• Priscilla Nason Shartle

hearthealthyboomer

~ Living healthy after age seventy.

hearthealthyboomer

Tag Archives: Easter Sunday

A Lesson in Perception

17 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by prisnasonshartle in Uncategorized

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brother, church, Easter Sunday, mother, Wayne Dyer

This year, 2018 has, for me, several serendipitous qualities. For one, I graduated from high school in 1968 at the age of 18. I, like the majority of my classmates was 68 years old at the reunion. But I have to admit, turning 68 years old has changed me more than any other birthday.  And for the good, I believe.

Philosopher and author, Wayne Dyer published a book not long before he passed away entitled, “ I Can See Clearly Now.” It is a book about his life and how when looking back on those times, he was able to see more clearly what really was going on or in some cases why it happened.  It got me to thinking about my own life and how I got to be where I am today, a sixty-eight year old woman.

My earliest memory was one when I was age three or four.  My brother and I are Irish Twins, born in the same calendar year, me in January and he Christmas day in December. It was Easter and my mother had made matching outfits for the two of us.  My sister was not yet born or was a baby.  Our mother was an excellent seamstress making her clothes as well our clothes.1953 (2)

What I remember most was not that my little brother and I were dressed so beautifully but that my mother was not happy that Sunday morning. I remember clearly sitting in the big arm chair in our little living room of our home.  My brother and I sat together, side-by-side, our legs too short to reach the foot stool at our feet.

He was crying silent tears.  I don’t remember why, just that he would not stop crying and the more he cried the more upset my mother got.  After we got home, my mother started to get us out of our new clothes.  By now my brother is exhausted from not trying to cry and we both show as much patience as two small children can to keep from upsetting our mother more than she was already upset.

My new Mary Jane patent leather shoes would be tucked away until the next time we went to church and my brother’s new saddle oxford shoes were removed.  Doing so, my mother discovered a wad of tissue paper jammed into the foot of each of my brother’s shoes. In that split second my mother realized that in taking the new shoes out of the box she had neglected to pull out the tissue and thus  my brother was forced to wear his new shoes with the tissue cramping his little feet.  This is why he had been crying and yet was unable to tell our mother what was wrong.

Later when she told this story to us, what I remembered remained the same but what I forgot was her over-whelming sense of regret and shame she felt for letting this happen to one of her children.  It was not a terrible thing, but one that could have been avoided had she stopped being upset with my brother and taken the time to figure out why he was crying.

I can see clearly now, at age 68, while sitting in that chair, holding my little brother’s hand that I was able to see things from a new perspective. I watched my mother who sat on the step stool discover that tissue paper, and it was the first time in my life that it occurred to me that things just might not be what they seem. It also marks the first time I began to wonder why my mother was always so unhappy. I inherited that same stool and today when I prop my feet upon it, I am mindful of the lessons I learned that Easter Sunday so many years ago. Things are not always what they appear no matter if seen through the eyes of a small child, young mother, or a 68 year-old grandmother.

 

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Free to be Me

07 Wednesday Mar 2012

Posted by prisnasonshartle in Free to be Me

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alcoholism, allergies, child of God, Easter Sunday, family, fathers, grandparents, mothers, neighbors, spiritual beings, springtime, winter

When I was a little girl my favorite time of year was springtime. Waking to the sound of lawnmowers roaring up and down the street and the ligustrum blooming outside my open window, I took the good with the bad.  We didn’t know what allergies were in those days.  A stuffy or runny nose in the spring was acceptable and a rite of passage from winter to spring.

Today the Bradford Pear Trees are in full bloom; already their petals are flying across the airwaves from yard to yard.  The other day my throat closed up on me in the middle of a conversation with my new neighbors.  I walked down with a bag of chocolate chip muffins, just out of the oven.  So warm, the plastic bag was steamed over.  The teenage son, twin ten-year-old boys, and 8 year-old daughter gobbled them up while their parents and grandmother and I exchanged names and telephone numbers.  I was there only a few minutes so as not to disturb their unpacking, but by the time I walked back to my house two doors down, I could not stop coughing or catch my breath.  I thought at first I was choking and then it came to me that it was the blossoms of the pear trees across the street from my house.

Once inside the house, I drank some water and washed my hands and face.  This seemed to help.  I felt refreshed and renewed, not unlike the feeling I get when winter turns into spring.  But this year seems to be harder than years in the past.  My first full spring in my house where half the garage still needs to be unpacked so that the storage unit that needs to be emptied can fit into the garage.  I can’t seem to part with some of my family furniture like my parent’s antique Queen Anne dining room table and antique four-poster bed, or my grandfather’s antique sofa.  I don’t have room for them in this house because I no longer have a den or a formal dining room.  And it is not fair to ask my children to burden their homes with pieces of furniture they don’t want.  So for the time-being they will be housed in the garage, along with my craft supplies, sewing materials, albums of the children when they were babies, and various other things that would not survive life in the attic over the garage.

The other day while working on the garage, I found a picture of my mother and her mother standing opposite a table filled with an abundance of food.  The table was covered in a cotton cloth and a vase of flowers.  It was outside the screened porch under some pine trees at my grandparents’ home.  It was Easter Sunday.  My mother and grandmother look pretty and happy.  In the same batch of pictures was one taken earlier in the winter, at Christmas.  Again my mother and grandmother and most of the rest of the family are seated around the table, all turning toward the person, most likely my father, who is taking the picture.  This time the table is in my grandparents’ dining room and again the table is beautifully set and filled with an assortment of food.  But not one of us is smiling in the picture.  It is clear that this is not a good day.

Probably my mother has been drinking too much and her mother and father are upset with her.  My father has gone into the protective mode hovering over my mother and being defensive to my grandparents’ remarks.  My uncle is also drinking heavily and his wife is not supportive but instead mad at him.  One spouse is enabling while the other is admonishing and we children are caught in the crossfire once again.

As the oldest of the cousins, it was my duty to stay calm and stay the course, to pretend all is well.  This was not a job I was given, but one I imposed upon myself.  Welcome to the world of living with alcoholics.  There I am in the picture, clearly a young teenager, maybe 12 years old, with my legs crossed like a young woman wearing fancy white boots, like the models of the early ‘60’s, and in my arms is a baby doll that I got for Christmas.  How mixed up is that?  It is no wonder that wintertime brings up feelings of inadequacy and hunger for a better life.  And that springtime is just the opposite.

We are all called to be the person God wants us to be.  If we are to live as Spiritual beings so that God can live through us, then we must choose to be free of the things that hold us back.  I can choose to live in the wintertime of negativity or in the springtime of renewal where I claim my freedom as a child God.

So give me a runny or stuffy nose any day!  I am free!

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