don't even have anything interesting to write about. I did not, for example, buy a place in Tuscany which I am planning to restore and document all the charming foibles of my neighbors as I do.
So what's with THIS blog? Absolutely nothing except this:
August 14 marked my last day as a member of the working world. I have become a reluctant member of the baby boomer retirement corps.
My To Do list now has nothing on it.
Sure, it sounds great. "I wish I had that luxury" is a phrase I've heard often these days.
Sure, I know that no work to do should bring me great joy, but instead, it makes me feel, ummm..what's the word? Oh, I know: OLD.
Yes, I'm officially a "retiree." Although I was born four days before the official 1946 era of The Baby Boomer, it's close enough. So what's up with this?
Will I become someone who goes to the movies in the middle of the day and eats dinner at 5 p.m. ? Possibly.
So I have decided that, for today at least, I will write --blog--about RETIREMENT.
Why not? It's not like I have anything else to do. Well, that's not really true. There's quite a bit I can do--should do---and maybe will do.
Maybe writing every day will force me to DO SOMETHING so that this place is not blank? I like the idea of a blog because, stories like Julie Powell's to the contrary, most blogs do not have high readership--and fewer still have devoted fans.
So, for today, what's with the heading: The Value of Small Things?
Just this: one of the few true things I've discovered is how so much can be accomplished with just the smallest amount of effort sustained over a long period of time. Cut a few calories and do an extra walk up the stairs every day and over a year's time, you'll lose weight. Write a paragraph a day and in a year or five, you'll have a book.
With today's blog, I'm starting what I hope will be a daily list to myself. What small things have I done ? At some point, it would be nice to write What I Have Accomplished.
Or maybe I'll just ramble on whatever strikes my fancy.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
I Am Good
By Dody Williams
I am good. Not that I have always been this way. I ate an entire bottle of baby aspirin when I was two. My mother found me happily savoring the last, tangy precursors to Sweet Tarts sitting on the powder pink tile floor of our bathroom in my Pepto Bismol pink footie pajamas covered in raspberry colored chicken pox spots. God, I loved baby aspirin.
My mother, however, knew what roughly fifty baby aspirin could do to twenty five pounds so she scooped me up in my pajamas and rushed me to the clinic and they strapped me to a gurney and flew into a room and shoved a clear plastic tube down my throat and pumped my stomach before I could even say, “Hey!”
When I was done, while I waited for my mother to finish talking to the doctor, a kindly nurse asked, ‘Do you have any brothers or sisters? A kitty or a dog?’ and even though I did indeed have a brother AND a sister and not one, but two kitties, I lied. I felt very grumpy and retaliatory so I said in a typical terrible two sort of way, ‘No.” I wasn’t very good that day.
Fast forward forty nine years. The other night, I found my mother who is now forgetful, fragile, elderly and living with me, sitting in her rose pink pajamas on the edge of her bed, sticking her fingers in a bottle of cherry baby aspirin after she has already had her daily allotment. Even though I am often weary of changing the sheets and making sure she is clean and dry and her hair is combed, suddenly I am back on the pink tile floor. I am two years old again and I see her as she was, young and strong and pretty. I remember the feeling of her heart pounding against my head and I recall how she drove like a maniac to the clinic to get my stomach pumped, how she raced into the building like an Olympian sprinter and made sure I would always be safe and sound.
I sat down next to her on the side of her bed and I realized she wasn’t much bigger than I was then. I scooped her bird bone body up against mine and gently took the aspirin out of her hands and kissed her on the forehead. Keeping her with me is the only option I have because she was such a good mom and now, I try to be a good daughter because it is a giant circle and it’s all good...
I am good. Not that I have always been this way. I ate an entire bottle of baby aspirin when I was two. My mother found me happily savoring the last, tangy precursors to Sweet Tarts sitting on the powder pink tile floor of our bathroom in my Pepto Bismol pink footie pajamas covered in raspberry colored chicken pox spots. God, I loved baby aspirin.
My mother, however, knew what roughly fifty baby aspirin could do to twenty five pounds so she scooped me up in my pajamas and rushed me to the clinic and they strapped me to a gurney and flew into a room and shoved a clear plastic tube down my throat and pumped my stomach before I could even say, “Hey!”
When I was done, while I waited for my mother to finish talking to the doctor, a kindly nurse asked, ‘Do you have any brothers or sisters? A kitty or a dog?’ and even though I did indeed have a brother AND a sister and not one, but two kitties, I lied. I felt very grumpy and retaliatory so I said in a typical terrible two sort of way, ‘No.” I wasn’t very good that day.
Fast forward forty nine years. The other night, I found my mother who is now forgetful, fragile, elderly and living with me, sitting in her rose pink pajamas on the edge of her bed, sticking her fingers in a bottle of cherry baby aspirin after she has already had her daily allotment. Even though I am often weary of changing the sheets and making sure she is clean and dry and her hair is combed, suddenly I am back on the pink tile floor. I am two years old again and I see her as she was, young and strong and pretty. I remember the feeling of her heart pounding against my head and I recall how she drove like a maniac to the clinic to get my stomach pumped, how she raced into the building like an Olympian sprinter and made sure I would always be safe and sound.
I sat down next to her on the side of her bed and I realized she wasn’t much bigger than I was then. I scooped her bird bone body up against mine and gently took the aspirin out of her hands and kissed her on the forehead. Keeping her with me is the only option I have because she was such a good mom and now, I try to be a good daughter because it is a giant circle and it’s all good...
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