Day 14, Health Awareness Prompt: Dream Day

Saturday morning, and the day's prompt is to write about my dream day, and whether it has happened yet, and if not, how might I make it happen?

There's a song that came out just about the time that Rick and I had set our wedding date. It was sung by The Sandpipers, and I've put the link to it from You Tube at the bottom of this post.

Every little girl's dream day would be her wedding day, and in that sense, I was like any other little girl (although, to confess, there was the matter of believing that Queen Elizabeth's real child (me) had been replaced with a boy, for the sake of the crown, and I dreamed that one day Prince Charles would return, admit the deception, and allow me to assume my rightful place in the castle. But I digress...)

Rick and I had watched the political scene from a distance (we weren't old enough to vote until after our first child was born.) The Vietnam 'conflict' was taking many of our generation away ... some marriages were hastily arranged as a result. But I was a planner, and we were responsible, and we would wait until he'd finished school to marry. We'd been good friends for five years, dating for three, and betrothed for two by the time we were married, and we were quite sure that it was the right thing to do. Others may have thought waiting until the new draft lottery was held would be a wiser choice, but we knew, draft or not, military service or not, we were meant to be married. And so we set the date, and like the young couples of the day, yielded the arrangements and guest list to our parents.

I'd planned to carry lilacs from the bushes on our front lawn; my mother warned me that they would be wilted by May 30th, and they were, so my bouquet was a family prayerbook covered in ivy and stefanotis strands, simple, and humbling. The groomsmen all came on time despite the fact that many had attended their senior prom the night before. The bridal party was dressed in bright spring colors of mint and maize, carrying bouquets of daisies  and roses in  light whites and yellows tightly gathered, and it all looked as though my simple bouquet had been planned that way.

The reception, with a turkey dinner and red wine (which we were not yet old enough, at 20, to drink) was filled with dancing and all the traditional  games ... throwing the garter to the single men, and the bouquet to the single young ladies ... clinking the glasses to encourage another kiss for the bride and groom ... dancing with the father of the bride, and the mother of the groom, and then the tin cans tied to the rear bumper, with a  printed wedding napkin tucked into the gas cap, to alert all that this was a wedding couple.

It was the day a dream came true, and was followed by yet another soon after, when the draft lottery spared Rick ... and yet again, when our daughter was born a year later ... and many years later when our son was born.

Our most recent dream day was this past  Thanksgiving weekend, when, with a generous gift certificate I'd received at my retirement party, we were able to go with our daughter, son, and grandchildren out for a well-appointed brunch by shore of the Atlantic. All of us at the table -not nearly the size it would have taken for all of us in the olden days - being attended by wait staff and being allowed to wander among the buffet tables laden with traditional breakfast items and tea-time treats as well gave me pause to think, and thank.

I am so blessed with love. My life is made up of my dreams come true.

Here is the link to the music that represented that very special dream day:  Come Saturday Morning

Day 10: Write a Letter to 16-year-old-me

 

April 10, 2012

Dear 16-year-old-me,

I'm writing this from your future, and I know all that lies ahead for you on this path. You are a junior in high school right now, and it is the year 1966. Your greatest fear is that your friend Rick, your soon to be fiance, will be drafted when he finishes school. Many who don't go on to college go instead to the 'conflict' in Vietnam. He says he will enlist in the US Navy rather than be drafted, as he would feel safer with his feet on the deck rather than in the jungles. You want him instead to go with you 'back to Canada', where his and your grandparents grew up before coming to the states. He is saying no, he will not run away. 

I'm happy to be able to tell you that he will not be drafted: the country will, in 1970, the year he would be drafted, have the first collective draft, combining youth from ages 18 to 25 in one large lottery, and his birthday will draw a number high enough that many other thousands will go to the war before he would be called. You are both relieved at that, as you are now ready to start a family together. 

Your nightly prayer to remain 'happy, healthy, and together' will be rewarded for many years. Some years will be more challenging than others, as the country will continue to struggle with financial recession, gas shortages, inflationary prices, and eventually the demise of the manufacturing jobs that are going to other countries. Your job as a teacher will remain stable.

You will often fear that you will disappoint; you do not disappoint. You will worry about finances, watching other families reap great financial benefits for having chosen other careers; you will never be wealthy in a financial way, but you will always have enough for a home, food, clothing and transportation. It is enough.

 In time, you will make decisions with others, for others, and because of others. Some of those decisions will be beneficial for you and for those you love; some will be difficult to make and prove later to have been the wrong decision based on the wrong advice. You will make adjustments, and corrections, and you will live with Rick knowing that decisions about health are never easy, never clear, and you can only make the decisions that you will not look back on with regret. You do this, several times. You learn to trust your instincts.

You will learn that living in the northern latitudes may have affected your health, though in a different way than that of your sisters and brothers. None of them will have the diagnosis that is ahead for you, and so will never make the same decisions about nutrition and physical health that you will have to make. You will stay one step ahead of the curve in those decisions, researching nutrition and medical care and choosing to try and then to stop as you discover what the researchers are finding and slowly revealing to the public. Gradually, you will come to believe that following your own knowledge, instincts, and life lessons will guide you to make the best decisions for you, regardless of what others may suggest in disagreement.

Vitamin D deficiency will be a part of your retirement. Supplementing that and other vitamins will become important to you in your late fifties, but no one will advise you of that, and you will eventually read about it and move in the direction that will benefit you. Be confident and follow your instincts and your learnings. 

I wish I could advise you not to worry, but it is in your nature to worry, to plan, to prepare for the next challenge, and to work hard to overcome each hurdle in your path. Worry seems to work for you.

You will take a quiet advisory role in your sixties, sharing research and findings through something called a blog, where people can stop in and read and make their own decisions about what you have found. And it will be enough. They have to make their own decisions, their own changes, and their own adjustments. You may not be there to see their decisions and their results. You do not have to be there. You have to make your own decisions, and they will have to make theirs.

You will always be wary of what life will place in your path. But you will always be prepared with self-sought knowledge, with determination, and with strength that at times seems heaven-granted. 

You will find happiness in realizing that enough is simply that: enough. 

Related articles

• "What, me worry?" - a lesson from Alfred E. Newman (ptl2010.com)
• Vitamin D and Calcium: Are We Getting Enough? (everydayhealth.com)

For the month of April, I've renewed the discount at CreateSpace for Multiple Sclerosis an Enigma. To receive 35% off the regular price, go to this link:

https://www.createspace.com/3711313 

and enter this discount code at the checkout: VXXURQMH

Health Activist Writer's Month, Day 2: a Quote

For the month of April, I've renewed the discount at CreateSpace for Multiple Sclerosis an Enigma. To receive 35% off the regular price, go to this link:

https://www.createspace.com/3711313 

and enter this discount code at the checkout:VXXURQMH




Choose a quote that inspires you (postively or negatively) and free-write about it.

"Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal." JFK


Common links ... breathing the same air ... cherishing children ... cherishing their future ... recognizing mortality. I had this quote on a large poster of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and hung it on the corridor wall outside my classroom. When I retired, I found a friend in the building that shared my admiration of this president, and who would promise to use the poster well. 


Kennedy was our president at the end of the Happy Days of the 1950s. He inherited the worries of a conflicted world across a different ocean, the Pacific. Vietnam was still being viewed as just a conflict, a place for America to step in and advise struggling countries. The cold war between America and the former USSR was well established, and the enemy was communism (or, to the other side, capitalism.) 


It was easy for JFK to impress me, as I was a ten year old when he was elected president. He was my president; I campaigned for him, carrying a homemade sign carefully lettered and spelled correctly, and I celebrated when he won the election despite the obvious handicaps ... being another from Boston ... being Catholic in a time when domination from across the seas was a threat to many, whether it might come from Russia or from Rome. 


JFK had young children. He had a beautiful wife. He had experience in the World War, and was a hero before he was president. His family came from the same city that I came from. He was from a family as large as my own. How could I not admire him?

When I was an adult, and he was long gone, the scandals were dragged out of the family closet. His beautiful wife went on to another marriage, in another country, and moved in even higher circles than she had as a young political wife. She became a symbol for all of the American women who lost husbands and fiances and brothers in the Vietnam "Conflict." But living as a symbol when the reason for your symbolism is removed was perhaps more than she would choose, and she moved on with her life. 

JFK knew that we were all mortal. He knew that we needed to protect the air that we all breathed, in an era when countries were competing with each other to have the most powerful and destructive tools of war. But he believed in a better use of scientific knowledge, and he authorized two vastly different programs: the race for the moon, and the Peace Corps. Because he did, man looked outward to the heavens and wondered about life beyond our atmosphere, and we began to look within our own sphere and recognize that things here needed more protection, more appreciation, and more collaboration.

It is not only because I was ten and easily inspired: JFK was the right man for our world at the time we all knew him. How sad that when he was gone, the appreciation was not sustained. We grew up, and are now older than he ever had a chance to be. In honor of his goals, and in respect for his memory, we all must do the best we can to protect this air that we all breathe, and to continue to cherish our children's future. 

Related articles

• Rhetoric in Jfk's Inaugural Address (socyberty.com)
• A day of learning about JFK (bostonglobe.com)
• Are You Quoting or Living? (kittypalmer.wordpress.com)