Marking another anniversary around the sun

 A few days ago my neighbor, Jean, across the way in the next building, turned 97.

So I am in awe of her advanced years, and how she has a life that seems peaceful and maybe a bit boring. She walks just fine, sometimes with a cane. She wears a neck brace, but puts her hair in pin curls at night. She broke her neck a few years before I met her, and prefers to keep neck braced all the time now. I guess those muscles don't work anymore.

Jean also is deaf. She's sweet and always smiles and says hi, but I never can answer in a shout loud enough. My next door neighbor used to go sit with her on her chairs outside her door, and they'd chat about current events. They'd share reading the newspaper daily. Now my next door neighbor has moved to a nursing home after a fall, and Jean doesn't have a regular conversation with anyone in her door area.

Her son often  brings her a new potted plant (he's manager of a nearby manufacturing company) or a balloon for her birthday, or a meal to-go.

Well, this is how I see her. I look every morning to see if she's up yet. Sometimes she beats me, but this morning I raised my kitchen blind before she opened her bedroom and living room blinds. It's always great to see them and think of her sitting in her easy chair reading the paper.

So, you expected my birthday post to be about me?

Nope, it's about Jean. And do I want or expect to live to 97? Not really. That's what's on my mind. I'm pretty grateful to be able to see a woman that's not all that different from me, just plugging along. We have some very different details to our lives...yet here we are going about our days looking out our windows to the same lame dogwood tree. Just like Jean, it's still alive, and going through the changes of the seasons.

My mother made us matching dresses...my second birthday I think...maybe third? I was a war baby, so didn't know many things had been in short supply, like butter, sugar, toys made of metal...what you don't know you don't miss. 

WW II was going on and on. My father worked in an aircraft manufacturing plant as an accountant. He must have had something keeping him from enlisting (besides me) but I never knew what it was. And now I'm a pacifist, even though I always give credit to those who do fight for our freedom.

Today's quote:

We find our quiet minds as we sit still with our breath, as we make small jottings in our books, and as we practice silent waiting. Then one day, “the little ways” open into broad expanses.

MARV AND NANCY HILES