Slow week. These last two weeks before school starts are always the l o n g e s t of the summer. Still I'm able to recognize my blessings in that I've been blessed with a daughter who wants to get back to studying. What I ever did to deserve a child this agreeable I'm not sure, though I'm sure karma plays a fickle role in that fate. PinF is a strong proponent of kindness to kids and old people especially. Kindness to all of course---but to the weaker and more vulnerable go the most kindness, care, respect, and love.
PinF has a neighbor across the way from his house who is 80 years old and just a pleasure of a woman. Born in the coal region of Kentucky where if you visited even today you would find that time has stood still to many of this centuries progressions. She has a daughter who lives with her too. The daughter works intermitently and drinks too much. Nice gal, just not too focused-- neither on her own life nor her reason for being in her mother's for that matter. She tries to put a spin on her place in her mother's life as being there to help her mom.
PinF knows it's the other way around. Her mother who at 80 is as sharp as someone 30 years younger, is lean and fit and has sparkling blue eyes and an illuminating smile that belie her 80 years. She's a real pleasure to just sit and talk to, something PinF does often, and as much joy as I know our frequent chats bring her, it is I who is enriched by her company far more than she is by mine. Doris to me exemplifies just this, that the youth of our heart never grows old and is like a window that blows in on the curtain of our lives.
Doris is PinF's buddy. Everyday I see her outside either crimping a plant, sweeping the walk, or taking her short walk to exercise her artificial hip she had replaced two years ago. PinF has been a friend to her since he moved to the neighborhood a year and a half ago, always keeping an eye out especially during the storms. On Mother's day Sophia and I gave her a potted tulip plant with it's blossoms in full bloom, it might as well have been a Tiffany setting by her reaction, not to mention telling all her neighbors of her "good fortunes". Doris just adores Sophie, and Sophie adores Doris, often riding her scooter to her house just to say hello. Life is funny this way. The way I see it, you either go through life either not giving a fiddler's fart about aging and the elderly, or you genuninely empathize and respect the journey and experience that this person represents. PinF choose the latter.
Old people to me are like books I haven't read. Lately I've been "reading" Doris DuPont's story. The forces and events that shaped her life and brought her to S. Florida are in a sense better than a book, as true life often is. Her's was a life forged by hard work, Protestant value's, and childrearing. She was asking me about Sophia's Holy Communion a few months ago and relating the story of her upbringing and childhood and how her religious education was had in a Catholic school for a short time as a girl in Kentucky. She was explaining her mother gave birth to six children and I commented how I thought she might be Baptist in that region of the country as opposed to Catholic. She said "Catholic? My parents were Protestants", she said she liked to tell people that they were "passionate Protestants" due to the amount of children they had. Funny lady.
Sophia auditioned for her first play this week. There was an open call for children 7-13 for a Christmas production. She wanted it bad, she seemed suited to this as she loves the performing arts and is certainly not shy. PinF was a child actor. Along with a few of his brothers we were members of the Drexel Hill Players, an accomplished troupe that staged several productuions a year. My oldest brother was a Von Trappe in the Sound of Music, and he was the scarecrow in Wizard of Oz. My "15 minutes" came via Upper Darby High Schools' senior class play The Music Man. I was cast in one of the lead roles as Winthrop, a daunting tole to be sure for an eight year-old. I had three solos to sing, of course ignorance is bliss and we rarely fear what we either don't know or have never seen. I believe also there was a certain aire of invicibility about me that I couldn't have understood at the time having just come through a near death event as a sick child a year before.
Sophie's mother was herself an actress (and still is) , appearing in productions in her Venezuela and eventually moving to New York to pursue her dream further. So Sophia's desire seemed to be in accordance with her history. Not being chosen was a tough thing to tell Sophia. This however is a far greater lesson to learn than instant acceptance. The sculpting of life is commisioned by experience. No character was ever shaped by complete success, either without let down's, set backs, or disapointments. I steeled myself to tell her as she was waiting anxiously to hear for two days. She took it like I thought she would--she cried in my arms. I reassured her that "we'd be back", this was only her first audition she has to believe that she will be back. I likened the whole experience to her ice skating and how she has come so far in such a short time. She perked up, still sad but she was crying through the pain of her "rejection". Of course there was only two roles for a girl, and over 300 children auditioned, so she was in good company so to speak.
I explained to her in her fragile state that "God never closes a door on her life where he doesn't open a window". This got her. She said "papi, what's that mean?" So I told her how she has many, many blessings, not to mention is gifted with many abilities and maybe this is just a sign that she's meant to do other things now. Ten minutes later she's playing with her new kitten, laughing, smiling and moving on. The young and the elderly. Such simplicity in each of their lives, yet such fluid congruency at the same time. Did I mention I found a guitar teacher for Sophia? That's right, and from Philadelphia too, and now we were off to lesson two. We gathered her guitar walked out of the house and who's there to greet us? Doris of course, she's talking to a neighbor and just about drops her conversation in mid-sentence as she sees us. She just lights up to see her two friends, and in that moment of her admiration and praise for Sophia she starts in on her neighbor about what a special little girl Sophie is and how she's a figure skater, and "..oh look now she's playing the guitar?"....Well you could see the pride in Sophie's step as she walked to the car with her guitar, I could see something else too.
The pain of her closed door had ceased and was being blown away by the breeze blowing through the open window of new opportunity.
2 comments:
Winthrop-akjn prefer the company of the elderfolk, especially on our jaunts to FL to see ak's mom....her friends are all a hoot, big boozers, and not one of them is under the age of 70. Their wonderful stories of the "old " days and their shennanigans are a glimpse into the past that a part of us longs to have been there for. There is always the dark side of the wars they had been through, many of them fleeing to the US with their parents decades ago.
Sweet news on the guitar lessons...CNN and I will produce all of her videos :)
Isn't it shameful how so many Americans ignore the elderly, disrespect them, and cast them aside? Ours is the only country that does not hold their elders in high esteem and care for them in their "golden years" when they their independence is compromised due to health, mobility and economics. Good for Doris and good for you that you have the privilege of sharing a great relationship with each other. We all need buddies.
And I hope Sophia is persistent in her quest for the "bright lights"! If you lived here, Sophia would be involved in Upper Darby Summer Stage, the coolest program for creative kids I've ever seen.
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