Category Archives: Gifts of Age
Celebrating turning Eighty
My husband, Julian, our five children and spouses, eight of our nine grandchildren and three great-grand children gave me a marvelous birthday weekend. They rented a large suite at the beautiful Montgomery Bell State Park near us and decorated it with a New Orleans and Mardi Gras Theme complete with Dixie Land Music, Mardi Gras Masks, beads, balloons, flowers, and all kinds of tinsel spirals and confetti. There was an awesome feast of New Orleans foods. I was born in New Orleans, baptized in the St. Louis Cathedral and lived in the Pontalba Apartments on Jackson Square in the French quarter. We moved when I was six,and I have lived since 1961 in Tennessee, but somehow New Orleans and the French Quarter are still my hearts home. My grown children also put some poster size and other smaller collages of pictures of me from the various stages of my life all over the walls along with signs and pictures of New Orleans. I thought that was cool, until they started snapping photos of eighty year old me next to twenty and thirty year old me. No fair!
St. Louis Cathedral where I was baptized. Right across from Jackson Square and catty-corner to our apartments. Mom told me we went to the French Market for coffee and pastries every morning.
I’m not very good at posting photos. I couldn’t get them to stay in a reasonable line. They started stringing out.
Various ages…..none 80!!!
My only daughter Julie, and her husband Scot and son Jake came from Memphis. Julie found all the decorations for the New Orleans theme and they all spent a whole lot of time decorating. The rooms looked out over the lake and woods. And my daughter-in-law, Molly fixed chicken and linguini and pineapple upside down cake and peach cobbler. Julie baked both chocolate covered and coconut topped cupcakes…..and of course there was lots of ice cream. Yum!
Parasol Princess, great-granddaughter Eisley here from Seattle. Her dad, Josh, just back to Seattle from Hawaii surprised me by coming also.
Parasol Queen Eileen from New Orleans. With twelve year old granddaughter Emma sitting next to me. Julie gave me the spangled shawl and the wonderful parasol.
Jambalaya, Shrimp and Grits, Red beans and Rice, Shrimp and pasta with garlic sauce. and more. Here our third son, Steve, from Atlanta is helping Julie. (Or getting himself some wine!)
Presents! Yay! But the best presents were son Mike and son -in-law Patrick in for the first time in a year from Cambodia where they teach at an Orphanage for children. And our Julie’s son Jordan who was in from Bolivia where he teaches fifth grade.
Here I’m with my mom in New Orleans. Of course I fell and skinned my nose and got my dress dirty right before the Newspaper photographer came. Klutz is my middle name. I hadn’t looked at this photo or the one with my dad in a long time. My husband found them and gave them to the kids to put up. Very poignant for me to look at these at my age. My parents have been gone a very long time.
Here I’m a Senior in High School in Houston
Not quite 80 in this one. I confess it’s one of my better little old lady pictures.
Last year at my husband Julian’s eightieth birthday with our five children.
With my dad, then a newspaper reporter in New Orleans, later City Editor of the Houston Post. He grew up in New Orleans. Any way, having such a loving family, good memories, and such a fun celebration came a long way toward making being eighty seem pretty good.
New, Short, Self-Explanatory Version of the Traditional Ten
Since our society seems to have rejected rules of behavior, I’d like to pass on some guidelines:
1. If you don’t want the one or ones you love doing it, DON”T DO IT! 2. If you don’t want your grandparents knowing about it, DON’T DO IT! 3. If you don’t want your present or future children knowing about it, DON’T DO IT! 4. If you don’t want it on the front page of the local paper, DON”T DO IT!
5. If everyone doing this will make the world a worse place for your children and grandchildren, DON’T DO IT!
6. If you don’t want to spend your nights in old age overwhelmed with regret about it, DON’T DO IT!
7. If you don’t want others doing it to you or those you love, DON’T DO IT!
Let me put this another way:
A. What so ever you do now, will come back to bite you on your ass! B. What may be great fun after drinking four beers or smoking pot will make you feel like the fool you were – sooner than you think. C. The world has become very very tiny. What so ever you do in secret will eventually become public knowledge. D. Even senility will not protect you from the embarrassment and regret of flash backs in old age. E. God forgives us, but he doesn’t take away all the natural consequences of bad choices. F. The people who love you may want to forgive and forget, but may not succeed in time for it to matter.
I am almost eighty. While these things may not be self-evident, I KNOW them to be true.
Expensive Grace
Anything that annoys you is teaching you patience. Anyone who abandons you is teaching you how to stand up on your own two feet. Anything that angers you is teaching you forgiveness and compassion. Anything that has power over you is teaching you how to take your power back. Anything you hate is teaching you unconditional love. Anything you fear is teaching you courage to overcome your fear. Anything you can’t control is teaching you how to let go.
Jackson Kiddard Quotebook.in
These Three Things Remain: Humor, Music, and Faith
The mind is a mystery. My mother had Alzheimer’s before we knew what it was. Three things seem to out last memory and logic: humor, music, and faith.
When mom was living with us, one day when I was stressed out doing bookkeeping at the kitchen counter, she insisted on starting dinner. So, finally I put a large pot of water on for corn on the cob and a small pot of water for one package of frozen broccoli and told her to just put them in when the water came to a boil. She called me over later saying, “Something’s wrong, this doesn’t look right.” She had put the corn in the small pot where it was now dry and burning and the broccoli was in free float in the huge pot of water. My response was not kind or spiritual. I shook my head in despair and exclaimed, “Oh, my God!” Quick as a flash, she responded, “Call on someone you know!”
Some years after her death, I was leading devotionals at a nursing home. I kept wondering as I spoke, whether I should call a nurse to check pulses, since most of my “listeners” seemed comatose. But when we started singing the old hymns, they all came to life and knew every word of every hymn.
It may be music or it could be faith. Because one of my favorite nursing home stories is about an elderly woman whose memory was failing. A caregiver was helping her get into her nightgown, when the woman asked her, “What is my name? I seem to have forgotten who I am.” Before the caregiver could reply, the woman smiled and pointed to a picture of Jesus on the wall, and said, “Never mind, he knows who I am and that’s all that matters.”
Everyday Friends
Today, a cardinal flamed into my winter landscape,
igniting a small sparkler of joy within me.
But just as quickly it flurried off.
Perhaps I moved in my delight?
I felt bereft.
As if someone, a long lost friend
had merely waved and hurried out of sight.
I waited, watching hopefully,
so focused on the loss, that I almost missed
the quieter colored Titmice, with just their touch of blush,
fluttering in blue-grey swirls near-by.
An earnest squirrel chit-chided me
from a scarlet berried dogwood,
where silken vested doves were perched
like rows of mourners full of silent sympathy.
So, letting go of “might have been.”
I began to laugh at madcap chickadees
drag racing to the feeders.
And my heart was filled with the quiet joy of peace
to be surrounded by such friends.
The Old and Forgotten
The barn’s worn grey boards lean
from the weight of forgotten decades
shrouded in weeds hiding rusty parts
full of empty echoes of dusty memories
long gone hay bales, children’s laughter
bright red tractor, bush hog, hay baler
once the heart of a family’s life blood
now, just nightly cat and mouse games
and a black snake brooding in the loft
just now and then, a golden butterfly
floating in on dust filled sunbeams
a sign of hope, perhaps a resurrection
A Place of Peace Where God Abides
For many years I sought
a place of peace where God abides.
Once I found it on a hilltop
under silent star filled skies.
And another time
in earth’s breathless silence
just before the dawn.
I found it sharing bread
with Christian sisters
outside of any church.
I’ve often found it in
the laughter of a child.
But with great chagrin years later
when I finally looked inside
I found my Doubting Thomas Twin.
But then, when I could finally
claim him as truly part of me
he taught me perseverance,
the key to everything.
And though it’s paradoxical,
he freed me from my fears
and became a place within me
where I can go for grace.
A place of peace where God abides.
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 