The importance of the ceremony.

With the ingestion of a third pie yesterday we thought it might be a worthwhile enough event to try and include it in our list of daily rituals. The main one on awakening is always the first coffee and tea of the day, together with scanning the news. Despite fervent wishes to get ‘new’ news, we invariably get disappointed. I pour Helvi’s (percolated) coffee first and then proceed to make my tea. I like to dangle the tea-bag for it long enough to give my cup of boiling water just the right dark colour, before adding milk to both beverages. I gave up coffee some weeks ago after finding out that my  percolating bowels often resulted in a fast run to a  toilet. This often happened after morning’s coffee. So far, it has done the trick and since changing to tea, all seems settled.

We mostly, depending on the quality of the previous night’s slumber, sip our drinks in silence. I broke the silence this morning with suggesting to go for our daily walk before breakfast, and even offered that we might get something to eat in our little town of Bowral instead!  Of course this breach from our usual protocol imbued our sipping ceremony with a strange flavour. I felt that a sudden transmutation in the order of things can often enhance the pleasure.  Of course, in younger years almost everything is a change and its pleasure never ending, and wildly adventurous. It is odd how in advancing years we experience change as an entity to avoid. We get used to our own pyjamas,  the mellowness of own pillows, and can get quite upset to find a pair of socks inside our Headache & Medications cabinet.

We got dressed and walked to Bowral with enough time on our hands to take it easy. Taking it easy, is one of the pleasures of retirement, and our town of Bowral is a haven for ‘taking it easy’ couples. The tapping of canes on pavements is a familiar sound giving great comfort for those without as yet the need for a cane. I know of course that many old people relish being maddingly fit, busy and they show off on TV how at the age of 92 they still go on running on bush tracks saving Koalas, or, how they can still do push-ups and study for PhDs.

With a third meat-pie now making its entry in our lives and consumed just outside at the Gumnut Pie shop it seems reasonable to assume that it has taken a hold in our list of habitual events. The transgression of our habitual daily routine has taken us to an unexpected turn, ripening the pleasures for those like us, ‘taking it easy’. One can never take things for granted and that change ought to be accepted as an unintended gift in spicing up our daily ceremonies.

We have as yet to formalize the eating of our meat-pies. It will take time and habits will ensure that it will grow into a similar yet different path of a ceremony, like our first tea and coffee mornings. This third pie was taken with a sachet of tomato sauce of which its secrets of opening it without squirting, was achieved by some forbearance and patience. It was  a splendid gift of an unexpected morning’s pleasure. Every drop of this fragrant meaty nectar with tom-sauce was consumed with an  aura of a rebirth.At moments like this we are re-born with life revealed, ever renewed by the power of another ceremony.

This journey of Violets continues with shy Clivias.

Creating secret areas in a small garden is very possible. Just allow growing things to go their own way. We rarely take plants out, instead provide freedom for whatever might want to grow.  The background of the bay trees against the paling fence at the back of our garden is being utilised to provide shelter and shade to many plants, especially many Clivias that are now flowering so generously.

The bay trees have just finished flowering and we continue to sweep up the debris. It is odd, but I can’t remember actually using the plethora of bay leaves in any of our cooking nor putting them in my sock drawer. Heaven knows my socks can do with bay-leaves.

In my mother’s cooking, bay leaves were often the main course, or at least I seem to still recall the taste and smell of them, especially in her roasts. She might well have over-used bay leaves in her cooking. It’s odd how even smells from decades ago, one can still recall. I don’t think bay leaves were used to ward of moths in the wardrobes of my childhood. I think she used those white moth balls.  I discovered rummaging through those mothball laden wardrobes a secret hoard of coins in a wooden box. The coins were all in separate divisions with the names of my brothers all neatly written on them.

My dad did not like eating shoulder of sheep/lamb and it could well be that the excess use of the bay leaves were cunningly used to hide my mother’s ploy to dish up sheep disguised as roast beef. My mother was very thrifty and sheep was cheaper. In any case, rummaging through those wardrobes and finding the coins I used to pilfer my brothers’ hoard of coins  to occasionally buy an ice-cream. Oh, how they tasted so wonderful and without guilt. The benefits of a still uncorrupted childhood.

Here is a rather haughty Kalanchoe. It had to be elevated so it is perched on top of the Mexican Chimeney in which we sometimes light a fire during a chilly winter’s afternoon. Isn’t it beautiful?

Both the light ceramic blue and white pot in the first picture and the dish below the Kalanchoe are from the same before mentioned pottery friend. The little white flowering bush on the left side is a Hebe.

The Art of morning’s Bed straightening.(for Seniors)

Almost There

It’s a forlorn hope and belief by some, that with age comes wisdom. Some say, a good politician reaches their top when over seventy. Cynics often contradict this and might well say: they only achieve that level of pure wisdom, when they are richly fermenting in the Mount Calvary cask below ground level, or sometimes, elevated above ground as in an Argentinian Mausoleum. I believe that in Buenos Aires’ La Recoleta cemetery, a number of those past buried politicians are still believed as being a little bit alive.

We did not see much evidence of life of those dearly departed souls. Many cats and dozens of volunteer ladies feeding them is as much an attraction as touring this enormous cemetery. Some of the graves are multi storied, have dining rooms and bedrooms with imagery so real of the dead, one whispers in fear of being overheard.

But, back to gaining wisdom in the search for reasons and answers of what the heck we are doing here, it pays to remain humble in its pursuits. That is if there is such a thing as getting answers. It would be nice that between birth and the veneered Mount Calvary cask we get snippets of information leading us to some rest of the anxious mind in our nodding years.

The day could not start less ambitious and humble than just making the bed without any creases in its top cover. This is what I have been trying to achieve of late. It is more than depressing to discover, just prior to hopping in, that the bed is still unmade. Those days are rare. Of course, most times H makes the bed. Her manner of bed making is perfect, a level that I want to achieve in my quest gaining better and more wisdom. Where does perfect bed making come from? It is a joy to contemplate and watch a bed without flaws before finally diving under the doona.

No matter how it is tried, the efforts I make always includes some little imperfection or fault. It might be that a sock found its way down the bottom of the bed and buried itself between sheet and mattress. To rectify that, after you completed the bed making, is dispiriting, but this has to be overcome in the search for life’s answers.

Sometimes I find that the electric blanked switch gear found itself the wrong side up, showing a lump just below the pillow. Of course, I try and cover it up by throwing a book over it. H reckons that is not honest. In any case, you can lie to others but not to yourself. You know the book was put there for a reason. Your wife might be fooled but not your conscience. It nags you, and results in your search for wisdom down a notch to boot.

I noticed the old lady higher up always puts her bed pillows in the sun on a chair. I asked her some years ago, and she said; ‘It kills germs and keeps me healthy.’ She should know. She worked her whole life as a nurse. Is that why one often sees hospital patients sitting outside in the sun? Some smoke though!

It is part of this bunched together lot of townhouses, and perhaps also old age, that things like pillows on chairs outside get noticed. Sometimes I even say to H. while driving past, ‘oh, Mrs so and so must be home, her pillows are outside.’ Sometimes, but not often, a reply might come from H, ‘oh I haven’t noticed she was gone, ‘I don’t keep an eye out for those sort of banal signals.’ Why, and how come do you? This hurts a little. I am caught out once again being involved in the triviality of life.

What hope for answers and wisdom can there be when I seem stuck between bed making and adventures at Aldi?

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Doctor will see you now.

Table setting. Hand coloured etching.

It used to be simple matter to see the doctor. As a child you stuck your tongue out, said aahh, and that was it. All doctors looked senile and had a foul breath. Now it has become far more complex and doctors look like teenagers. You more likely to have your bum looked and poked at than your tongue.

I received a serious letter, that, since I had turned seventy-five the Government would like to make sure I would still have some years left without needing to be looked after. Could I make an appointment for a thorough investigation of my levels of health. It would take about one- and- a- half hour. I like their optimism and clear despair of having to look after another grand-pa. It hints at a chair in ‘blue Haven retirement village’ with a bus trip to the Tulip Festival, nurse wiping my chin if not something else as well.

The letter gave details of what the health assessment would comprise off;

. Measurement of Blood pressure, pulse rate and rhythm.

( I do have good rhythm and keep it up till the end with happy ending.)

. assessment of medication, continence, immunisation status, physical function, activities of daily living, fall status.

Oh no, not continence again? Not another nervously strained stool sample with gloves, wooden stick and screw-top container? Look doc, I hover between deep seated constipation and voluminous bouts of diarrhoea, give me a break. I’ll invite you for a prawn barbeque, mow your lawn, but no more stool samples. Concentrate on my tinnitus and my wobbly feet. I do still remember the good times when I slept all night without leeks and straining the potatoes three times a night. My physical functions do include being able to still take  two steps on the stairs at the time and to run to Aldi’s when the Shiraz is on special. My fall rate is perfect and I generally put my hands out to brake the fall. I remember my pin numbers and have a fairly good idea of passwords and know how to put photos on the internet.

. assessment of mood and memory.

Milo

It’s been no picnic. I do enjoy the good times and relish the friends I still have. I do get down but know that it passes almost unnoticed.  I know you mean well, doc, but no anti-depressants. I love my depression. Look where it go me? I am on my 757th article of folly and nonsense and still able to put down words in certain order with the help of a keen despair, but also with some sun and hope for a still liveable world for all Grand-kids.

. social setting and whether you are caring for another person.

I care for my partner of many years and she does for me. We still do a little dance.   I don’t have many ailments or suffer from gout, insomnia, or nervous ticks, nor sit in the park forgotten how to get home. Sure, moments of finding the impetus to keep going are joined with acute feelings of having done it already. Putting socks on is a drag on the day, but relish the first coffee. At times I feel even food resisting and I have to fight the urge to a regurgitation in having tasted it all too often before. But, what can one do?  A fresh herring or smoked eel is still the answer.

A walk along the creek helps.