It's Not About the Cake

My older sister, Jill and I were talking about weddings the other day. Jill had just attended a wedding over the weekend and it happen to dovetail with a packet of pictures that ended up at my house due to my mother giving back photos she could no longer store. Going through the old photos with my sister we came across a few from my wedding. Jill grabbed one from the pack and starting laughing so hard she could hardly breathe. It was a picture of my wedding cake, a cake she had made for Ted and me.  I didn't remember either the cake or that she had made it so it was of great interest to me to see it. She shared the photo with me and we both laughed until tears rolled down our faces. OMG! At the time I'm sure I was delighted with the cake, and I must say, I still am. It's perfect. Jill is a creative person, an interior decorator, an artist, a fashion designer but baking may not be her forte. But the love and the effort was there and its always good to see something that she is not so good at, there isn't much. Compared to the cakes at weddings we have been attending this cake looked like something offered up during the Great Depression. You decide.

My parents, who had three daughters and one son, figured they would have to pony up for some weddings in their lifetime so they told us three girls that we could each have $3000 for a wedding, to be spent however we chose. We could elope like they did and take the cash for other uses or spend it on a wedding, adding to it from our own pockets as we felt necessary. Ted and I had full-time jobs, we didn't consider ourselves poor but we had not saved for a big wedding as we were marrying only nine months after we had met. No, I wasn't pregnant! Neither of us came from money or a tradition of big weddings so we weren't at all perturbed to be planning a wedding on $3000, we were grateful. Nowadays that might be the dress budget for a bride. Maybe.

My dress was bought wholesale through connections we had in the clothing business, I think it was $75. I did my own hair and make-up, I know, impossible to tell, right! There was no diamond ring, just gold bands. Ted bought a new tie. Jill was my bridesmaid and only attendant and she made her dress and did her own hair and make-up. Voila, a bridal party was created!

We were married a December 17, 1983, in the living room of my parents home and with some catered food, a full bar that was tended by a friend, and some music tapes lovingly compiled by my husband- to-be (way before iPods), we had a party.  It was imperfectly perfect and I have not regretted a thing. With the overblown media attention to celebrity weddings these days and sites like Pinterest offering unending ideas for novel themes and add-ons, the weddings of today are an expensive exercise in perfection. Exhausting for everyone involved.  It shouldn't be so much about the wedding, it's about a marriage. 

I've pinned the picture of my cake to my bulletin board in my office as a reminder of my sister's love and of the almost 33 years of happiness that my $3000 wedding has brought. Who could ask for anything more than that?

Vanishing Oasis

The rocky, scrub covered mountains rise almost from the centre of town and turn shades of purple and tan as the sun lowers behind them.  They act as a wall between Palm Springs and all things west of it, the desert, the freeways, Los Angeles, the ocean. The town itself is flat, flat, flat with extraordinarily tall, thin palm trees that sway in the afternoon wind like drunk super models, throwing no shade. These palms and many others that have been planted, along with the thriving bougainvillea, oleander, fruit trees and flowers are courtesy of the huge aquifers that sit under Palm Springs. Those aquifers are in danger now from the prolonged drought in California that is Mother Nature's way of reminding California of its roots....desert roots. 

I have been visiting Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley for almost thirty-three years, my first visit being on my honeymoon. It is an almost too pretty place, coloured with deeply green lawns, gardens filled with flowers, blooming vines tumbling over white painted walls. And lots of trees... citrus trees, palms of all shape and size, eucalyptus and palo verde, and even some pines. The colourful lushness of Palm Springs always made me prefer it over Scottsdale, Arizona, another spot I visited frequently, even though they had almost identical climates. The difference, of course, is all that water that the Coachella Valley was sitting on. It filled swimming pools, fed decorative waterfalls, was sprinkled on golf courses and generally made you believe you were in an oasis in the desert. You were, in fact. 

But that's all over now. California's long and persistent drought has reached into the heart of Palm Springs and is ripping out its manicured emerald lawns and replacing them with sand and gravel. I spent quite a bit of time in Palm springs this last winter and I was so dismayed to see house after house sporting gravel front yards with a few tiny desert plants dotted about. Some didn't even bother with that. Large established trees were being sawed down, replaced by small cacti.

 Many yards that had gone through lawn replacement last year were now sporting patches of grass growing through the gravel making them look unkempt and down at the heels, like old men who are past caring about their appearance, proving that even in the desert grass is hard to kill.

I know, I know, it's a necessity. The governor of California has asked residents to voluntarily cut back their water consumption and the population has responded, thanks in part to the turf buy-back program the government offered. So I get it but it doesn't mean I like it. Palm Springs is looking more and more like Scottsdale, all shades of tan and grey, baking in the sun with less and less trees. it's a strong reminder of climate change and our dependence on water. 

On one of my recent visits to Palm Springs I went into a garden centre downtown and spoke with a woman working there about the situation. She said they were booked up for months ahead with lawn replacement jobs and yet even though she benefited from the work she didn't feel it was necessarily the right answer. The lawns do not require as much water as people think and they have a cooling effect as well as contributing to an ecosystem for the bugs and the birds. But that is an artificial ecosystem and one California can longer support. Being just a visitor it is not for me to pass judgement on what the citizens do.
Through all this the mountains stand guard, unaffected by the drought, the disappearing green lawns and flowers of the desert below just a passing dream of the humans that tended them. The desert has been there all along, waiting for a comeback.

Trouble Again

Hi All,
I am having problems with the feed that gets my new blog posts out to email subscribers. As I am  new to this and not super tech savvy it's taking time. I published a new post yesterday but it did not make it out to your email inboxes.  I will continue working on the issue and hope that things work next week. In the mean time please check out my blog for my latest post.
Thanks,
Faye

The Path of Least Resistance

My life is a very good life by all the usual standards.  I bushwhacked through the jungle of youth, hacked out a path over the years, widened and smoothed that path, trimmed up the edges, planted flowers for colour and now I walk back and forth on it with the realization that it isn’t really leading me anywhere. There is nothing wrong with this path, it’s perfectly acceptable, I suppose.  The epitome of the path of least resistance.  With very little effort I can continue to keep it in good workable shape and never need anything more. But….there is a but and it’s a pebble in my shoe as I tromp back and forth on my path. In the past I have been able to shake the pebble about in my shoe to a more comfortable spot where I hardly notice it but lately it won’t stay there, it keeps coming back to poke me in the heel. A rock under your heel will not be ignored, it demands attention. So, I am sitting down on my path and removing that rock from my shoe.  In fact, I may take the shoes off altogether. 

When I talk of a new path I’m not talking about traveling the world with a backpack or leaving my husband and family behind for an ashram in India.  I’m a firm believer in the old adage that “wherever you go, there you are”.  Self-exploration can be done from home, in fact, being in that ashram might just be a great diversion and I don’t need more diversions.  Decades of caring for a family have left me so attuned to other people’s needs that I have forgotten how to listen to my own.  Getting diverted by other people has become my fallback position.  It feels good to help and can be rewarding and for some it is enough.  This doesn’t mean I will be ignoring my old path, merely adding to it.

Maybe it is my age, the ever speeding up of the passing years. I am at the end of a decade, I’ll be sixty next year and I think that the end of a decade is a touchstone for many people.  A time to look back on the previous ten years and do a summing up. I believe some of us do it unconsciously and end up suddenly leaving a marriage or a long career behind in an effort to make the next decade look different.  Others like me do it much more slowly, with a great deal of thought and consideration for the people in our lives it may affect.  Tiny steps, carefully taken.  This blog is my first step.  With it I have tentatively taken my machete out and started to whack away at the jungle beside my tidy, old path in the hope that a new path will slowly emerge.  Every person that views my blog adds a little power to my machete.  So, thank you, I’m grateful. 

Taking a New Path by Jill Charuk
www.jillcharuk.com

Love in The Fast Lane

Are you over 75, single and looking for love?  Are you interested in finding that love online?  Well, I may be the right person to talk to.  For a woman my age I know way more about seniors online dating that I should have to.  And let me tell you, there is far more going on there than you can imagine.

When my mother, June (hi Mom!) was widowed seven years ago at the age of 80, she was devastated to find herself left alone when she had counted on my father to outlive her. He was eight years her senior so the odds weren’t with her plan but she had invested in magical thinking that she would die first. Fast forward a year and she could see that there was no going back, only moving forward, so she decided to try and find a new mate and online dating seemed the way to go.  June was, and still is, healthy, active and attractive and had enough money to take care of herself.  In short, a catch.  New photos were taken of her and I was recruited to write up a bio.                                              

                                                    My beautiful mother, June

An overly lengthy bio was written by yours truly (more about that later) and okayed by June.  Up went her profile and her preferences in a man.  It became apparent mighty fast that 80 year old men thought themselves a good match for a 55 year old woman. Their parameters for age seemed to be 55-79 so we decided that June needed to lie about her age. We quickly made her 79.  Who would we be hurting? I mean, really?  Women I know who are 55 and looking for love online are running into the flip side of the same problem, 75 year old men want to date them and the women are not interested. Women are a bit more realistic about the age thing, most 55 year old women would set their parameters at 50-65, not 30 -55 but hey, that’s life.

There are just as many seniors that post out-of-date pictures of themselves as people in other age categories do.  We saw pictures of men in tank tops looking manly, men standing in front of boats or RV’s, hooked up to oxygen tanks, one gent posted a picture of himself ironing…in a tank top. There was one nude shot of a young man proudly displaying his erection that managed to get by the filters but I deleted it before my mom saw it so his dream of having an older woman’s eyes on him was dashed. Poor guy.  So many times the men my mom met were so much older and frailer than their pictures that when my aunt was concerned about the dangers of my mother going off alone to meet a strange man for coffee or a meal, June scoffed at her and said, “ for god’s sakes, I could kick them over and make a run for it any time. There’s no danger!”  My mom is pretty fearless …and in pretty good shape.

Through it all my mom was a good sport, telling anyone who would listen about her escapades and laughing at herself. In the end she did meet a man, a couple of years younger than herself with whom she had a relationship for two years. The never lived together but spent a great deal of with each other. He died, unfortunately, but that is the downside of dating over 80. Everything is accelerated, the dating phase is brief, the commitment quick and it can be over in the time it takes a younger person to decide if they really are in love. There literally is no time to waste.

After the death of her man-friend (you just can’t say boyfriend about an 80 year old man) my mom picked herself up quite quickly and wanted back on the dating websites. The clock of life was ticking. This time around though she was more in control.  “Just put in a nice current picture of me and say how many kids I have, the men don’t care about anything else”, she told me. Okay then, so men don’t change much as they get older.  I complied with the directives and within a couple of months my mother had met a very nice man.  A few months later they were living together and are still together several years later.  Happy ending.

                                  June and Frank in September, 2015

The whole experience has been very illuminating.  I know the odds are that I may end up alone, outliving my spouse.  For some the release from marriage is a blessing, for others it’s a lonely place.  My mother is brave and forthright, clear in what she wants and she got it. Forging a new relationship after 60 years of marriage is not easy, its takes effort and compromise and fearlessness.  So if you are out there, trying online dating and not getting the results you want just think about June.  The ratio of men to women over the age of 75 is pretty unbalanced.  The odds were against her but she managed to find someone not once, but twice.  Despite the grey hair, the glasses and the wrinkles the actors in this play are all the same as their younger counterparts with one exception, they feel the passing of time.  Intensely.  Relationships are appreciated, not expected to be perfect and taken one day at time.  Today could be all they have. We would all be wise to carry that in our hearts.  Get on with it.