Like Water off a Duck's Back - Let it Roll

by Anonymous

My name is not important, my mission is however key to enjoying senior life. I was told by my doctor way back in the early 1960’s that to laugh each day keeps you young and healthy. He believed that laughter was as important as staying fit, eating right and a good job in life all put together. I was younger then but decided to file that information away for future reflection.

By nature I am happy-go-lucky soul but sometimes life will beat you down. It is all too easy to get caught up in the daily grind, financial woes, family stress and job issues. In my mid fifties, I did just that, I had a couple major family issues and a major job issue all weighing on me. I lost sight of real life, the everyday joy of living and set out to work myself out of all my problems.

My parents had reached their late golden years and were becoming a handful, my brother had issues he was confronting and my private business was barely breaking even. My response was to work harder and harder and spend less time at home, while out searching for money. When I was home, I had so many family problems to deal with; I forgot that very important lesson back in the early sixties. Laugh, enjoy life and live, it will do more for your soul than any other medicine man can invent.

I suppose it was inevitable, one day I was selling a new customer, someone who did not know me from Adam. She watched me for awhile and finally commented, “You don’t look well, are you alright?” I of course smiled and assured her I was fine and finished the sale.

Back on my way to the next stop, I was happy that I had just added a new customer with good future potential and was still on track to see my other customers. Not fifty miles down the road; I started having overheating problems with my truck. When I got to the next town I found a mechanical shop and he diagnosed it as a water pump and informed me I would be spending the night. After dinner, I called my wife and during our conversation I began to get a rhythmic stabbing in my left shoulder. I tried to ignore it but soon it was overwhelming. I called home again and advised my wife I was going to go over to a walk in clinic and have it checked out.

Well the long story short, was I was on the verge of a massive coronary, most likely fatal by all medical predictions. Major wake-up call! I was lucky and only need a stent to fix the blockage and was advised to change my ways.

Over the next few months I did a lot of soul searching and realized that I was taking on life’s stress in bucket loads. The first thing I had to do was to dump some stress. How do you do that? For me it turned out to be a simple decision. Start living my life again, enjoying the ups and downs and forget about trying to control everything. Because it cannot be done, life lives you, if you do not live it. The best you can do is roll with the punches and seek out the positive side of every crisis.

missing attribution - contact if this image belongs to you.

I reintroduced laughter and silliness into my life, I began to let things slide, like water off a duck's back and each day I felt a big weight become smaller. The bottom line was: dying now or let life beat me up and enjoy the ride. I chose the ride. I got through the entire crisis somehow and my parents are in heaven, my brother is well, my business was a casualty but I still have a loving family and my health.
Each day I make sure to search out the humor in life, the ironies and most of all the solution to that day's furrowed brow.

I'm happy to share my personal perspective on how I live life, so as to be around a good number of years yet.

The Perfect Christmas Tree

by Carol Shaw

image from A Christmas Story

Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree...

Every year, my husband would take us and our 4 little kids tramping through the cold Chicago winter of ice and snow in search of the perfect Christmas tree.
"Bundle up, kids...we're going with Daddy to get our tree."
A few years of this and the kids were asking, "Mom, do we have to go?"
He just had an eye for what he wanted and that was that. Must be the master gardener in him. Our trees looked so perfect that when guests came over during the holidays they would say, "Oh, what a pretty tree! Is it real or artificial?"

Even after we moved to Arizona it was the same thing, only we didn't have to tramp through the snow to find one. One year, he was very busy, working long hours at the family business and really didn't have much time to shop for a tree. After about the second lot we visited, they had a tree all set up as a demo. It was flocked with artificial snow, covered with lights, ornaments and all.
"How much for that one?" says he.
With a much-surprised look on the salesman's face, they decided on a price and off we went with it. Brought it home, set it up, and that was that!

Then we bought our cabin up in Pine, Arizona, which backs up to the Tonto National Forest. The family all gathers there for Christmas each year, all of our kids, their spouses and our grandkids. The first two years we bought live trees, thinking we would help Mother Nature with a few more trees...however, that didn't work out because we were not there to attend to them.

image borrowed from this post at Mother  Earth News blog.

Not wanting to buy a fresh cut tree - because we wanted to go up early to decorate, and then un-decorate after the holidays - he finally relented and we bought our first artificial Christmas tree. Of course, this was no easy task, either. You know how many different artificial trees there are out there.

Well, ours was a beauty. The cabin having high ceilings, we chose a really tall tree. It was so big, in fact, that our granddaughter wrote an essay for school about the humungous Christmas tree her Papa put up at the cabin. As the family got bigger and the room got smaller, he took to pruning the tree. Yes, I said pruning. Got out the old wire snips and did it. He is probably the only person you will ever know  that pruned an artificial tree!!

Last year he decided it was time to purchase a new one, and got a very tall, slim tree. Really turned out lovely, only it got a thumbs-down from the grandkids! They wanted another humungous one!

So guess what? Once again...Christmas tree, Oh, Christmas tree...

Thanks, Carol, for this wonderful Christmas memory!