Posted on July 31, 2024 under Wednesday’s Words of Wisdom with no comments yet

To the sea. To the sea

 

“Time, flowin’ like a river,

Time, beckoning me,

Who knows when we shall meet again,

If ever,

But time keeps flowin’ like a river,

To the sea.”

Time. The Alan Parsons Project

Listen.

Can you hear it? It started out as a trickle, barely discernible. Then it picked up speed. It’s not quite a torrent yet but the momentum is definitely there. The giant whooshing sound you’re hearing is the month of July making its hasty exit.

“Life runs on fast legs.”

I saw this line a few weeks ago. I want to assure my readers that I’m not deep enough to claim its authorship. Regular subscribers to my Week45 site know that I have written about the passage of time on numerous occasions in the past. I’m like that irritating 33 vinyl album that started skipping after one too many plays. I mean, is it possible to ever get tired of Procol Harum’s Whiter Shade of Pale?

I learned how to crawl in the winter of 1952. Fifty years later, I was crossing the finish line at the Boston Marathon. Time flies. My feet didn’t on that particular day. These days, I am relegated to walking and there are days when it feels more like crawling.

My first test run at school just days after my 5^th birthday lasted until lunch time on the first day of school. A few weeks ago, I was teaching music to a pre-primary class at the age of 72. Tempus fugit.

“It’s a long way to Tipperary.” You musical historians would know that this famous piece of music was used as a marching song among soldiers in the First World War and is remembered as a song of that war. Originally it was a lament from an Irish worker in London missing his hometown. We learned this song from our parents at a very early age. Sixty-five years later, I’m still singing this song during my weekly visits to the nursing home.

My very first job at the age of 13 was cutting grass at St.Ninian’s Cemetery. I was paid the princely sum of $1.00 per hour and only got a break when there was a burial. Sixty years later, I’m still working (by choice) and have secured my burial plot in that same cemetery. At 13, mortality seemed a long way away. These days, not so much.

Oops. It would appear that Len is about to go maudlin on us.

Absolutely not.

It’s just a fact. Our row is being hoed.

I am just astonished that so much of life has happened in the blink of an eye. I am one of the lucky ones. I am rarely bored and am blessed with many friends and good health. Loneliness must be the worst of afflictions. There are many people my age who track their days like Crosby’s molasses being poured out of a carton.

The best we can do is savour the day in front of us.

“If you wake up and don’t want to smile,

If it takes just a little while,

Open your eyes and look at the day,

You’ll see things in a different way.

Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow,

Don’t stop, it’ll soon be here,

It’ll be here better than before,

Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone.”

Don’t Stop – Fleetwood Mac

Life runs on fast legs.

They’re just not my legs!

Have a great weekend.

Posted on July 24, 2024 under Wednesday’s Words of Wisdom with 3 comments

How the years fly by

 

“There’s a time for joy,

A time for tears,

A time we’ll treasure through the years,

We’ll remember always,

Graduation day. “

Graduation Day – The Four Freshmen

It’s reunion season.

We are just a few weeks removed from high school graduations celebrated across the country. Young people, brimming with confidence, crossed the stage, staring off into the future and endless possibilities. The first rite of passage in the books.

Do you remember your graduation?

I was part of the very last graduating class of Antigonish High School in 1970. We were a small group – 62. I have been carrying around our Graduation Exercises program for 54 years now. Some of my classmates were brilliant students. Some excelled at sports. We were debaters, singers, cheerleaders, members of student council, writers for our yearbook.

My most vivid and lasting memory of grad night was a gathering at my parents’ house on Hillcrest where several of my classmates came to enjoy one last singalong together. Well into the festivities, my dad entered the living room with a single bottle of beer which was shared amongst those in the room. “One bottle of beer on the wall…”

Every year around this time, grads of our beloved AHS gather at a local pub to reminisce, revel, regale and reconnect. We don’t move as quickly as we once did. There are a lot of nuts and bolts and titanium holding us together but the glue that binds us all is friendship and laughter. We are a collection of old folks looking in the rear-view mirror but still treasuring what we have.

Years of successes, failures, love lost, and love found, grief and pain etched on the lines of our faces.

Stories, stories and more stories.

For a few hours, we deposited our aching bodies (most of us have at least one body part that has given up on us) at the entrance of the pub’s patio and talked about those halcyon days when our only care in the world was finding the right dance partner for the last waltz at the Parish Center.

In the absence of name tags this year, much of the time after arriving was spent trying to figure out who everybody was. Most of us have changed our looks over the past 50+ years which is hardly a surprise.

Of course, there’s always a lot of catching up to do. What has everyone been doing all these years? Children, grandchildren, employment, births, deaths. Once these details have been dispensed with, we start to talk about our alma mater. The stories are heartwarming and funny.

The owners of the pub know their audience well. With the Brierly Brook gurgling in the background, the speakers churn out hit after hit from the 1960s. The smiles on the faces says it all. We are with our tribe. “Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase)”. While the original tribe sadly continues to thin out, the addition of children and grandchildren ensures that our legendary stories of smoking under the Brierly Brook bridge, sitting on the railing outside the Alleys, or going to the Saturday night dances (fights!) at the Parish Center will remain long after we have “slipped the surly bonds of earth”.

Now, most of us know our tribe so when a few people from the county school arrived at our gathering, a few eyebrows were raised. Back in the day, there were fierce rivalries between the “townies” and the “country hicks”. There are two adjoining patios at Piper’s. I knew these folks. They were lovely people.  I wasn’t expecting a melee to break out with their appearance. I decided to broker a peace deal. Toting a cold bottle of Alexander Keith’s finest, I approached their table. One of the people at the table had recently lost her husband and this trio had just come from a wake at one of the local funeral homes. They had endured enough sadness lately and banishing them didn’t seem the right thing to do. They were quite surprised to see so many people at the pub on a Tuesday afternoon. I jokingly suggested that they could move to the upper patio!

We laughed and laughed some more. We hugged. We said our goodbyes.

Until we meet again.

“When the ivy walls,

Are far behind,

No matter where our paths may wind,

We’ll remember always,

Graduation day.”

Have a great weekend

Posted on July 10, 2024 under Wednesday’s Words of Wisdom with one comment

A stroll down memory lane

 

“Memories,

Like the corners of my mind,

Misty watercolor memories,

Of the way we were.”

The Way We Were – Barbara Streisand

Quickly. What is the first thing that crossed your mind when you saw the picture in this post?

The human brain. Easily the most astonishing part of the human body weighing in at around three pounds, the brain is “a complex organ that controls thought, memory, emotion, touch, motor skills, vision, breathing, temperature, hunger and every process that regulates our body.” Johns Hopkins.

And if you’re counting, there might be upwards of 100 billion neurons, our own version of the Milky Way which contains billions of stars.

Now, “dear gentle reader” (I sound a bit like Lady Whistledown from Bridgerton!), why on earth have I chosen the human brain, and more specifically, memory, for today’s missive?

I saw the picture of the schoolbooks wrapped in brown paper and my brain instantaneously carried me back in time over 60 years when we all had to cover our school textbooks. On the first day of school, we were handed all the books we would need for the year. We immediately marched home after school and the first order of business was to cover these books. Every household had a large roll of brown paper. With eight of us all vying to complete the task simultaneously, it was the definition of chaos. I learned at a very early age that I lacked some core competencies, one of them being the ability to wrap things. Fast forward to wrapping Christmas presents. I was an abject failure at this and kissed the ground of the person who invented gift bags.

How does the brain process so much information at warp speed? When I saw the picture, I could quickly visualize our kitchen table covered in brown paper, scotch tape and markers. And in the same breath, I thought about that same table and the same roll of paper as we gathered around to package a side of beef from John D’s Meat Market. Each sibling was assigned a task. Weigh the meat (ground beef, roasts etc.) on an ancient baby scale, cut an appropriate size piece of brown paper, wrap the meat, tie it up with string and indicate the contents and weight. Transport to the freezer in the basement.

All of these images created by a simple photo.

Of course, this took me down that rabbit hole we call nostalgia. I thought about the large barrel of powdered milk (Starlac) which produced some of the most unsavory, warm, lumpy milk imaginable. Some of you might remember the packages of margarine, the ones with a dab of coloring which you had to squeeze to make it come out looking like actual margarine.

My mind drifted to the rotary telephone. One of the blessings of the old technology is that you had the opportunity to slam the phone down on an unwanted caller. Very therapeutic.

Nesbitt orange soda bottle caps.

K-Tel.

Writing out the lyrics of songs by repeatedly lifting the needle off of the vinyl record.

All of these things are stored somewhere in this giant processor inside our skull.

Sadly, as time marches on relentlessly, memories fade and some of our neurons stop firing. Nowhere is this more evident than in an Alzheimer’s unit. Last week, I had the privilege of playing music at one of our local nursing homes. I performed for a large gathering in one of the lounges and afterwards went to the Alzheimer’s unit. If you haven’t been to one, it can be a sobering experience, especially seeing people you grew up with.

This awful disease has robbed so many people of their memory and dignity.

Last week, I included a quote at the end of my piece which bears repeating. I saw this while reading a book by Jodi Picoult. Not to press the point too far but reading a book illustrates the power of the brain. As the words are lifted off the page with our eyes, the brain instantaneously converts the words into images. Every person reading the same lines sees the image differently.

I digress.

“If you ask me, music is the language of memory.” Jodi Picoult

This is apparent in an Alzheimer’s unit. Electrifying might be a stretch. Maybe heartwarming is a more apt description. It seems like it takes a while for old neurons to start firing when your memory bank is almost empty. But fire, they do. I discovered that a woman who was staring blankly into space, was originally from Mabou, the heart of Celtic music. I asked her husband, who was visiting, what musicians she liked most. Not surprisingly it was the Rankins and John Allan Cameron. I played Four Marys. You know what it’s like when you decorate your Christmas tree and turn on the lights. It’s magical. A few lines into the song, the most beautiful smile, bordering on angelic, broke out on her face. She was struggling to find the words but there was no doubt that she recognized the tune. Another resident sitting nearby was unresponsive for most of the time I was there. When I played Mairi’s Wedding, one of the amazing staff came over and the two of them danced. Pass the tissues.

I couldn’t agree more with Jodi. Music IS the language of memory.

That’s a wrap.

Thank God for gift bags!

Have a great weekend.